Woods Hole Historical Museum

WHHM Conversation: Woods Hole Whaling, by Dr. Jim Hain
2018-11-13 12:30 - 13:30 (America/New_York)
A Woods Hole Historical Museum Conversation about Whaling in Woods Hole
November 13th, 2018, 12:30 PM, Woods Hole Public Library
Candle House in Woods Hole in the early 1900s. Robert C. Hunt Jr. postcard collection, Falmouth Public Library.
The stone Candle House on Water Street, which now houses administrative offices for the Marine Biological Laboratory, is a reminder of a time 175 years ago when Woods Hole was home port for a number of whaling ships. In “Woods Hole Whaling: A National and Global Enterprise from a Small Village,” Dr. Jim Hain will present the history of whaling in Woods Hole.
Today, ships and researchers from the village sail the oceans seeking knowledge directed to the conservation of whales. In a past time, the ships and people sailed widely to harvest the whales. As with Texas and Louisiana today, the raw materials then were brought to a refinery or manufactory―in this case, the Candle House in Woods Hole, used for storing whale oil and manufacturing spermaceti candles.
Dr. Hain has assembled details from logbooks, account books, narratives, photographs, videos, cemeteries, and the work of other authors to paint glimpses of Woods Hole, whaling voyages, and the whaling related products manufactured and sold from the village.
Dr. Hain has worked at the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Sea Education Association, and is currently affiliated with Associated Scientists at Woods Hole. He has done research from Newfoundland to Brazil. One of his current projects is studying and monitoring right whales and their calving in coastal waters of northeast Florida, where he works from December through April.
The conversation will be held at Woods Hole Public Library lower level meeting room and is free and open to the public.

A Talk about Cod and the Cape by John Cumbler
2016-06-28 13:00 - 14:00
The Woods Hole Historical Museum is honored to present Professor John Cumbler who will speak on June 28, 2016, at 1 PM. Dr. Cumbler, a popular and awarded history professor at University of Louisville. His fields of specialization are United States environmental history and economic history. He has recently published his seventh book “Cape Cod: An Environmental History of a Fragile Ecosystem”. The book is an economic and environmental history of Cape Cod. The subject of his talk in Woods Hole will be “Cod and the Cape”, a subject which will tie into the Museum’s new exhibit about historic cod fishing.
Dr. Cumbler is on phased retirement and splits his time between Louisville and Wellfleet. He is a trained and certified rescuer of large marine mammals and sea turtles.
The talk is free and open to the public and will be held in the lower level meeting room of the Woods Hole Public Library, adjacent to the Museum at 581 Woods Hole Road. There is metered on-street parking as well as small lots at the Museum and Library. The Museum exhibits will be open before and after the talk. For more information, call the Museum at 508-548-7270.

A Conversation About Shellfishing
2016-05-24 13:00 - 14:00
The next “Conversation” sponsored by the Woods Hole Historical Museum will be a historical look at shell-fishing in Falmouth. The Conversation is scheduled for Tuesday, May 24 at 1 PM in the meeting room in the lower level of the Woods Hole Public Library, 581 Woods Hole Road, adjacent to the Museum.
The speaker will be Matt Weeks, who comes to the subject with not only a lot of on-the-water knowledge, but also a deep curiosity and skill in searching historical documents. Matt was the fisheries technician for the Town of Falmouth for two years, and helped oversee the creation of oyster rafts in Little Pond, among other duties. Since then, he has moved on to become a self-employed shellfisherman, with an oyster grant just outside Waquoit Bay. He works that grant, and also participates in wild harvest.
He has found the time and energy to do serious research in the historical records in the Falmouth Historical Society archives and the Falmouth Public Library, gleaning information about shellfishing dating back to 1770s. He will talk about the results of that effort.
Matt will share his findings relating to Falmouth’s shellfish resources for more than two hundred years starting in the 1770s. He will touch on past management of the resources, showing images of the historical records and ledgers, including early concerns about Oyster Pond’s oysters starting in in 1773, the first oyster grants awarded in 1852, and seeding local ponds. He will include details on aquaculture and natural resources and their changes through time.
In trying to clarify and analyze oyster grants, he has created tables showing location of grant, date, and the grantee, stretching all the way from 1852 to present, and for the first time providing a historic and comprehensive look at the Town’s grants. He has also studied the more recent official town records relating to shellfish up to the present and will present an overview of those reports.
As he says of his research “My goal was to build some institutional memory that could shed some light on what has been done in the past and how we got to “now”. I also hope to glean from the documents some reflection of the ecological history of our resources and how they were utilized and changed. This would hopefully help put current management into a long- term historical perspective.”
As he studied the records, he also found interesting bits about other fisheries, which he will also share, including the first scallop permits in 1898, and concerns in the 1920s about fish weirs, seines, and a herring house.
It all promises to be an informative and very interesting presentation, proving, as the Museum’s Director Jennifer Gaines says “Matt proves how important and vital a study of the historical documents can be, enlightening us about our lives and town today.” She adds “This is great; it is as if we all are looking right at those documents; it’s fascinating!”
For more information, call the Museum at 508-548-7270.

Underwater Archeology: A Talk by Raymond Hayes
2015-10-15 13:00 - 14:00
The Woods Hole Historical Museum marked Massachusetts Archeology Month (October, 2015) with an illustrated talk by Raymond L. Hayes, Ph.D. about his underwater archeological survey of Great Harbor, Woods Hole.
Dr. Hayes, who is a research associate at the Institute of Maritime History in the Smithsonian Institution, finds Great Harbor particularly interesting because it has several unusual features for Cape Cod: a very deep area in its south-east quadrant, providing a deep-water anchorage, historical docks on the south-east edge, as well as the Pacific Guano Company docks farther north into the harbor where ships would tie up when returning laden from the Pacific islands. He will share the results of his surveys both under-water and on the shores.
Old bottle found in Great Harbor (Raymond Hayes)
Ray Hayes is Professor Emeritus and former Assistant Dean for Medical Education, Howard University College of Medicine, Washington, DC. He completed his college education at Amherst College and holds post-graduate degrees from The University of Michigan (Ann Arbor). He has served on faculty at several medical schools, including Harvard, the University of Pittsburgh, Morehouse, Howard University and the University of the West Indies (Mona, Kingston, Jamaica).
He is former Vice-President, distinguished honoree and a life member of the Association of Marine Laboratories of the Caribbean, a member of the MBL Society (Woods Hole) and a founding member of the Board of Directors of the Global Coral Reef Alliance (Cambridge). He is also a Fellow and lifetime member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Ray holds licensure as a NAUI SCUBA instructor. He has served as an Associate Member of the Advisory Council on Underwater Archaeology and is currently on the Ethics and the UNESCO Committees for the Society for Historical Archaeology. He is on the Board of Directors for two international maritime archaeological societies, the Institute of Maritime History and the Stichting Marien Archeologie Curaçao (STIMACUR). He is also a research volunteer and consultant at the U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command, Underwater Archaeology Division, D.C. Navy Yard.
Milk bottle found in Great Harbor. (Raymond Hayes)
He has co-authored chapters in two books on Caribbean Maritime Archeology, edited two textbooks on Underwater Archaeology and presented research papers before the World Archaeological Congress, the Society for Historical Archeology and the Mid-Atlantic Archaeological Conference. Within the past year, he co-authored a book on the underwater archaeology of a British steamship, SS Mediator (1884, Curaçao) and published results of historical anchorage surveys on the Caribbean islands of Dominica and St. Kitts. Ray is a resident of Woods Hole, MA and Silver Spring, MD. He is married with three adult children and four grandchildren.
