THE RIGHT WHALE AND BOWHEAD 



leadership of Captain Josh Edwards killed a large 

 right whale, the skeleton and baleen of which were 

 secured for the Museum at an expense of $3,200. 



Captain Josh, as he was known to all the country 

 near and far, was a genial old man, radiating good 

 nature a typical whaler of the old school. Although 

 seventy-six years had whitened his hair, when the cry 

 of "Ah! Blow-o-o-o!" had sounded through the vil- 

 lage, he forgot his age and was in the first boat to leave 

 the beach on the five-mile chase. And it was his arm, 

 still strong under the weight of years, which sent the 

 keen-edged lance at the first thrust straight into the 

 lungs of the whale. 



Mr. James L. Clark, formerly of the Museum, and 

 myself, as soon as word of the whale was received, 

 hastened to Amagansett, where we had two weeks of 

 the hardest sort of work to secure the skeleton. 



The carcass was beached just at the edge of low 

 tide, where surf was continually breaking over it, 

 and we had to stand in freezing water while cutting 

 away at the huge mass of flesh which encased the 

 bones. 



The temperature was +12, and, to add to our dif- 

 ficulties, on the second day a terrific storm almost 

 buried the carcass in sand so that it was necessary 

 to build a breakwater of flesh against the surf, and 

 laboriously dig out the skeleton bone by bone. 



The Amagansett whale was an old female, fifty- four 

 feet long, and proved to be the largest specimen which 

 had then been recorded. On the same day that it 

 was captured, a smaller thirty-eight-foot whale, evi- 



255 ' 



