Sep 29, 2022 - Sale 2615

Sale 2615 - Lot 310

Price Realized: $ 5,250
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
(WHALING.) Philip M. Kinsey. An unusually lively group of letters home from a South Pacific whaler. 8 Autograph Letters Signed to various family members (most of them quite long) and additional incomplete letter fragments, plus 2 letters addressed to Kinsey from his father Samuel, and one to Samuel Kinsey from the ship's captain; later numbers added in red pencil, generally moderate wear, with the letter fragments quite worn; no postal markings. Various places, 1852-1855

Additional Details

These letters offer an entertaining mix of whaling stories and South Pacific ethnographic detail, and they reach a poignant conclusion. Philip Mixsell Kinsey (1829-1855) was raised in Catasauqua, PA near Allentown, and set out on a whaling voyage aboard the ship Amazon of Fairhaven, MA in September 1852.

His 8 November 1853 letter describes whaling in the Arctic, including an attempt to strip the blubber and tusks from a dead walrus, running through an ice field which other whalers had refused to attempt. One of many rousing whaling passages: "When he rose to the top of the water, he recived two iron from our boat, and now the fun commences. . . . Now he's off at rail road speed and towing the two boats. . . . You can hardly see for the white water, but there he slacks. Hall line quick my boys, there he slows, spring to your ores and lay back, let her run steady, and now the mate is lancin' him stern all quick, the Capt. is lancin' on the other side. There he goes down. . . . The next time he rose, the mate gave him a death lance for sure. He spouts thick blood, and three hearty cheers arises from the boats and ship. . . . The head with bone weighed about 3000 lbs--rather a large head, don't you think?" On 25 March 1855 he contemplates a gift for his brother: "About that mermaid I am afraid I shall be unable to catch one, but what do you think about a bottle of wind caught from the last gale, or a piece of blackskin scraped from the flukes of a whale?"

On 24 March 1853 he describes the Portuguese Atlantic colony of Cape Verde: "These islands are inhabited by Portiguise. Thay look like our plantation Negrows. I understand that the missionarys have made an excellant harvest in converting souls to God." On 12 April [1853] he describes at length the island of "Whylootake one of the Friendlys" (in Tonga, or perhaps Aitutaki in the Cook Islands): extensive fruit groves, and an exceptionally honest and intelligent population. He also recounts three sailors who deserted the ship in New Zealand, but ran out of food after eight days: "Hunger compelled them to leave their hiding place to seek some food, but no sooner did they show their heads, than the Mowarys [Maoris] nab them and conducted them to the calabuse . . . for a reward of 5 lb. They will burn all the wood on the land if they could not find the runaway outside the bush." Archangel Bay in Siberia is discussed on 8 November 1853.

Maui did not meet with Kinsey's approval. He describes the restrictive shore leave laws at length, and complains: "The dust in the streets in generly from 8 to 10 inches thick. . . . Their dress is made in the oddest style that I can remember, the waist being right under the arms and hanging loose upon the body. Their head dress is generly artificial flowers brought from China." In March 1855 he describes alleged cannibalism on the Marquesas Islands: "At times the chiefs will fight their king, or it will be chief against chief. When an enemy kills annother, if he can get the body he secures it untill he collects his friends, when he takes certain parts of the body and roasts it for them." He also describes their appearance: "Each tribe can be told by their tatooing. This tattoing is all done for the girls. If a man is not pricked up in this way, no girl will marry him. The women have the tattooing done upon the arms and legs and some upon the lips."

Philip's last letter was written from Lahaina, Hawaii on 15 October 1855. He describes landing a whale in a storm "blowing so hard that it caused the ship to jump up and down so bad that the fluke chain parted, and so to save our main mast we had to cut the whale adrift, and to tell the truth it was with sad hearts that we did so." He describes the celebration on the ship as their cruise came to an end, bound for the Hawaiian Islands. A month later came a mournful letter from the ship's master Edward H. Barber announcing Philip's death while "attempting to recover one of the ship's boats whilst on shore at Hervey's Island after recruits for my homeward passage. . . . He must have been carried out with the undertow. . . . His body was not recovered."