38Talk:

I'm finding this conversation on Theseus' Ship and fluid texts very exciting, and I hope we'll have the opportunity to continue it in the future through this forum and others.  I'm currently writing my first book, a scholarly monograph, on what I'm provisionally calling the cultural afterlife of the US industrial whaling industry.  I chronicle representations of the whaling industry from its peak of productivity through its decline and commemoration, through the disciplinary perspectives of literary studies and visual culture.  So these conversations on how we try to come into contact with the past are fascinating and really generative for my research.

I was a Voyager on the Newport-Martha's Vineyard leg (and how I wish that my time on the Morgan was still ahead of me!).  I approached the ship with a strong desire to see what was "original"and "authentic."  But I have to admit that I was captivated by the ways the ship has been fitted out for its 2014 voyage, and I wished I'd lingered in the engine room and in the hold, where C19 ship architecture and even some of that original framing comes into contact with C21 plumbing.  I was reminded of what Marcel Duchamp said (or what was said about his work), that the "only works of art America has given are her plumbing and her bridges."  Modernist snobbery aside, the plumbing in the hold of the Morgan IS a work of art.