Decorated whalebone, possibly made in South Georgia, 1900s
This is a blade of rorqual baleen which is a type of whale bone. Some whales have these instead of teeth. They help the whales to filter the small animals that they eat from the sea water.
This is decorated with flowers and a shield shaped frame. It is inscribed 'South Georgia'. South Georgia is a very remote island near Antarctica. It is surrounded by ice cold waters and a whaling station used to be based there.
Baleen whales (Mysticeti) are filter feeders, sifting huge quantities of sea water through their mouths to feed on krill. The baleen whales include species like the Blue Whale, the Bowhead Whale, the Humpback Whale and the Greenland Right Whale.
This baleen plate is a product of twentieth-century whale fishery in the South Atlantic.
South Georgia whaling station is most famous as the place where Sir Ernest Shackleton finally made it back to safety. This followed the amazing survival effort that followed his Trans-Antarctic expedition on the Endurance in 1914-1916.
South Georgia lies between 35.47' to 38.01' west and 53.58' to 54.53' south. It is surrounded by the ice cold waters that flow up from Antarctica.
Scrimshaw is the folk art of the whaler. This is usually made with whalebone, teeth or baleen. The origin of the term âscrimshawâ is not clear and is discussed a lot. When a captain ordered his crew to be âscrimshanderingâ, he wanted them to be pre-occupied with a creative past-time.
The main reason for making scrimshaw was to kill time and to keep men occupied and out of trouble. Sailing, and especially whaling, involved long periods of waiting and doing nothing. Anything that took a long time would have been a welcome hobby.
Items identified with the Hull whaling trade are extremely rare, and occasionally fake. The British trade in whale oil and bone centred around Hull in the early 1600s and the early 1700s. Most scrimshaw is from after these periods.
