On Thursday, January 30, the entire Fifth Form traveled to the Whaling Museum in New Bedford, MA for a guided tour of the wide world whaling. All of them are currently reading Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, and though Ishmael and Ahab are fictional characters, their voyage was a very real one, and New Bedford was the epicenter of the industry at its height in the mid-1800s. Not surprisingly, Melville sets the early chapters of the novel in New Bedford, where Ishmael stays at the Spouter Inn, meets his companion Queequeg, and sets out for Nantucket and the seven seas.

The museum provided an invaluable opportunity for students to inhabit the world of the classic novel by experiencing what life on a whaling ship was like. They spent the morning examining sperm whale skeletons, harpoons, scrimshaw, and climbed aboard the museum’s ½ scale replica of a whaling ship. They even got to hold and smell real whale oil! Perhaps more than anything else, the students gained an understanding of the many risks inherent in the whaling voyage—which could last four or five years—and the grueling, dangerous undertaking of finding, harpooning, and processing a whale while at sea. The knowledgeable docents explained the history of whaling and the role of New Bedford in it, as well as describing what we know of Melville’s own experience whaling in the South Pacific. Many thanks to the teachers and staff who chaperoned, and especially the crew at the museum, who made such an enriching experience possible for our students.

See a full gallery of photos from the morning here