I glanced at Tyler glumly as we passed a giant map of Nantucket engraved in the wall. “So much for that.”
“You know what?” Tyler said. “We’re smart people. We can research shipwrecks ourselves.”
“I like your optimism. I’m not sure I buy it, but I like it.”
Every December, the museum transformed into a winter wonderland, decked with wreaths and filled with trees. We wandered through the rooms, admiring them while also looking at the actual displays. As a kid, my favorite part of the museum had been the interactive exhibits about women who’d lived on the island, holograms of reenactors telling their stories. Noah had liked the giant skeleton of a sperm whale in Gosnell Hall, while Grandpa, an amateur painter, had loved the seascapes. Tyler, I quickly discovered, was obsessed with the miniature boat models, with their tiny, impeccably made sails. “I want to make one of these,” he said as we passed the first.
I studied it, all the masts and rigs and sails. “Seemscomplicated. And like they’d take up a lot of space.”
He grinned. “If I lofted my bed, I bet it could fit.”
Tucked between ship replicas and standing tall in gallery rooms were Christmas trees, designed by local nonprofits, artists, and businesses. Some were classically decorated, others goofy, and some weren’t trees at all but tree shapes made out of buoys. We wandered about, picking and changing favorites, ducking into the old candle factory and craning our heads back to take in the tree toppers.
I must have been in the museum a hundred times, on rainy days especially, as the adults tried to find ways to distract all the cousins. There’d always been exhibits about nineteenth-century Nantucket, the heyday of whaling and its downfall, but I’d never paid intense attention. Now, in between admiring trees, Tyler and I pored over each plaque. I focused on the nineteenth-century women, as though tucked away might be a mention of one specific Barbanel lady. I read about Petticoat Row: modern-day Centre Street, which had once been a hotbed of women-owned businesses. One temporary exhibit discussed women who’d gone to sea themselves. Some disguised themselves as men, like Rebecca Anne Johnson, who used her father’s name when she joined a whaling ship, but many wives of whaling captains also accompanied their husbands.
A poem had been transcribed, titled “The Nantucket Girl’s Song.” A few of the lines jumped out at me:
Then I’ll haste to wed a sailor,
and send him off to sea,
For a life of independence
is the pleasant life for me.
But every now and then I shall
like to see his face,
For it always seems to me to beam with manly grace...
But when he says Goodbye my love, I’m off across the sea
First I cry for his departure, then laugh because I’m free.
“Harsh,” Tyler said.
I gave him a fierce smile. “I love it.”
Tyler trailed his finger over the second couplet.For the life of independence is the pleasant life for me.“And is that what you want? I thought you wanted Isaac.”
“Idowant Isaac. To date, not to center my life around. Welcome to the twenty-first century, bro.”
“Guess I deserved that.”
In the candle factory, we read about sperm whales, saw old oil lamps and glass bottles filled with yellow spermaceti, admired portraits and paintings and newspaper clippings. In one case, I saw a small wooden arrow, remarkably similar to the one we’d found in the chest. “Tyler! Look!”
I read the plaque as he joined me. “ ‘Boatsteerers—or harpooners—used oak pins known as chockpins to secureharpoon lines to a whale boat. They held one of the highest- ranked positions on a whaling ship and were likely to become officers or captains themselves. According to legend, they wore their pins to let the young ladies of Nantucket know they were whale hunters and, therefore, highly eligible bachelors.’ ” I made a face. “I wouldn’t want to marry a dude who killed whales.”
“You’re only saying that because of modern sensibilities,” Tyler said. “You would have in the 1800s. You would have thought it was hot.”
“I would not!”
Tyler raised a brow. “Guess you’ll never know, will you?”
I frowned. “So if the guy had one of these pins—it meant he was a whaler, didn’t it? A harpooner.”
“Seems likely.”
