The Bark Alice Returns to Port!

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. 

A scrimshaw tooth depicting a dangerous whaling scene.

A damaged harpoon with the name "Alice" inscribed on its surface.

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.

The next time you visit the whaling museum, make sure to stop by the workshop to see our display of Ships in a Bottle, donated to the Museum in 2023 by the Kappel Family. Before you go, pose in front of our famous ship wheel in If I Were a Whaler. Local legend says that this ships wheel once steered the Bark Alice!

This ship's wheel, a prominent feature of the Whaling Museum's If I Where a Whaler gallery space, is purported to belong to the Bark Alice.