October 12, 2024 • 24 mins
Alexander Brash, co-author of A Whaler at Twilight: A Long-Lost True Account of Whaling and Redemption in the South Pacific talks about his great, great grandfather’s epic journey and the importance of marine conservation in the context of today’s environmental challenges.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is What's at Risk with Mike Christian on WBZ
Boston's news radio. Hi, Mike Christian, hero What's at Risk?
First up on tonight's show, we have an encore edition
of What's at Risk with Alexander Brash, co author of
A Whaler at Twilight, a long lost true account of
(00:22):
whaling and redemption in the South Pacific. Alexander talks about
his great great grandfather's epic journey and the importance of
marine conservation in the context of today's environmental challenges. And
in our second segment, we are honored to welcome the
legendary thriller writer and author of dozens of New York
Times bestsellers, Patricia Cornwell. She talks eloquently and passionately about UFOs,
(00:49):
Harriet beecher Stowe, crime scenes, Jack the Ripper, and her
most recent novel, Identity Unknown. A Whaler at Twilight is
a fan fantastic but true story centered on one hundred
and twenty year old journal of Robert Armstrong, a man
from Baltimore, telling his ten year whaling adventure in the Pacific.
(01:11):
He describes sailing around Tierra de Fuego, visiting Chile, the Galopagos,
New Zealand and dozens of Polynesian islands. He speaks of
the thrill and risks of hunting whales, of having hundreds
of natives borger ship, and of trading with cannibals for food.
There are hurricanes, mutinies, desertions, floggings, female whalers, and finally,
(01:36):
the author's successful re entry to American society. The co
author is the man's great great grandson, Alexander Brash, who
found the journal in his mother's trunk and did three
years of research to make the story come alive with maps,
ship's logs, photographs, and other sources. Our guest today is
(01:57):
conservationist Alexander Brash, author with Robert Armstrong, of A Whaler
at Twilight, a long lost true account of whaling and
redemption in the South Pacific. How you doing today, alex
Nice to have you.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
What a pleasure to be with you on What's at Risk.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Perhaps a good way to start before we get into
the book is for you to tell our listeners a
little bit about your background and your life's journey.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Funny enough, I was actually born and raised in New
York City, and then for some odd reason, became fascinated
by birds and early age, and ended up sort of
working my way through both high school and college working
at the Museum of Natural History, and then from that
I started down in Washington after college and worked for
the World Wildlife Fund, standing panda bear's and rainforest. Went
(02:41):
to the Yale Schooling environment worked for a couple of
years on a PhD out of Rutgers University until a
hurricane blew through my study site and moved what was
going to be a three year PhD process on top
of a two years master's for something like a five
year saw and added the New York Times and took
a job with the New York City Parks Department and
then rose up to be the chief park ranger and
(03:03):
environmentalist for the agency. Was there about twenty years, then
switched over and joined the National Parks Conservation Association. It
spent ten years as a regional director in the Northeast,
and then finally I was president of Connecticut Audubon for
three or so years.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Well, this story I did a little research on at
a whaler at twilight. This is a fascinating story, and
you've balanced it out with things in your life, and
you know what's going on in the world today. But
this is about your great great grandfather, Robert Armstrong, right correct,
So over one hundred and sixty years he had this
across the South Pacific. He wrote this autobiography. I guess
(03:40):
about his experience, and yet it was undiscovered, and maybe
it was discovered but unused for a long period of time.
Your mom played a big part in you writing this book.
How did that all come about?
Speaker 2 (03:52):
It first came about when I was a grad student
and I was leading a bird trip, or the bird
component of a trip up to Cape Cod. And we
were going up with thirty customers, if you will, who
were wanted to see whales off of Stellwagon Bank off Provincetown,
but also do some birding, and I did the burning part.
We went off and saw some had some incredible sights
(04:14):
of both humpback and particularly right whales in May that year,
and I came back and I told my parents about it,
and my mother, after a long pause, said, well, you
know you have a whaler in your background. I said, well,
that's really nice, and then she sort of long paused.
She said, well you know there's a map too. I said,
well that's really cool. You know, someday I'll look at it,
(04:36):
and then it kind of got swept aside. I mean,
you know, I kept going to grad school and then
had jobs and was Washington, New York and never really
got back to it. And then finally got back to it,
and there in a trunk that she had in the
back of her closet that had been in the family
for one hundred plus years, this big, old black leather
trunk with brass hinges and so forth. And I finally say, well,
(04:58):
I'm ready, I'd love to see this map or whatever
you have. And I guess I'd always thought that what
else might be would be a simple letter or something.
And we go to the bottom of the trunk after
I pull it out, and there is not only a map,
but this one hundred page handwritten manuscript, which at first
I couldn't read because she the first one she gave
me was just a copy. It was an old xerox copy,
(05:19):
and it was very faint and indecipherable, and then I
sort of was embarrassed to bring it back to her
for a while, and they finally did and she said, oh, well,
there's another copy, and we dug deeper in the trunk
and there was this sort of old black on white mimeograph.
It's reverse. It's sort of like the purple mimiograph stuff
you had as a child at grade school. But it
(05:41):
was a nineteen thirties version that her father had made.
But it was a very clear white writing on a
black background, and very distinct. And I sat down and
digitized the whole thing and then reading it as I
went along, and said, you know, this is an incredible
story because it's less about whaling. It's really a crazy,
rocking true tale of a guy who really is alienated
(06:03):
from his family. He's suffering, you know, from substance abuse.
He's become an alcoholic, and he doesn't know what to do,
and he heads out across the Pacific to sort of
find himself.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Yeah, that's that's a fascinating story and to discover it.
How come you were so reluctant to go back and
dig into it. Maybe reluctant it is a strong word,
but just just you know, didn't necessarily have an interest
in it for so long.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
You know, it's hard to say. I would say there's
probably some of the you know, ego of youth, where
your little focus on you know, at that time, I'm
trying to focus on getting good grades to get out
in life and do all my other work and find
a job and get a job and iron that down,
and I, you know, then get married and raise children,
and you know, you sort of put that stuff aside,
(06:48):
and I think I really just didn't have the time,
because at the end of the day, when I did
finally retire and have the time, took nyon three years
to digitize it, to slowly go back and double check
everything and then sort of begin to with curiosity, tracked
down the proper nouns that were used throughout and follow
up on some of the stories and see what I
(07:09):
could find.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
I think he was from Baltimore originally, but he actually
went whaling out of New Bedford. Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Yes, that's correct. He was in Baltimore and his parents
died when he was very little. I think his mother
died when he was four, and his father dies when
he's something like fifteen or something. Luckily, one of his uncles,
who does not have children, has him in but he
he too, is a rather hard working and as he
later calls him, a rather cold uncle who he appreciated,
(07:37):
did in fact love him, but he was sort of
a hard man, and they sent him off to a
dental school, and then he fell in with a bad
crowd and in his own words, became a drunkard, and
then got fired from one job and came back to
Baltimore and went back. They'd got him back to school,
alumni network sort of helped him. And then he got
a second job, and then he did the same thing,
and he became he was fired for being drunk tending
(08:00):
to tending to dentistry needs in the neighborhood. And so
after that one he was too embarrassed to go home.
So then he went up to New York and drunk
himself on the table the first night. On the second
day when he crawled out of the bed and his
hotel went down and sold all of his tools and
his watch, and then woke up on the streets the
(08:21):
next morning penniless and sold himself to a whaler. They
put him on a train and shipped him out of
New Bedford.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
That's fascinating, is all that detail in the in the
transcript in the ductor. Yeah, Yes, that's really great.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Yeah. And he writes early on that he wrote this
tale to be less about whaling, though obviously it is,
but to be more about sort of the human interests
out of the story, the things that he saw, the
places that he went. He wailed for three and a
half years on one ship heading from New Bedford out
across the South Pacific, and then he got off that
(08:56):
ship in New Zealand, and he ended up logging there
four and a half plus years in two different places
among them with the Maoris, and had some you know,
interesting intense times there and then finally said to himself
it was time to go home, but he still was
under the spell of evil drink and still not sure
(09:17):
about his place in life, and so forth. And anyway,
he gets himself on a second whaling ship and they
wail for another year sort of in the South Pacific,
and then slowly head home.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Yeah, and he struggled. He struggled with drinking for quite
a while. Obviously he must have stopped at some point
in time, and you know, looking for his own redemption,
I guess through this whole process, how did it all
play out for him in life?
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Luckily for me it played out fairly well, I would say.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Since he's a great great grandfather. Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
So on the on the way back, he you know,
has been fighting the demon drink, and he's also been
struggling looking for redemption you know, from his God at
that point, and who I sort of term in the
book as I look back at it later as sort
of an Old Testament God. And halfway back out under
(10:06):
the Southern Cross in the Pacific Ocean, he has an
epiphany one night and he sort of realizes that his
view of God, who was going to tell him or
fix him, was an archaic view and that the real
view is really was all up to him. And I
kind of call it as his Dorothy moment, because in essence,
like Dorothy with their red shoes, he finally realizes the
(10:28):
only one who can save himself is himself, and he
could have done it all along, and so he sort
of simultaneously in his epiphany, he realizes obviously he's got
a stop drinking and that he's the one to do it,
and that God is full of forgiveness, but that's up
to him, and so he straightens out at that point,
and they, you know, ultimately round Cape Horn back they
nearly sink in several after a series of savage gales,
(10:53):
and he gets home to Bedford and at the end
of ten years, he's given less than five dollars for
ten years at sea, And when he convinces the owners
of the whaling ship that he's not going to sign
up again, they relent and they give him. They give
him the five dollars and he which is enough to
(11:13):
take a train. He gets as far as Philadelphia, he
runs out of money. He takes his last dime ad
buys a loaf of bread, and then he walks the
railroad tracks from Philadelphia back to Baltimore, drinking green scum
water out of a pond along the way, and finally
gets back to Baltimore. Everyone has heard his reputation, so
as he says, the kids in his commandery your town,
(11:35):
who are now all more grown up. But they sort
of run away with his reputation. But he settles in
and he stays sober, and he works hard, and he
redeems himself in the eyes of his community and gets
a job, and ultimately he marries a nice woman and
they have six kids, and I'm the product of the
oldest daughter.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Yeah, that's it all ended happily for him. When you
were doing your research, I think I noted you visited
the New Bedford Whaling Museum and the library there. What'd
you find?
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Well, I found that was that was absolutely one of
the most fascinating elements of all this, and a real,
a real It struck me to the bone in a
good way, and it reminded me of the value of
our natural parks because what I ended up finding, besides
the new Bedford Real and Museum being a beautiful museum
(12:25):
with lots of great artifacts, and the town of Bedford,
the historic District which is run by the Park Service,
with the cobblestones and so forth, really brings one back
to the era. But as I went to the library
and I asked about some of the proper names and
the ships he was on, they said they could help me,
and then they sort of said, so, what are you
looking up? And I explained that I was looking at
Robert Armstrong and the librarian had a complete bluesays, well,
(12:47):
I have his log book, and I said, you know,
you can't be I mean, that's just totally ridiculous. And
I and I falsely presumed for the moment that you know, okay,
Robert Armstrong was a common name, but sure if they
had it. And so what it turned out I sort
of have surmised was when he himself finally died in
nineteen oh two, and his six children, you know, as
(13:10):
kids do, sit around the parents' estate and they sort
of divvy it up, and you know, you like this
and I like that, and the people draw straws or
roll dice or play cards to get who gets what.
I sort of surmised that the oldest daughter on my
side took his one hundred page handwritten autobiography, and the
next or the second daughter further down the line, she
took one of his two logbooks from one of the ships,
(13:33):
and the youngest son took the other log book. And
then years later, fortunately the middle daughter had one log book,
wrote to the younger son, and there's a letter, and
borrowed his logbook back, and she made a sort of
handwritten or xerox copy of it, sent it back to him.
That copy is lost, but her original and a copy
(13:55):
of the second her great daughter in law sent you.
I realized no one else wanted it, and then roughly
two thousand and six sent it to the museum, and
so there I put the put the two pieces together,
which of course gave great statue of the story that
I was working in. It was bona fide, and you know,
also showed how he had ultimately written his autobiography because
(14:16):
he he wrote his version later in life in his sixties,
but obviously used the two logbooks to you know, jog
his memory and set the dates and so forth. So
it was incredibly fortunate and an amazing find.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Now you you retrace some of Rob's journey, is that
is that correct? Or down around Cape Horn and through
Tierra del Fuego.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Yeah, And as I said, I'm sort of a crazy burder,
so I really wanted to go see After working on
it for three years, I was sort of determined to
really walk in his path as much as I possibly could.
And I originally thought about going out to some hitchhiking
my way out one way there there's some South Pacific island,
(14:58):
but then sort of realized that I'd really much rather
see the sea, because that really is the essence to
me of his story, and my pension for seabirds led
me to want to really go off Cape Horn, which
is notorious in a good way for being one of
the best great pelagic seabird areas with all the albatrosses
and so forth. So I took one trip around Cape
(15:20):
Horn and this mixing of the Pacific and moving or
from the Atlantic moving into the Pacific, and the different
seabirds you see, and you know, we went through a
great storm which made me really feel for him, and
twilight of our last evening at Sees, some sperm whales
came up off and I was just thinking, you know,
how lucky they are like me to be the progeny
of his time and yet be a survivor. And it's
(15:42):
sort of striking how far away he was. And you
think back to the day with no communication, no one,
his family didn't even know he was still alive, and
he could have disappeared, and that would have been that.
You know, he was on the opposite side of the world,
and I don't know how happy or depressed he was,
but obviously he turned around and ultimately came back. But
it struck me that it was, you know, the far
(16:04):
reach of his swing.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
That must have been amazing to sort of recreate portions
of his journey, just because it would personalize it so
much for you.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Yeah, and then that's the other side of the whole book.
I mean, it is it is a great it is
a family story, I mean it is looking back into
a family and it ties, you know, me to some
ancestors that I never thought about. It makes you look
at things along the way. I paused as I said,
we know great great good father was he was looking
(16:36):
for God, and along the way I found papers in
that same trunk my grandfather wrote about his view of
God and religion in the nineteen twenties, and so I
could sort of also stream together and look at how
a family looks at God and religion without being too deep.
I'm more of a secular person, but it was a
really interesting deep dive into sort of an evolution with
(17:00):
a family of a philosophy if you will.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Yeah, I mean whaling was really sort of the first
oil industry, if you think about it that way, and
it was pretty gruesome as I as I've read, I
think cutting them up and boiling their flesh for sperm
oil was probably not a very pleasant thing to do.
And there were and whales were hunted mercilessly for years,
for decades and almost hunted out of existence. What is
(17:23):
the status of the whaling industry today? And you know,
whales have come back, But as a conservationist, how do
you view that one.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
Of the things I did ponder as I went through
all this was was my view of whaling and whaling itself,
and you know, it moved, and there was a I
threw a chapter in because it is of interest and
it also gives context a story. But you know, whaling
clearly moved. Thro like sort of view it as three
great three phases, and the first was sort of indigenous
(17:53):
and aboriginal whaling in early times, and you can see
it's sort of being romantic. And you could then move
into the golden age of whaling, the late seventeen hundreds
and eighteen hundreds when it was the heart of the
sea and Moby Dick and that and the time of
Robert Armstrong at sea. And then slowly it phads out.
(18:13):
Obviously the need for whale oil faded and as oil
came to fore and then it kind of dampered down
for a bit, and then it picked up again and
it became, you know, I think a horrendous endeavor and
I think horrible and it's passing in the sense that
about the nineteen twenties it picked up again, and by
then you had steel ships and you had powered seam engines.
(18:36):
It quieted a little bit for World War Two, and
then after World War Two it's even it's really the
end of a great great era in the sense that
they just slaughtered them because now you have steel ships
which can penetrate the Arctic, you have gigantic harpoon guns,
you have factory ships, and at that point they're really
just being taken for whale meat. No one needs the oil,
(18:57):
no one needs the whalebone anymore. That's been replace by plastic,
and so it almost just becomes this sort of narcissistic
ethnocentric this is our past identity, and it was largely
on the Russians, Norwegians and Japanese. Finally, an international whaling
association came together and they pulled back and really made
(19:18):
a global push, and everybody sort of dropped out of it,
except for the Japanese who steal whale today and they
hide behind this Shenanigans of research. I think in the
large scale commercially, whaling has died out and many species
have come back. The sperm whales who always were tough
to get and they were out at sea and deep,
and by the time whaling came back in the big way,
(19:40):
they no longer needed oil, so they were not the focus.
It really moved to the Great Blue whales and the
say whales, who were faster and who previously had eluded
sailing ships, but now under you know, in the nineteen
forties and through the sixties could not elude a steamship.
But now, I mean, they're slowly bouncing back. But the
real problem are some of the populations are so low,
(20:04):
like the right whales, that they've just never been able
to recover, and they'll probably die of starvation before they
will dive anything else in the future.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
That's a good point that you bring up, because you've
been a a conservationist and a naturalist for your whole career.
Maybe tell the listeners a little bit about your work
there and the importance of brain conservation today because it
hits on what you just talked about.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
We've sort of reached the point where I think so
much of what humans do is to the detriment of
the notion of a maintaining diversity and a world in
which we live comfortably alongside other plants and animals. And
we've now reached the point where basically we're taking over
the world. We really don't manage it well And one
(20:47):
of the two things I think I bring up near
the end of the book as I look back on
that one is I think at the present there's a
very real danger that we've moved away from the law
much broader view in conservation of that kind of a
balanced world and in a world replete with biodiversity, where
we still have snow leopards and blue whales and panda bears,
(21:11):
and we've sort of shifted to those things that are
all preserved, when in fact they're really not. It's easy
to go on TV now and see there's the panda bear,
and it's a beautiful picture, and few people actually go
out to see them in the wild. And the second
thing I think we have to worry about is are
sort of we're now beginning to stray away from the
very essence of biodiversity and the species on our planet.
(21:33):
And climate change has become such a major focus, and
a valid one at that, but much of the discussion
now in conservation and politics it's sort of solar power
and greening efforts and blah blah blah, But it's really
shifted away from really trying to preserve our tropical rainforests
(21:55):
and the deep ocean blue and the wild lens apes
and so forth, which you know is what we will
need to maintain the broader biodiversity that I think is
the ultimate health of our planet. And so I do
think there's a really strong need at the moment a
I think get people back out, you know, the more
(22:16):
we can get people out to see the beautiful places
in the planet and appreciate the species, and also to
not leave behind, in a very anthropocentric view, the notion
that we should have a balanced world where humans live
in concert with others, not just managing them.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Yeah, that's a good point, and not to mention the
fact that I'll walk through the forest is very nurturing
on very many levels for us, and we should not
lose that. What do you think the solution to that is?
And I know it's I'm sure it's multifaceted, but is
it more regulation? Is it certainly more public awareness? But
how do you how would you, as a conservationist, recommend
(22:56):
we go forward to just stop all of those types
of things.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Now, well, I think that's one of the one of
the reasons that I actually got into Whale or Twilight.
The very notion is ultimately one can't regulate something without
support behind it. So I think one of the greatest
things anyone can do is continue to encourage people, as
Mike Love wrote about years ago, but to encourage people
to get out into the landscape, appreciate the landscape, and
(23:23):
then I think it's a simple education also about things
such as edge effects and fragmentation, and hope we get
there and ideally, ideally, as we move forward, if there
is that appreciation, I think we begin to look at
new ways to design and live in cities. I mean,
an urban landscape ultimately is going to be better because
(23:45):
if you can move people into a more efficient, cost saving,
energy saving urban s landscape that is appealing. At the
same time, you begin freeing up open areas and you
can leave more behind for present and wildlife to live
in a more Boundle's planet.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
Alex. One last question, what's next for you? You've had
some success with this book, and I'm sure you've been
inspired by it. What are the next steps for you
in life?
Speaker 2 (24:12):
My next book that I'm vaguely working on or starting out,
I've been working for several years, but now begin to
put pen to paper is going to be the Natural
History of far out of National Seashore, sort of on
the edge of the ocean again. So it brings us
back to the sea, one of my favorite places. That's
my next project.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
Well, we've been speaking with Alexander Brash. He's the author
of A Whaler at Twilight, a long lost true account
of whaling and redemption in the South Pacific. Alex thank
you so much for your insights and it's really a
fascinating book and recommend it to our listeners for sure.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
Thank you, Mike. It's been a pleasure to be on.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
We'll be right back after the news at the bottom
of the hour.
This is What's at Risk with Mike Christian on WBZ
Boston's news radio. Hi, Mike Christian, hero What's at Risk?
First up on tonight's show, we have an encore edition
of What's at Risk with Alexander Brash, co author of
A Whaler at Twilight, a long lost true account of
(00:22):
whaling and redemption in the South Pacific. Alexander talks about
his great great grandfather's epic journey and the importance of
marine conservation in the context of today's environmental challenges. And
in our second segment, we are honored to welcome the
legendary thriller writer and author of dozens of New York
Times bestsellers, Patricia Cornwell. She talks eloquently and passionately about UFOs,
(00:49):
Harriet beecher Stowe, crime scenes, Jack the Ripper, and her
most recent novel, Identity Unknown. A Whaler at Twilight is
a fan fantastic but true story centered on one hundred
and twenty year old journal of Robert Armstrong, a man
from Baltimore, telling his ten year whaling adventure in the Pacific.
(01:11):
He describes sailing around Tierra de Fuego, visiting Chile, the Galopagos,
New Zealand and dozens of Polynesian islands. He speaks of
the thrill and risks of hunting whales, of having hundreds
of natives borger ship, and of trading with cannibals for food.
There are hurricanes, mutinies, desertions, floggings, female whalers, and finally,
(01:36):
the author's successful re entry to American society. The co
author is the man's great great grandson, Alexander Brash, who
found the journal in his mother's trunk and did three
years of research to make the story come alive with maps,
ship's logs, photographs, and other sources. Our guest today is
(01:57):
conservationist Alexander Brash, author with Robert Armstrong, of A Whaler
at Twilight, a long lost true account of whaling and
redemption in the South Pacific. How you doing today, alex
Nice to have you.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
What a pleasure to be with you on What's at Risk.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Perhaps a good way to start before we get into
the book is for you to tell our listeners a
little bit about your background and your life's journey.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Funny enough, I was actually born and raised in New
York City, and then for some odd reason, became fascinated
by birds and early age, and ended up sort of
working my way through both high school and college working
at the Museum of Natural History, and then from that
I started down in Washington after college and worked for
the World Wildlife Fund, standing panda bear's and rainforest. Went
(02:41):
to the Yale Schooling environment worked for a couple of
years on a PhD out of Rutgers University until a
hurricane blew through my study site and moved what was
going to be a three year PhD process on top
of a two years master's for something like a five
year saw and added the New York Times and took
a job with the New York City Parks Department and
then rose up to be the chief park ranger and
(03:03):
environmentalist for the agency. Was there about twenty years, then
switched over and joined the National Parks Conservation Association. It
spent ten years as a regional director in the Northeast,
and then finally I was president of Connecticut Audubon for
three or so years.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Well, this story I did a little research on at
a whaler at twilight. This is a fascinating story, and
you've balanced it out with things in your life, and
you know what's going on in the world today. But
this is about your great great grandfather, Robert Armstrong, right correct,
So over one hundred and sixty years he had this
across the South Pacific. He wrote this autobiography. I guess
(03:40):
about his experience, and yet it was undiscovered, and maybe
it was discovered but unused for a long period of time.
Your mom played a big part in you writing this book.
How did that all come about?
Speaker 2 (03:52):
It first came about when I was a grad student
and I was leading a bird trip, or the bird
component of a trip up to Cape Cod. And we
were going up with thirty customers, if you will, who
were wanted to see whales off of Stellwagon Bank off Provincetown,
but also do some birding, and I did the burning part.
We went off and saw some had some incredible sights
(04:14):
of both humpback and particularly right whales in May that year,
and I came back and I told my parents about it,
and my mother, after a long pause, said, well, you
know you have a whaler in your background. I said, well,
that's really nice, and then she sort of long paused.
She said, well you know there's a map too. I said,
well that's really cool. You know, someday I'll look at it,
(04:36):
and then it kind of got swept aside. I mean,
you know, I kept going to grad school and then
had jobs and was Washington, New York and never really
got back to it. And then finally got back to it,
and there in a trunk that she had in the
back of her closet that had been in the family
for one hundred plus years, this big, old black leather
trunk with brass hinges and so forth. And I finally say, well,
(04:58):
I'm ready, I'd love to see this map or whatever
you have. And I guess I'd always thought that what
else might be would be a simple letter or something.
And we go to the bottom of the trunk after
I pull it out, and there is not only a map,
but this one hundred page handwritten manuscript, which at first
I couldn't read because she the first one she gave
me was just a copy. It was an old xerox copy,
(05:19):
and it was very faint and indecipherable, and then I
sort of was embarrassed to bring it back to her
for a while, and they finally did and she said, oh, well,
there's another copy, and we dug deeper in the trunk
and there was this sort of old black on white mimeograph.
It's reverse. It's sort of like the purple mimiograph stuff
you had as a child at grade school. But it
(05:41):
was a nineteen thirties version that her father had made.
But it was a very clear white writing on a
black background, and very distinct. And I sat down and
digitized the whole thing and then reading it as I
went along, and said, you know, this is an incredible
story because it's less about whaling. It's really a crazy,
rocking true tale of a guy who really is alienated
(06:03):
from his family. He's suffering, you know, from substance abuse.
He's become an alcoholic, and he doesn't know what to do,
and he heads out across the Pacific to sort of
find himself.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Yeah, that's that's a fascinating story and to discover it.
How come you were so reluctant to go back and
dig into it. Maybe reluctant it is a strong word,
but just just you know, didn't necessarily have an interest
in it for so long.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
You know, it's hard to say. I would say there's
probably some of the you know, ego of youth, where
your little focus on you know, at that time, I'm
trying to focus on getting good grades to get out
in life and do all my other work and find
a job and get a job and iron that down,
and I, you know, then get married and raise children,
and you know, you sort of put that stuff aside,
(06:48):
and I think I really just didn't have the time,
because at the end of the day, when I did
finally retire and have the time, took nyon three years
to digitize it, to slowly go back and double check
everything and then sort of begin to with curiosity, tracked
down the proper nouns that were used throughout and follow
up on some of the stories and see what I
(07:09):
could find.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
I think he was from Baltimore originally, but he actually
went whaling out of New Bedford. Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Yes, that's correct. He was in Baltimore and his parents
died when he was very little. I think his mother
died when he was four, and his father dies when
he's something like fifteen or something. Luckily, one of his uncles,
who does not have children, has him in but he
he too, is a rather hard working and as he
later calls him, a rather cold uncle who he appreciated,
(07:37):
did in fact love him, but he was sort of
a hard man, and they sent him off to a
dental school, and then he fell in with a bad
crowd and in his own words, became a drunkard, and
then got fired from one job and came back to
Baltimore and went back. They'd got him back to school,
alumni network sort of helped him. And then he got
a second job, and then he did the same thing,
and he became he was fired for being drunk tending
(08:00):
to tending to dentistry needs in the neighborhood. And so
after that one he was too embarrassed to go home.
So then he went up to New York and drunk
himself on the table the first night. On the second
day when he crawled out of the bed and his
hotel went down and sold all of his tools and
his watch, and then woke up on the streets the
(08:21):
next morning penniless and sold himself to a whaler. They
put him on a train and shipped him out of
New Bedford.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
That's fascinating, is all that detail in the in the
transcript in the ductor. Yeah, Yes, that's really great.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Yeah. And he writes early on that he wrote this
tale to be less about whaling, though obviously it is,
but to be more about sort of the human interests
out of the story, the things that he saw, the
places that he went. He wailed for three and a
half years on one ship heading from New Bedford out
across the South Pacific, and then he got off that
(08:56):
ship in New Zealand, and he ended up logging there
four and a half plus years in two different places
among them with the Maoris, and had some you know,
interesting intense times there and then finally said to himself
it was time to go home, but he still was
under the spell of evil drink and still not sure
(09:17):
about his place in life, and so forth. And anyway,
he gets himself on a second whaling ship and they
wail for another year sort of in the South Pacific,
and then slowly head home.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Yeah, and he struggled. He struggled with drinking for quite
a while. Obviously he must have stopped at some point
in time, and you know, looking for his own redemption,
I guess through this whole process, how did it all
play out for him in life?
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Luckily for me it played out fairly well, I would say.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Since he's a great great grandfather. Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
So on the on the way back, he you know,
has been fighting the demon drink, and he's also been
struggling looking for redemption you know, from his God at
that point, and who I sort of term in the
book as I look back at it later as sort
of an Old Testament God. And halfway back out under
(10:06):
the Southern Cross in the Pacific Ocean, he has an
epiphany one night and he sort of realizes that his
view of God, who was going to tell him or
fix him, was an archaic view and that the real
view is really was all up to him. And I
kind of call it as his Dorothy moment, because in essence,
like Dorothy with their red shoes, he finally realizes the
(10:28):
only one who can save himself is himself, and he
could have done it all along, and so he sort
of simultaneously in his epiphany, he realizes obviously he's got
a stop drinking and that he's the one to do it,
and that God is full of forgiveness, but that's up
to him, and so he straightens out at that point,
and they, you know, ultimately round Cape Horn back they
nearly sink in several after a series of savage gales,
(10:53):
and he gets home to Bedford and at the end
of ten years, he's given less than five dollars for
ten years at sea, And when he convinces the owners
of the whaling ship that he's not going to sign
up again, they relent and they give him. They give
him the five dollars and he which is enough to
(11:13):
take a train. He gets as far as Philadelphia, he
runs out of money. He takes his last dime ad
buys a loaf of bread, and then he walks the
railroad tracks from Philadelphia back to Baltimore, drinking green scum
water out of a pond along the way, and finally
gets back to Baltimore. Everyone has heard his reputation, so
as he says, the kids in his commandery your town,
(11:35):
who are now all more grown up. But they sort
of run away with his reputation. But he settles in
and he stays sober, and he works hard, and he
redeems himself in the eyes of his community and gets
a job, and ultimately he marries a nice woman and
they have six kids, and I'm the product of the
oldest daughter.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Yeah, that's it all ended happily for him. When you
were doing your research, I think I noted you visited
the New Bedford Whaling Museum and the library there. What'd
you find?
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Well, I found that was that was absolutely one of
the most fascinating elements of all this, and a real,
a real It struck me to the bone in a
good way, and it reminded me of the value of
our natural parks because what I ended up finding, besides
the new Bedford Real and Museum being a beautiful museum
(12:25):
with lots of great artifacts, and the town of Bedford,
the historic District which is run by the Park Service,
with the cobblestones and so forth, really brings one back
to the era. But as I went to the library
and I asked about some of the proper names and
the ships he was on, they said they could help me,
and then they sort of said, so, what are you
looking up? And I explained that I was looking at
Robert Armstrong and the librarian had a complete bluesays, well,
(12:47):
I have his log book, and I said, you know,
you can't be I mean, that's just totally ridiculous. And
I and I falsely presumed for the moment that you know, okay,
Robert Armstrong was a common name, but sure if they
had it. And so what it turned out I sort
of have surmised was when he himself finally died in
nineteen oh two, and his six children, you know, as
(13:10):
kids do, sit around the parents' estate and they sort
of divvy it up, and you know, you like this
and I like that, and the people draw straws or
roll dice or play cards to get who gets what.
I sort of surmised that the oldest daughter on my
side took his one hundred page handwritten autobiography, and the
next or the second daughter further down the line, she
took one of his two logbooks from one of the ships,
(13:33):
and the youngest son took the other log book. And
then years later, fortunately the middle daughter had one log book,
wrote to the younger son, and there's a letter, and
borrowed his logbook back, and she made a sort of
handwritten or xerox copy of it, sent it back to him.
That copy is lost, but her original and a copy
(13:55):
of the second her great daughter in law sent you.
I realized no one else wanted it, and then roughly
two thousand and six sent it to the museum, and
so there I put the put the two pieces together,
which of course gave great statue of the story that
I was working in. It was bona fide, and you know,
also showed how he had ultimately written his autobiography because
(14:16):
he he wrote his version later in life in his sixties,
but obviously used the two logbooks to you know, jog
his memory and set the dates and so forth. So
it was incredibly fortunate and an amazing find.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Now you you retrace some of Rob's journey, is that
is that correct? Or down around Cape Horn and through
Tierra del Fuego.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Yeah, And as I said, I'm sort of a crazy burder,
so I really wanted to go see After working on
it for three years, I was sort of determined to
really walk in his path as much as I possibly could.
And I originally thought about going out to some hitchhiking
my way out one way there there's some South Pacific island,
(14:58):
but then sort of realized that I'd really much rather
see the sea, because that really is the essence to
me of his story, and my pension for seabirds led
me to want to really go off Cape Horn, which
is notorious in a good way for being one of
the best great pelagic seabird areas with all the albatrosses
and so forth. So I took one trip around Cape
(15:20):
Horn and this mixing of the Pacific and moving or
from the Atlantic moving into the Pacific, and the different
seabirds you see, and you know, we went through a
great storm which made me really feel for him, and
twilight of our last evening at Sees, some sperm whales
came up off and I was just thinking, you know,
how lucky they are like me to be the progeny
of his time and yet be a survivor. And it's
(15:42):
sort of striking how far away he was. And you
think back to the day with no communication, no one,
his family didn't even know he was still alive, and
he could have disappeared, and that would have been that.
You know, he was on the opposite side of the world,
and I don't know how happy or depressed he was,
but obviously he turned around and ultimately came back. But
it struck me that it was, you know, the far
(16:04):
reach of his swing.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
That must have been amazing to sort of recreate portions
of his journey, just because it would personalize it so
much for you.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Yeah, and then that's the other side of the whole book.
I mean, it is it is a great it is
a family story, I mean it is looking back into
a family and it ties, you know, me to some
ancestors that I never thought about. It makes you look
at things along the way. I paused as I said,
we know great great good father was he was looking
(16:36):
for God, and along the way I found papers in
that same trunk my grandfather wrote about his view of
God and religion in the nineteen twenties, and so I
could sort of also stream together and look at how
a family looks at God and religion without being too deep.
I'm more of a secular person, but it was a
really interesting deep dive into sort of an evolution with
(17:00):
a family of a philosophy if you will.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Yeah, I mean whaling was really sort of the first
oil industry, if you think about it that way, and
it was pretty gruesome as I as I've read, I
think cutting them up and boiling their flesh for sperm
oil was probably not a very pleasant thing to do.
And there were and whales were hunted mercilessly for years,
for decades and almost hunted out of existence. What is
(17:23):
the status of the whaling industry today? And you know,
whales have come back, But as a conservationist, how do
you view that one.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
Of the things I did ponder as I went through
all this was was my view of whaling and whaling itself,
and you know, it moved, and there was a I
threw a chapter in because it is of interest and
it also gives context a story. But you know, whaling
clearly moved. Thro like sort of view it as three
great three phases, and the first was sort of indigenous
(17:53):
and aboriginal whaling in early times, and you can see
it's sort of being romantic. And you could then move
into the golden age of whaling, the late seventeen hundreds
and eighteen hundreds when it was the heart of the
sea and Moby Dick and that and the time of
Robert Armstrong at sea. And then slowly it phads out.
(18:13):
Obviously the need for whale oil faded and as oil
came to fore and then it kind of dampered down
for a bit, and then it picked up again and
it became, you know, I think a horrendous endeavor and
I think horrible and it's passing in the sense that
about the nineteen twenties it picked up again, and by
then you had steel ships and you had powered seam engines.
(18:36):
It quieted a little bit for World War Two, and
then after World War Two it's even it's really the
end of a great great era in the sense that
they just slaughtered them because now you have steel ships
which can penetrate the Arctic, you have gigantic harpoon guns,
you have factory ships, and at that point they're really
just being taken for whale meat. No one needs the oil,
(18:57):
no one needs the whalebone anymore. That's been replace by plastic,
and so it almost just becomes this sort of narcissistic
ethnocentric this is our past identity, and it was largely
on the Russians, Norwegians and Japanese. Finally, an international whaling
association came together and they pulled back and really made
(19:18):
a global push, and everybody sort of dropped out of it,
except for the Japanese who steal whale today and they
hide behind this Shenanigans of research. I think in the
large scale commercially, whaling has died out and many species
have come back. The sperm whales who always were tough
to get and they were out at sea and deep,
and by the time whaling came back in the big way,
(19:40):
they no longer needed oil, so they were not the focus.
It really moved to the Great Blue whales and the
say whales, who were faster and who previously had eluded
sailing ships, but now under you know, in the nineteen
forties and through the sixties could not elude a steamship.
But now, I mean, they're slowly bouncing back. But the
real problem are some of the populations are so low,
(20:04):
like the right whales, that they've just never been able
to recover, and they'll probably die of starvation before they
will dive anything else in the future.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
That's a good point that you bring up, because you've
been a a conservationist and a naturalist for your whole career.
Maybe tell the listeners a little bit about your work
there and the importance of brain conservation today because it
hits on what you just talked about.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
We've sort of reached the point where I think so
much of what humans do is to the detriment of
the notion of a maintaining diversity and a world in
which we live comfortably alongside other plants and animals. And
we've now reached the point where basically we're taking over
the world. We really don't manage it well And one
(20:47):
of the two things I think I bring up near
the end of the book as I look back on
that one is I think at the present there's a
very real danger that we've moved away from the law
much broader view in conservation of that kind of a
balanced world and in a world replete with biodiversity, where
we still have snow leopards and blue whales and panda bears,
(21:11):
and we've sort of shifted to those things that are
all preserved, when in fact they're really not. It's easy
to go on TV now and see there's the panda bear,
and it's a beautiful picture, and few people actually go
out to see them in the wild. And the second
thing I think we have to worry about is are
sort of we're now beginning to stray away from the
very essence of biodiversity and the species on our planet.
(21:33):
And climate change has become such a major focus, and
a valid one at that, but much of the discussion
now in conservation and politics it's sort of solar power
and greening efforts and blah blah blah, But it's really
shifted away from really trying to preserve our tropical rainforests
(21:55):
and the deep ocean blue and the wild lens apes
and so forth, which you know is what we will
need to maintain the broader biodiversity that I think is
the ultimate health of our planet. And so I do
think there's a really strong need at the moment a
I think get people back out, you know, the more
(22:16):
we can get people out to see the beautiful places
in the planet and appreciate the species, and also to
not leave behind, in a very anthropocentric view, the notion
that we should have a balanced world where humans live
in concert with others, not just managing them.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Yeah, that's a good point, and not to mention the
fact that I'll walk through the forest is very nurturing
on very many levels for us, and we should not
lose that. What do you think the solution to that is?
And I know it's I'm sure it's multifaceted, but is
it more regulation? Is it certainly more public awareness? But
how do you how would you, as a conservationist, recommend
(22:56):
we go forward to just stop all of those types
of things.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Now, well, I think that's one of the one of
the reasons that I actually got into Whale or Twilight.
The very notion is ultimately one can't regulate something without
support behind it. So I think one of the greatest
things anyone can do is continue to encourage people, as
Mike Love wrote about years ago, but to encourage people
to get out into the landscape, appreciate the landscape, and
(23:23):
then I think it's a simple education also about things
such as edge effects and fragmentation, and hope we get
there and ideally, ideally, as we move forward, if there
is that appreciation, I think we begin to look at
new ways to design and live in cities. I mean,
an urban landscape ultimately is going to be better because
(23:45):
if you can move people into a more efficient, cost saving,
energy saving urban s landscape that is appealing. At the
same time, you begin freeing up open areas and you
can leave more behind for present and wildlife to live
in a more Boundle's planet.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
Alex. One last question, what's next for you? You've had
some success with this book, and I'm sure you've been
inspired by it. What are the next steps for you
in life?
Speaker 2 (24:12):
My next book that I'm vaguely working on or starting out,
I've been working for several years, but now begin to
put pen to paper is going to be the Natural
History of far out of National Seashore, sort of on
the edge of the ocean again. So it brings us
back to the sea, one of my favorite places. That's
my next project.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
Well, we've been speaking with Alexander Brash. He's the author
of A Whaler at Twilight, a long lost true account
of whaling and redemption in the South Pacific. Alex thank
you so much for your insights and it's really a
fascinating book and recommend it to our listeners for sure.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
Thank you, Mike. It's been a pleasure to be on.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
We'll be right back after the news at the bottom
of the hour.
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