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Thank you Peter.


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From: 38Talk@fer3.com [38Talk@fer3.com] on behalf of Peter Whittemore [NoReply_Whittemore@fer3.com]
Sent: Friday, June 27, 2014 7:01 PM
To: Tom Brillat
Subject: [38Talk] FW: Morgan Letter

This is the letter I sent last night for the New Bedford Standard-Times 
"letters to the editor" column, or maybe even a guest editorial column (with 
pictures of the boat?)  Steve Urbon passed it on to the top editor today  so 
I hope it shows up in the weekend edition, for all of our benefit.     Peter 
Whittemore

________________________________
From: peterwhittemore---.com
To: peterwhittemore---.com; surbon{at}s-t.com
Subject: FW: Morgan
Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2014 23:25:53 -0400



________________________________
From: peterwhittemore---.com
To: peterwhittemore---.com
Subject: Morgan
Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2014 15:09:11 -0400

     A top-gallant salute to the Port of New Bedford, Mayor Mitchell, to the 
Captain, crew, craftsmen and staff of Mystic Seaport, and to anyone who has 
ever dreamt of the one of a kind voyage we have just been privileged to 
experience sailing on the Charles W. Morgan whaleship from Vineyard Haven 
back home to New Bedford Harbor.

     I am the great-great-grandson of Herman Melville, author of "Moby Dick".  
He left this port, which in the 1840's was the richest city in the world, on 
the whaleship Acushnet like many a young man, going out to find work in the 
energy sector, as they do today in the shale oil fields of the Dakotas.  It 
has been the thrill of a lifetime to be among the crew sailing into this 
port, blood coursing in our veins like the singing of the rigging, with the 
joy of the creation filling our souls like the wind in the sails.  We did not 
catch sight of the great White Whale, but believe me, he's still out there.

      Melville sailed in 1841, just four months before the Chas W Morgan was 
launched.  One might say the Acushnet of New Bedford launched the novel Moby 
Dick and the Morgan has given me an opportunity to return the story to its 
source on a "sister" ship.  I left New Bedford Tuesday evening on the 
SeaStreak, going to Martha's Vineyard at twenty-six knots and returned the 
next day, some 173 years earlier, so to speak, at an exhilarating six knots 
under eight square sails.  There were many descendants of former captains, 
crew and owners aboard and we all agreed the ancestors were smiling down on 
us all the way into port

     You might think this a great opportunity for one of the family to plug 
the book Moby Dick as if we ever made a dime on your copy purchase.  The book 
sold 800 copies in Melville's lifetime, and was so panned by the critics of 
the day that the copyright ran out never to be renewed.
So please all of you from high school kids to ancient mariners who read 
Melville's epic, and who should be grateful for such open-source adventure 
and wisdom, read it twice at least and read it in your later years when the 
depth of the ocean and the depth of your soul is so much richer.  And if 
you've gained value from the journey, please send that dime and then some to 
the New Bedford Whaling Museum, and to the Berkshire Historical Society's 
home at Arrowhead, in Pittsfield Mass where Moby Dick was written, and to the 
great people of Mystic Seaport whose hard work, with blisters and splinters 
to show for it, brought this great day to the Seven Seas. Please support 
these efforts to keep the literature and the sea alive.

     Oh Lord this madness and thy mysteries are so great and my brain is so 
small.  Give me the words of my ancestors that I might make us all see that 
Melville's novel "Moby Dick" walks these docks as we speak, day and night, 
walks the cobblestone streets of New Bedford and Nantucket and walks the 
halls of Wall Street and the corridors of Congress, calling us like Elijah 
the Prophet and Ishmael the Beholder, and Father Mapple in his sermon on 
Jonah, calling us to speak the truth to falsity.  We need not speak the truth 
to power because truth is the ultimate power, but we must speak the truth to 
falsity as we see the oceans fill with plastic and pollution, as we see whale 
fishing continue beyond any reason, and as we witness industrial enterprise 
crushing the American soul once so joyous in its freedoms.  Moby Dick still 
plies these waters calling us to wake up and smell the seaweed, breathe in 
the beauty and to step up and act to sustain our Earth.

      Thank you Mystic Seaport, crew of the Charles W. Morgan and to those who 
love the sea and the life it has given us all. Thanks for showing us that we 
can rebuild and rededicate ourselves to a revival of the American spirit in 
view of a sustainable future for the seas that continue to feed the world.

Peter Gansevoort Whittemore
Cohasset MA
1-781-383-6568


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