Apr 19 2012
Historical, Not Historesque
On the breezy, sandy shores of the Straits of Magellan, a man in brown coveralls is smoking a plank. One end sits in a repurposed oil drum and slowly the other end of the wood is being pulled in a lateral direction. Warped, the plank is, to sheath the sides of a schooner.
This is a replica of the Goleta Ancud, the vessel by which the nation of Chile claimed this area of Patagonia. Here on the grounds of the Museo Nao Victoria stands another replica, this one of Magellan’s fleet, namesake of the museum. The shipwright finished that a just few months ago.
Juan Cariñanco has been building ships since he was 8 years old.
We were on our way from the cruise ship dock to the airport to catch our flight to Santiago, Chile’s capital. Having spent a few days on the modern Stella Australis, visiting the end of the Earth, Cape Horn, as well as the Beagle Channel, the Aguila Glacier and only 100,000-plus penguins on nearby Magdalena Island, we were struck by the contrast in this makeshift shipyard.
One man with a few hand-power tools, using native wood, the curl of shavings blowing about and the beach just a couple dozen yards away. Being late March, this was the South American autumn – the shoulder season – and so our combined crews from the Hit and Run History and Through My Eyes series were the only visitors.
While in a dramatic location certainly, the museum’s grounds are too far outside of town to be accessible by foot traffic. That’s indicative to someone who grew up Chatham. When we travel, we look at how other places deal with tourism. Are they gorgeous and undiscovered? Or sadly overexploited, underwhelming, or even inexplicably unappreciated? It doesn’t dominate our thinking, but it does crop up. It’s part of their local economy and so part of their local story.
But boatbuilding on the beach – that’s a tradition that goes back centuries in Chatham. Perhaps not so many schooners here, but the tools and principles that Juan was using are familiar enough.And there is no mistaking the smell of evergreen sawdust kicking up in the salt wind.
As I’ve been ruminating on Chatham’s 300th anniversary, I keep coming back to this scene near the tip of South America, 6,500 miles away. Perhaps it is a perception of what history is. That is, not a defined set of facts but an ongoing process of inquiry.
Recently I heard an interview with someone on board the ship visiting the Titanic’s resting place. The person would have seemed to be an expert, except that his revelation was that he kept meeting people on this cruise who knew facts about the Titanic he didn’t. That’s the mark of a true historian – when you realize how much more there is to learn about a topic. But perhaps you can at least get a sense of the place, or event or person, and convey it effectively.
When the proposal for a set of stocks was put forward as part of the town’s 300th celebration, my first reaction was factual. They never existed here, so they should not be introduced now. That they might be fun didn’t enter into the equation. I am certain we will see people walking around in outlandish pirate garb as well. Highly questionable historical integrity there as well. Fun, nonetheless.
To the accuracy of whether there were stocks or a pillory in Chatham, I can speak with some authority. My first job out of college was as a researcher for the selectmen and town clerk to read the entirety of the town’s legal records. This included every single minute of the town meetings since incorporation.
All sorts of minutiae were included, including the length and diameter of the “rod of correction” for unruly boys who disturbed the meeting house a few hundred years ago. The cost of repairing the roof.The bounty for blackbird heads and horsefeet tails. And who bid what in the annual auctioning off of the poor.
But nothing about the building or maintaining of stocks. That would not have been something overlooked in a town that watched every penny and shilling. So that’s a relatively easy question to address. Factbased.
What was missed in the discussion however was why there were never stocks or a pillory in Chatham. Certainly there were such things in Plymouth, and that was the original colonial and cultural capital. Same goes for Boston.
Perhaps that is why I recall my brief time with the shipwright in Punta Arenas. He was practicing a very direct kind of history. He was demonstrating quite directly what it takes to make a ship and put it to sea on the waters that the original sailed. He was doing something true, and in so doing, making a story.
With so many shipmasters from Chatham, it would be nice to think of clipper ship replicas floating around here. But that just wasn’t the case. While those Chatham captains traveled to China, Europe and the South Seas, their ships’homes were Boston Harbor. Chatham waters are no place for a deep-draft sailing vessel. My point is that we must be careful not to fall prey to a false nostalgia for a time that never was. Be historical, rather than historesque.
Back to the question of Chatham’s stocks – or rather lack thereof. With a long history in Chatham, and plenty of time spent in studying the genealogies, deeds and wills of local families, I have my own thoughts on the answer. But rather than sharing that, I would rather invite your thoughts. History is about inquiry. What do you suppose?
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