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by Casey Nyvall PR & Collections Intern July is the month of beaches and long hot days. And, sea glass! In case you are unfamiliar with it, this is sea glass:  Sea glass! These vibrant ocean rocks are gorgeous—but how are they made? When it comes to the creation of sea glass, the process seems straightforward. But underneath, there is an enigmatic transformation. Let me take you on the journey. Close your eyes, imagine you are at the beach, with a glass bottle of juice. Imagine you finish your juice, and place it next to you on the sand while you look at the ocean. Then, when the tide comes again, it takes your empty bottle. Open your eyes. What do you think happens next? You're right if you guessed a chemical process called oxidation. During oxidation, salt water shifts the chemical makeup of the bottle's glass. If the bottle you lost were to roll against your flip-flop on the same beach, years later, it would likely look something like the bottle on the right:  Before and after; two once-identical bottles, but the right bottle has been oxidized and the left has not. These Cold Spring Harbor Company bottles were initially the same. However, the left bottle has only been affected by the passage of time on land, while the right bottle spent years in the tumultuous ocean waves. This resulted in the glass's drastic modification, from clear with a tinge of green-blue to something nearly unrecognizable, cloudy and pale. This is generally what occurs when sea glass forms; instead of whole bottles, it often sands down the edges of broken glass or bottle shards, making pieces appear more like stones when they wash up on shore. After glass undergoes oxidation, it can become discolored and opaque; this is how the colorful tones develop in sea glass pieces found on the beach. Additionally, salt water can alter the texture of glass. Who can say what these pieces from the museum collections might look like if they underwent oxidation, like the bottle in the image above!  An amber flask that has found a home in the museum collections.  An olive green bottle, also from the museum collections. (You can find more images of items held in the museum by looking on our collections page.) There are other names for sea glass, such as beach glass, mermaid tears, and pirate glass. Pirate glass is a specific type of sea glass. Pieces of it are especially dark in color, but under bright light, a lighter hue becomes visible. Along with multiple names for the pieces themselves, the sea glass collecting community has their own terminology for the many different aspects of finding sea glass. My favorite is “seaglunking.” It is the colloquial term meaning to go searching for sea glass. To me, the phrase really captures the playful nature of hunting for sea glass on the shore. Today, sea glass is commonly seen in the form of jewelry! Now that we have the environmental awareness of the 21st century, sea glass is either found on the shore, made from bottles and glassware that accidentally enter the ocean, or is crafted artificially by inundating glass with salt water and sand, and even acidic chemicals.  Sea glass jewelry! Part of what is so beautiful and entrancing about sea glass is that each piece, each bottle or fragment of a bottle, is a fragment of someone’s story we will never really know. This gives sea glass an air of mystery that, when coupled with legends of creatures in the sea, contributes to public perception of the sea as an unknown in human history. The lost stories behind sea glass are a manifestation of how much we still don’t know about the world—and each other. Further reading:
If you can make it, we encourage you to attend the museum’s Sea Glass Festival on July 20th! From 10AM-5PM there will be sea glass-themed activities, and merchandise (including beautiful sea glass jewelry!) Bibliography
by Baylee Browning Collections and Exhibits Associate In 1974 the Whaling Museum gift shop was selling bottle bound models of the Cold Spring Whaling Company fleet. Once a part of the collection of the Kappel family, the Bark Alice recently made its way back to port, this time without its usual load of whale oil and bone!  A ship-in-a-bottle model of the Alice. The Alice was built in 1830 and by 1844 she had been purchased by the Cold Spring Whaling Company and sent out on her first whaling voyage under Captain Freeman Smith. The Alice was sailing during the golden age of American whaling. She could hold two hundred and eighty one tons and required a crew of at least twelve men. By 1862 the Alice and her various crews had traveled the Atlantic, Pacific, and Arctic Oceans between six voyages and returned with a total of 298 barrels of Sperm oil, 11,276 barrels of whale oil, and 131,711 pounds of whale bone. After her final voyage in 1862 the Alice was retired and sold to Brown and Wilde of Boston. The following year she was sold again in Liverpool and lost to history. The Whaling Museum’s archives are full of accounts detailing the day to day on the Alice. These include bills, memos, crews lists, payments, letters, and even the details of a suit from a sailor who felt shorted on his pay in 1846! Perhaps the most interesting story is the account of how a harpoon from the Alice also found its way home.
 Full image of the damaged harpoon. During one of her voyages a harpoon was successfully struck fast to a whale, but before the whalers could finish the job the whale managed to escape. This fragment is from the very same harpoon. The whale was pulling the boat with such force and ferocity that the shaft broke and the harpoon, and the whale, were lost to the crew. The whale had escaped… for now!  This harpoon broke off as the whale escaped the crew of the Alice. It was not recovered until the whale was caught once again, decades later! During one of the voyages of the Andrew Hicks of New Bedford (1884 and 1908) a severed harpoon head was discovered, buried in the blubber of a whale they had caught. The harpoon finally made it back to Cold Spring Harbor by 1932. The Whaling Museum Society had this to say about the find: This harpoon is still in good condition, and it must have been imbedded deep in the tissues of the whale, because its many years… in salt water did not destroy this piece of fine old wrought iron; it must have been thrust into some part of the whale which moved just a little, for witness that the groove of the moveable harpoon head has worn much against the shank and frayed the edge of the groove.
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