Local actors and musicians will bring Hudson NY’s whaling past to life in letters and song on Thursday, September 4, at 6 pm at the Hudson Area Library’s Community Room. The event is part of the return to the library of the popular “Hudson: A History of Whaling & Maritime Commerce” exhibit for the months of September and October.
“Epistolary Drama: The Tale of Whaling” will feature local actors reading heart-wrenching, impassioned, and occasionally amusing letters from crew, captains, wives, and heroes.
In between these tales, a chorus and attendees will sing rousing songs and shanties about life at sea. The drama will be narrated by the character of Captain Edward A. Chapel, a long-time Hudsonian and whaler.
The musical director for the performance is Alex Harvey, an expert on whaling songs who performs songs of the sea in a project he calls ShinBone Alley.
At his performances listeners learn to celebrate the haunting intercultural exchange of 18th and 19th century maritime music – whose ingredients traveled from the furthest corners of the globe to be remade and stitched anew by sailors of every shade and shape at port and at sea.
The performance was conceived by library trustees Miranda Barry and Gary Sheffer using letters uncovered during research for the library’s exhibit on Hudson’s whaling past.
“Whaling was challenging for both whalers and their families who stayed home,” said Miranda Barry, the scriptwriter and director for the performance. “The letters and songs reveal hardship but also determination, skill, and humor. Thanks to talented actors and musicians, we can experience the realities of Hudson’s whaling history.”
The library’s whaling exhibit and related programming is part of a yearlong three-site exhibit and programming on Hudson’s beginnings and its era of whaling and maritime trade with the Columbia County Historical Society and the Hendrick Hudson Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution.
Library History Room Coordinator Brenda Shufelt said, “After a summer hiatus, and back by popular demand, we are re-mounting Hudson: A History of Whaling & Maritime Commerce with newly discovered crew lists of Hudson ships. The exhibit is the culmination of over ten years of research and two years spent gathering digital facsimiles of historic documents specific to Hudson’s whaling past.”
Shufelt said other related events include a Teacher Workshop with 3 CTLE (professional) credits, a history talk on the waterways, footpaths and wagon ways developed by Indigenous peoples and the Dutch that were later used by Hudson’s proprietors. Also, the History Room’s annual cemetery tour with Kelley Drahushuk will include whaling-related gravesites.
Registration is required. Email brenda.shufelt@hudsonarealibrary.org to register.
Most of the letters featured in the Sept. 4 performance were written by local residents such as Gilbert Jenkins Jr., grandson of Thomas Jenkins, one of Hudson’s founders.
The young Jenkins was disillusioned by his first whaling experience and in 1833, he wrote to his brother from South America about his experiences on the ship America II:
“Our 1st Mate is a mean, ill-bred man and he is disliked by the ship’s company and I hope to have the pleasure of flogging him on our return home.”
Whaling voyages out of Hudson often lasted three or more years and whalers prized letters from their wives. Featured in the performance will be a charming ditty written by Carrie Hyde to her husband George, who was on the whaling ship Napoleon from 1858-62. Its first stanza:
“Husband, dear husband, come home to me now
Come home err the springtime is through
The old blind cow has got a white calf
And our young lambs are bleating for you”
In 1784 Hudson was founded by a group of whalers and merchants, largely from Nantucket, who purchased Claverack Landing from Dutch settlers. The established river port soon became a busy port with whaling and transatlantic voyages.
Between 1784-1845, there were 47 whaling voyages out of Hudson, some successful and some financially devastating. Industries turning out products such as shipbuilding, rope, sail, soap and candle making rose along the wharves, and in 1795 Hudson became a U.S. Port of Entry.
Barry is a producer for theater, film and TV who moved to Hudson in 2013 and is a member of Hudson’s Historic Preservation Commission. She is currently producing “Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom,” a musical about the Voting Rights movement in 1965. Previously, she was Executive VP Creative Director for Sesame Street, in charge of all US and global productions.
Sheffer is a Hudson native and chair of the library’s History Room Committee and president of the library’s board of trustees. He has been a journalist and a public relations executive for more than 40 years.
Read more about whaling in New York.
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