As we stroll up Main Street in Sag Harbor, New York, a former whaling port and now glamorous summer destination and crown jewel of the Hamptons, the charming shops start to give way to older residential houses. Just beyond the village proper, we see an imposing stately house in the distance. It is surrounded by a white Victorian fence and rolling green lawns. Where else would a former whaling ship owner live back around 1845 than the biggest house in town?
Benjamin Hunting II owned multiple whaleships and became a rich man capturing whales and selling their valuable oil. Eventually over the years, his home became a living tribute to history. Welcome to the Sag Harbor Whaling & Historical Museum in Sag Harbor, New York.
The house was designed in the Greek Revival style by the renowned architect Minard Lafever who also designed The First Presbyterian Church in Sag Harbor, also known as the Old Whaler’s Church.
As we make our way onto the gracious portico, we pass under the massive Corinthian columns covered in ornate carved detail, including a relief of whaling tools. While still gazing up, we are greeted at the top of the front steps by an arch formed by two jaw bones of a right whale.
The manager of the museum, Jennifer Edwards, (L) with the author, Susan McGuirk (R) under the Whalebone Arch.
Image Courtesy of Rossa Cole
We enter the Entrance Hall where we immediately notice a graceful staircase, leading to what became a Masonic Temple in 1920 and is still in use. Beyond the stairs in the hall is an information desk and gift shop.
Moving into the main galleries on the first floor, we start with the Front Parlor. Here we see the portraits of famous whaling captains and some of their wives. There are examples of early American furniture, including a chest from a member of the Dominy family. In glass cases below the portraits are examples of whaling logbooks from actual historic voyages. In the middle of the room sits a Try Pot, an enormous cast-iron vat that was used on board whaling vessels to render the fat from the whale blubber to oil.
From there we move into the Harpoon Room. Along the south wall we see the weapons used to capture and kill whales. Besides several types of harpoons, we see lances, guns, flensing knives and blubber spades. Along the wall is a whale vertebrae and shipbuilding tools.
Across on the east wall of the Harpoon Room lies the Scrimshaw Collection of almost 200 pieces. In their spare time on deck, the sailors carved folk art treasures out of whale bone and teeth, as well as ivory. They depict nautical scenes, and fashioned jewelry, items for the home, and even toys.
As we depart the building through the front door and walk down the porch steps to the east, we see on the grounds a shed built to house an actual 1860s whaleboat. It is said to have sailed aboard the Sag Harbor whaler Concordia and is the biggest whaling artifact in the collection. One look at the size of it demonstrates how dangerous it was for harpooners to face a mammoth whale in such an outmatched vessel.
I had the recent good fortune to hold a launch party for my new historical novel, Dear Missing Friend, set in Sag Harbor, at the Sag Harbor Whaling & Historical Museum.
Sag Harbor and the whaling trade played a pivotal role in my book from the beginning. Like so many of us, I found myself researching family history a few years back. It was strictly for fun, and I did not have a grand plan of how it would all play out. It wasn’t until I came upon a real advertisement looking for a lost wife from Sag Harbor that I got hooked. It was in the “Missing Friends” column where Irish immigrants tried to find their missing loved one in the new world. My 2nd great aunt was being tracked down by her whaler husband and my research began in earnest.
The sources that illustrated my characters’ journeys were varied. Whaling logs to ship manifests and passenger lists for crossing the Atlantic and the world were located. There are federal and state census records showing addresses and information like family members, occupations, nationality, net worth, acreage and what crops were grown. Maps help situate characters, while bank and employment records illustrate quotidian lives. Birth, death, marriage, war and newspaper records, as well as burial locations, show the passages of each character’s lives.
From 175 years ago, readers from across the Hamptons may still recognize actual addresses, street names, churches, cemetery plots, locations of hotels, local census records, notices from the Sag Harbor Corrector, Town of Southampton records, local maps, local civil war records, and pictures of houses still standing. Whaling history includes a fictional encounter with Herman Melville, the whaling log of the bark, Neva, and several crew lists.
In letters from Michael Heffernan, the husband of the protagonist, Cath, he describes whale voyages and gives witness to the Irish sailing experience that was not uncommon by the 1850s. His voyage routes, ports, and sights are all detailed in letters to her. Perhaps the most moving is from the Bark Neva, after the married couple is estranged, explaining why he broke his promise to renounce the sea.
The main setting in the book, Sag Harbor, has much of the past preserved in it. The village was economically depressed for most of the century following the whale fishery collapse in the 1850s. Little was torn down or built up for several generations, so it still retains much of the character and flavor of the era. The many smaller houses surrounding the magnificent edifice of the Whaling Museum perhaps tell a more accurate story of the workaday life of the seamen, sail makers, whale oil barrel makers, and wharf stevedores of the small village. The memory of the great Whale fishery is still alive in the magical seaport of Sag Harbor, New York.
The Museum is a certified National Treasure and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Plan your visit or learn more here: The Sag Harbor Whaling & Historical Museum
Image Credits: Photographs courtesy of Rossa Cole and The Sag Harbor Whaling & Historic Museum; Hayden Soloviev (CC BY 4.0), via Wikimedia Commons.
Best-selling author, Susan McGuirk, posts about heroines of historical fiction on her free newsletter “The Storied Sisters Society” on Substack. While working at HBO, she honed her writing skills composing hundreds of in-house film reviews. She also worked at Anthology Film Archives, a historical film museum. Besides Substack, follow Susan on Instagram, Goodreads, Bluesky and Bookbub. Official website: www.susanmcguirk.com
Susan McGuirk’s Dear Missing Friends is story of Three hearts. Love lost. One impossible choice. A character-driven historical saga featuring the love triangle of a seaman, a governess and a wealthy speculator. Told through letters, the sweep of 19th century events like the gold rush, whaling voyages, and the streets of Manhattan unfold.
