Isaac D. Rose (1811-1890): whaleman and officer, Gay Head farmer, overseer, postmaster, district and town clerk--and Porte Crayon's estimable "Roos"

Writing in the September 1860 Harper's magazine about a visit to Gay Head (now Aquinnah) on Martha's Vineyard, David Hunter Strother (aka "Porte Crayon") describes the home and hospitality of "a very intelligent and well-mannered person" supposedly named "Roos." Strother's fictive narrator Bob Berkeley specifies the occupation of his Gay Head host as "a professional sailor, who had made his last voyage as first mate of a whale-ship." Who is this distinguished whaleman turned farmer? Here is the extended passage which I am prompted to consider after reading Nancy Shoemaker's citations and brief discussion of Strother in her new book Native American Whalemen and the World.

Continuing our walk, we at length met a man in the pathway, whose address indicated some acquaintance with the world; and in answer to our inquiry for dinner, he very politely turned and led us to his house. 

It was a small but regularly finished wooden house, and altogether of a better sort than any we had yet seen. The parlor was respectably furnished, carpeted, and curtained; the mantle- piece and tables decorated with sea-shells, Daguerreotypes, and hooks. Among the latter were some illustrated annuals, but all of them of a moral and religious character.  

Our host, Roos, we found to be a very intelligent and well-mannered person, a professional sailor, who had made his last voyage as first mate of a whale-ship. This is the occupation of most of the men of the reservation, and is the only pursuit followed by civilized men that the Indians or their descendants have shown any aptitude for. It is, in fact, nothing more than their original and natural occupation of fishing, extended and improved by the genius and enterprise of the white man. The few poor garden patches that we observed were doubtless cultivated by the women and children, after the Indian fashion. 

Roos gave us a comfortable dinner, at which he and his wife joined us. After the meal we retired to the parlor, where he spun us some sea yarns, and traded us some pretty shells which had gathered in the Indian seas. The books on his table, he informed us, belonged to the schoolmistress, who was at that time quartered at his house. 

Upon this suggestion we took leave, and wended our way to the Academy, where we found the school in session....  -- A Summer in New England

Critical of Strother's racist view of Gay Head Indians as "a thriftless and inferior people," Professor Shoemaker determines that his facts must be as faulty as his stereotypes:

They said his name was "Roos," but it must have been George Belain, who was at that time the only Gay Head native who fit their description of "a professional sailor, who had made his last voyage as first mate of a whale-ship."  --Native American Whalemen and the World, chapter 10

Wait wait wait. First we need to sort out who's talking and traveling here. Professor Shoemaker finesses "they" as transparently "[a] travel writer" (Strother) and "an illustrator" (Porte Crayon). But the actual writer and artist are one man, Strother, who throughout his "Summer in New England" series employs fictional personae (both Virginians) as a narrative device to achieve a dual perspective. Cecil D. Eby, Jr. explains it well in his 1960 biography of David Hunter Strother:

The narrator is Bob Berkeley, who writes in first person. Accompanying him on his trip is Dick Dashaway, a brainless but generous young Southerner of many love affairs. The guileless, amiable Dick serves the same function as the Chinaman in Goldsmith's Citizen of the World: he is almost painfully naive, but his comments upon the strange manners of the Yankee nation often cut to the heart of the matter. Dick's provincialism is balanced by Bob Berkeley's sophistication. We therefore obtain two interpretations of the events. -- Porte Crayon: The Life of David Hunter Strother, Writer of the Old South (University of North Carolina Press, 1960) page 97.

The New England travelogue complements Strother's previous Harper's series, A Winter in the South. Strother's actual journey to New England took place in 1859. Eby adds in a footnote that the narrator's traveling companion "Dick" is based on Berney Wolff, Strother's brother-in-law.

Without endorsing ugly and always offensive stereotypes, discerning readers will want to keep in mind the formal context, tone (often satirical), and complicated perspective of A Summer in New England. Strother's bigoted southern tourists find faults with Yankees and other New England types, not only among the Wampanoag people of Gay Head (Aquinnah).

Now about this respectable whaleman "Roos" whom Professor Shoemaker believes "must have been" George Belain.

Must have been? Ack. Despite the ploy of fictive tourists called Bob and Dick, Strother names real names of people and places. He gets them wrong sometimes, but not that wrong. His "Deacon Simon" is Simon Johnson. "Hetty Ames" can only be the widow Mehitable Ames, 80 years old in 1860 according to the Indian Census of Gay Head. And look at his sketch of the woman in the rocking chair, identified in the caption as "Jane Wormsley." Sure enough, that's Jane Wamsley. Strother's "Roos" might be harder to figure out, but not impossible. "Belain" for "Roos" can't be right. So we need a different real name closer to "Roos."

In Vital Records of Sudbury Massachusetts we find the spelling "Roos" variously associated with Rooss, Ross, and Rose. Aha, maybe Porte Crayon's "Roos" is "Rose" as in Isaac D. Rose.

In "Appendix A" of the 1849 Bird Report of the Commissioners, Isaac D. Rose (age 37) is listed with his wife Harriet A. (age 27) and infant only 10 days old with other recognized members of the "Gay Head Tribe."

As shown in the Vital Records of Tisbury, Mass., Isaac D. Rose married Harriet A. Wamsely in April 1841:

ROSE, Isaac D., colored, of Gayhead, and Harriet A. Wamsley of Gayhead, Apr. 27, 1841.* [Isaac D. of Gay Head, and Harriet A. Wamsley of Gay Head, C.r.]

Harriet was Isaac's second wife. His first wife was Harriet's sister, Priscilla A. Wamsley, who died October 12, 1838.  Isaac and Priscilla were married in 1837. The name ROSE was entered in the Vital Records of Chilmark as ROWS:

ROWS (see Rose), Isaac of New Bedford, and Priscilla Womsley, int. May 23, 1837.

ISAAC D. ROSE (1811-1890)

According to the New Bedford Family tree at Ancestry.com our Isaac D. Rose was born in Taunton, Massachusetts on November 14, 1811; and he died in Gay Head of an unspecified "heart ailment" in September 1890. No source for date of death given, but the Index to Deaths in Massachusetts 1886-1890 confirms under Rose the 1890 death at Gay Head of "Isaac D (colored)" as recorded in volume 409 page 228. (Where the date of birth comes from escapes me.)

New Bedford City Directories for 1838 and 1839 show Isaac D. Rose with the whaleship Mercury and boarding at "34 Sixth, corner Walnut" street.

New Bedford, 1839 by Granger, via fineartamerica

The 1860 census of Gay Head shows Isaac D. Rose with 12 acres of land just like George Belain. Then "farmer," Isaac D. Rose was or had been a whaleman, too. There he is again in the 1870 federal census, Isaac D. Rose, age 58, occupation "Mariner" with a healthy $700 in real estate and personal estate valued at $250. Daughters at home, Etta H. age 10 and Minola or Mincola or Minneola 17. (Daughter Mineola or "Minnie" would marry an African mariner named John Stevens.) In the 1880 census Isaac D. Rose is "farmer" again, still married to Harriet A., with Etta H. the only daughter still at home, now 20 years old. This younger daughter Etta H. Rose would marry Leonard L. Vanderhoop December 30, 1885.

Isaac and Harriet Rose also had a son, Alfred, born June 1848 in Gay Head. Alfred P. Rose died in battle on July 30, 1864, in Petersburg, Virginia, when he was 16 years old. Serving, as David J. Silverman notes in Faith and Boundaries (Cambridge University Press, 2005) "among the 'colored troops' of Massachusetts."

Crew Lists show Isaac D. Rose as 3rd mate aboard two ships, the Golcoda II in 1841 and Canton II in 1845.

The 1845 record gives his age as 34 and residence as Taunton, Massachusetts--near to Fall River which is Isaac D. Rose’s place of birth according to 1860 census. Both parents of Isaac D. Rose were born in Connecticut according to the 1880 federal census.

A crew list published in the Whaleman's Shipping List August 10, 1852 names Isaac D. Rose as second mate of the whaling bark Clara Bell of Mattapoisett under "Captain David [Daniel] Flanders, of Chilmark, Mass." Isaac D. Rose worked his way up the ranks, from 3rd mate in 1841-5 to 2nd mate in 1852. It would not be surprising then to find him later in the 1850's as 1st mate of a whaler, or acting in the capacity of mate.

In the only reference to Isaac D. Rose in Native American Whalemen, Nancy Shoemaker names him among the town clerks of Gay Head, many of them whalemen. Not only whalemen, at home they were prosperous and capable leaders of the community. Wherever he went on land and sea, Isaac D. Rose proved himself a leader.

As Overseer...

Chap. 30. RESOLVE on the Petition of the Overseers of Gay Head.
Resolved, That for reasons set forth in their petition, that there be allowed and paid, out of the treasury of the Commonwealth, to Isaac D. Rose, Aaron Cooper, 2d, and Samuel
Peters, Overseers of the Indians and people of color at Gay Head, the sum of five hundred and sixty-five dollars, for the purpose of erecting a school-house at Gay Head; and the governor is hereby authorized to draw his warrant for that sum. [Approved April 14, 1857.] --1857 Acts and Resolves

This 1857 evidence of Isaac D. Rose's leadership in securing funds for the new school at Gay Head suggests a strong interest in education, consistent with Strother's observation when visiting "Roos" in 1859, of his host's pride in the community's new school, their teacher, and her books:

The books on his table, he informed us, belonged to the school-mistress, who was at that time quartered at his house. Upon this suggestion we took leave, and wended our way to the Academy, where we found the school in session...  --Strother's Summer in New England

As postmaster...

THE POST OFFICE 

Until 1873 this town was served from the Chilmark office at Squibnocket, and on Feb. 14 of that year Isaac D. Rose was appointed the first postmaster of the newly-established office. He served eleven years, and was succeeded by William A. Vanderhoop, Dec. 11, 1884; Paulina A. Vanderhoop, Nov. 14, 1893, and Mary A. Cleggett Vanderhoop, Aug. 13, 1907, the present incumbent.  --Banks, History of Martha's Vineyard

and District then Town Clerk...

As noted above, Isaac D. Rose married two Wamsley women, Priscilla in 1837 and, several years after her death in 1838, Priscilla's sister Harriet in 1841. Despite his "non-Indian" "non-member" status alleged in the contentious but richly documented 1985 government report cited below, Isaac D. Rose was already included in the 1849 census of Gay Head Indians.

... state records indicate that the first man to hold the important position of town clerk was William D. Vanderhoop, a non-Indian, and that for the period 1873 to 1888, this post was held by Isaac D. Rose, a non-member mulatto who had previously served as an elected overseer and as the district clerk (Mass. State Vital Records 1841-1890). Between 1899 and 1920, five (5) other non-Indians were town officials, including Charles H. Ryan (cranberry agent, 1899-1901), Charles S. Hatch (auditor, 1910), William M. Marden (town clerk, 1921-1922), Merriam C. Hayson (library trustee, 1921-1922), and Harry W. Webster (constable, 1926) (Town of Gay Head 1899-1980). With the exception of Hatch, however, all of these individuals were married to Gay Head women. --Evidence of Proposed Finding Against Federal Acknowledgement

In the divisive 1869-70 controversy over enfranchisement, incorporation and land division, Isaac D. Rose initially seemed to oppose but eventually supported division of common lands--George Belain and others opposed Rose's petition in favor of the proposed "set off" (again borrowing from the historical assessment in Evidence of Proposed Finding p67).

Clearly there's a lot more to find in libraries and historical collections on Martha's Vineyard and in the National Archives in Boston. Oh I would love to visit both places and amplify with more details about the full and distinguished life of Isaac D. Rose. If some other brave researcher gets there first, so much the better.
---
Ha! Talk about your brave researchers. After writing every bit of the above, now I find Dr. Russell G. Handsman way way ahead of me in his brilliant essay on

Some Middle-Range Theory for Archaeological Studies of Wampanoag Indian Whaling

 a revised 2011 conference paper which I happened upon at academia.edu

Dr. Handsman starts and ends critically but fairly with Melville's Tashtego, and along the way confidently identifies the estimable Gay Head whaleman of David Hunter Strother's September 1860 Harper's article as none other than

Isaac Rose!

One of accompanying illustrations shows a detail from an 1858 map of Chilmark & Gayhead with Isaac D. Rose's place labelled what looks to me like I. or J. Rase. Or Rose. Or Ruse? If spelled "Ruse" there or anywhere, well there's your Roos!

Update: 1926 sketch-map by Edward S. Burgess shows the "Isaac Rose site" centrally located along the Old South Road of Gay Head; accessible in the Indian Converts collection via Reed Digital Collections.

Related post:

• Heroic Indians in fact and fiction
  https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2015/07/heroic-indians-in-fact-and-fiction.html

Heroic Indians in Fact and Fiction

I'm reading the Kindle version of Native American Whalemen and the World by UConn historian Nancy Shoemaker. It's good to learn about the real and important presence of Indians in the whaling industry. The book introduces and analyzes a staggering number of primary sources like whaling journals and logbooks. Also published narratives of whaling. Most of these sources are new to me, so I'm delighted to know more about them and grateful to the author for her work of investigating them.

Regarding the book I did know something about: Moby-Dick receives what might be called obligatory mentions, delivered with a sigh. As historian, more interested in facts than fiction, Professor Shoemaker has little professional use for Moby-Dick, notwithstanding Melville's heroic Indian harpooneer, Tashtego, and the illustrious name Melville gave to the fated whaleship, Pequod:

"Moby-Dick is full of this sort of typical New England romanticism about Indians...."
--Nancy Shoemaker, interview with Andrew Epstein at 11:08; via UConn Today

Native American Whalemen incorporates much of Shoemaker's earlier article in Journal of the American Republic, the point of which was that unlike Melville's stereotypical noble savage, real-life Tashtegos on American whaleships were frequently mates and boatseerers (official job title of Melville's "harpooneers"). Their professional status entitled real-life Tashtegos to be addressed respectfully as "Mr." Citation:

Shoemaker, Nancy. "Mr. Tashtego: Native American Whalemen in Antebellum New England." Journal of the Early Republic, vol. 33 no. 1, 2013, p. 109-132. Project MUSE, https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/jer.2013.0017.

And so we're busted. No denying it, Moby-Dick is full of romanticism--about pretty much everything, and strongly influenced by European (not only American) models in Goethe and Byron and Mary Shelley. Fair enough, but it's depressing to encounter romantic as a kind of code word for "bad" (if not "despicably evil") and "worthless." Reminds me in that regard of Cynthia Wachtell's reading of dreadful glory in Melville's Civil War poem, "Inscription for the Slain at Fredericksburgh."

From the start, Professor Shoemaker's enterprise involves a problem of methodology which she acknowledges with admirable candor:

"The absence of a racial category on crew lists has confounded historians investigating race in maritime history."

Yes! Especially when the subjects of their study do not fit neatly into one "racial category" or box. Sure, Melville's "token New England Indian" (as Professor Shoemaker calls Tashtego, p. 37) is a romantic fiction. Back in the real world of nineteenth-century whaling, your Indian whaleman might well be a respected officer, "Mr. Tashtego." And he might also be African-American. Joel G. Jared, the first named of Professor Shoemaker's exemplary Gay Head Indians, was identified as Negro (offensively, using the common slur) in documentary evidence that she defers to chapter 3 on "The Primacy of Rank." Looking online, I see Jared is described as "malatto" in one 1856 Crew List of the Anaconda.

The discussion in chapter 2 on "Race, Nationality, and Gender" works surprisingly hard to define people by race. Varying contemporary identifications of Haskins men as "mulatto," "black," and "Indian" are cited as signs of uncertainty if not incompetence rather than eyewitness evidence:

"Samuel Haskins's own identity was probably not this quixotic." --Native American Whalemen and the World, chapter 2

Really? I wonder what "identity" here even means. Racial identity, it sounds like, but then why not say so. Whatever "identity" means, maybe it is that quixotic, after all. Quixotic to scholars examining racial categories, for a start, since Martha S. Putney names the brothers Amos and Samuel Haskins in her groundbreaking roll of Black Sailors: Afro-American Merchant Seamen and Whalemen Prior to the Civil War.

As if he wanted to make matters more quixotic, Amos Haskins went and married Elizabeth P. Farmer (1824-90)

"the African American daughter of the widow Dianna Farmer, who had lived in New Bedford at least as early as 1826"  --New Bedford Historical Society, Inc.

Let me see if there's anything about Amos Haskins's wife in Native American Whalemen and the World. Yes, though no mention of her being African American which is fine by me but odd in a book fixated on "the Contingency of Race" (as the subtitle has it). One Samuel Haskins of Gay Head we can glimpse for ourselves, thanks to the miracles of Google and Facebook. This Samuel Haskins is reportedly the son of Amos Haskins, according to information provided by Edith Andrews as summarized in the January 2000 Faces of Whaling Oral History Project by the National Parks Service.

Samuel J. Haskins was publicly honored with other Gay Head whalemen for heroic actions during a notable maritime disaster, the 1884 wreck of the City of Columbus at Devil's Bridge.

At about nine o'clock a life-boat was successfully launched by a crew of Gay Head Indians, consisting of Joseph Peters captain, Samuel Haskins, Samuel Anthony, James Cooper, Moses Cooper, and John Vanderhoop. After battling an hour they were able to bring seven men ashore rescued from the rigging. A second crew manned it, all Indians, except the captain, James T. Mosher. They were Leonard L. Vanderhoop, Thomas C. Jeffers, Patrick Divine, Charles Grimes, and Peter Johnson. They had rescued thirteen men when the U. S. Revenue Cutter Dexter arrived to render assistance, having been called to the scene by telegraphic messages.  --Charles Edward Banks, History of Martha's Vineyard

More recently, local historian Thomas Dresser also has published a vivid chronicle of the 1884 shipwreck in his eleventh book, Disaster Off Martha's Vineyard. Pictures of both rescue crews and boats may be found on Facebook. Here's the one showing a "Samuel Haskins" in the first life-boat, second man from the left (according to the caption at Facebook which may be wrong):

Left to Right [or the reverse, Right to Left?]:
 Joseph Peters, Samuel Haskins, Samuel Anthony,
James Cooper, Moses Cooper, John Vanderhoop — 

Photo Credit: Martha's Vineyard Antique Photos via Facebook

Later (8/01/2015): Thomas Dresser reproduces a wonderful group photo showing "Sam Haskins" (bearded?) with other Gay Head heroes, on page 116 of Disaster Off Martha's Vineyard. The "Samuel Haskins" in the Facebook photo above looks more like the man "Tom Cooper" in Dresser's group photograph. Same hat! And the man shown standing in the photo above is the same man identified in Dresser's photo as "Joe Peters." Yes it looks like the intended order of the given names must be Right to Left, making Samuel Haskins the second man from the right--bearded like "Sam Haskins" in Dresser's photograph.

The men of both crews were identified by name and commended as "Gallant Rescuers... all native Indians of Gay Head" in the New York Herald (Monday, January 21, 1884). The Massachusetts Humane Society honored each man with a silver medal and $25.00 award. A similar notice in the rival New York Tribune employed more condescending language (and puzzling, as in the unexplained term "Narves."). It's complicated all right. Spite of the woeful stereotypes, the newspaper's praise for "the heroic islanders" of Gay Head feels real and heartfelt:

New York Tribune (January 21, 1884)

In The Story of Martha's Vineyard, Charles Gilbert Hine reproduces a photo of the medal received by courageous lifesavers:

As related at website of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head, these medals of honor awarded by the Massachusetts Humane Society

"are proudly passed down through the generations from one family member to another."

I don't yet know what happened to Joel G. Jared, but his Gay Head wife Rosanna also figures in the story of the Columbus shipwreck.  Rosanna later married "seaman and farmer" Abram Rodman, identified as "Black" (not "Mulatto" and not "Indian") in the 1880 census. Rosanna Gershom Rodman (the former Rosanna Gershom Jared, born Rosanna Gershom David on April 25, 1839) won public notice during the disaster as one of the island heroes. With other women of Gay Head, Mrs. Rodman (by then a widow, evidently) received $5.00 and a certificate from the Massachusetts Humane Society

"for noble and humane exertions on the occasion of the wreck of the steamer City of Columbus, Gay Head, Jan. 18, 1884."   --Worcester Daily Spy, February 5, 1884

With her husband Abram and others, Rosanna Gershom Rodman is also distinguished in New England history as a petitioner for property and voting rights.

Ironically, the determination to critique supposed exhibits of racism by unenlightened observers gets in the way of appreciating great acts of heroism by people of color. Case in point, Professor Shoemaker's mishandling of a chapter in A Year with a Whaler by Walter Noble Burns, Burns has been called "America’s premier romantic outlaw-lawman mythmaker" but Shoemaker does not even footnote his influential career as historian and romancer of the wild American West. Rather, Burns shows up as a racist stooge for his prose portrait of the third mate, a Cape Verdean named Tomas Mendez, which Professor Shoemaker blasts as

"virulent racism mixed with xenophobia." --Nancy Shoemaker, Native American Whalemen and the World

My take: Burns unaffectedly relates his inexperienced, racially prejudiced view of Mendez as a monster of evil. All that's transparent. What Professor Shoemaker fails to mention is the context--which of course is everything, the whole point. Possibly she did not read far enough. Mendez turns out to be the hero of the chapter which is devoted to him, poetically and evocatively titled, "The Night King." The narrator exaggerates his hatred of Mendez at the beginning to set up the dramatic twist at the end. In a stove whaleboat Mendez heroically cuts the harpoon lines to save his crew:

When the whale crushed the boat—at the very moment, it must have been—the Night King had snatched the knife kept fastened in a sheath on the bow thwart and with one stroke of the razor blade, severed the harpoon lines. He thus released the whale and prevented it from dragging the boat away in its mad race. The Night King's last act had saved the lives of his companions.... 

The qualities that had made him hated when he was indeed the Night King flooded back upon me, but I did not forget the courage of my enemy that had redeemed them all and made him a hero in the hour of death.  --A year with a whaler, The Night King

In a later, emotionally powerful scene (also overlooked by Professor Shoemaker) the brother of Mendez unexpectedly learns of his death:

A pathetic incident grew out of the visit of the captain from the other ship. Tomas Mendez's brother, a boat-steerer, came aboard with the boat's crew. He was a young negro whom all the boat-steerers and officers knew. He came swinging lightly over our rail, laughing and happy over the prospect of seeing his brother. 

"Hello, fellers," he called to the Portuguese officers and boat-steerers who welcomed him. 

"Where's my brudder?" 

"Dead, my boy," said one of the boat-steerers gently. 

"Dead?" echoed Mendez. 

He staggered back. When he had heard the details of his brother's death, he burst into tears. All the time his skipper remained aboard, the poor fellow stood by the cooper's bench and sobbed.

The final chapter of Native American Whalemen and the World counterbalances old negative stereotypes of degradation with the positive theme of respect. If she had not already dismissed Tashtego as Melville's "token New England Indian" Professor Shoemaker might have fittingly cited the last chapter of Moby-Dick as an enduring fictional tribute to the prominence and heroism of Native Americans in the whaling industry. However romanticized, Melville's Tashtego still belongs in the category of respectful treatments of Indians. I almost wrote "the famous last chapter of Moby-Dick" but that could be wishful thinking.

Here's the tableau with Tashtego from chapter 135, THE CHASE — THIRD DAY:

For an instant, the tranced boat's crew stood still; then turned. "The ship? Great God, where is the ship?" Soon they through dim, bewildering mediums saw her sidelong fading phantom, as in the gaseous Fata Morgana; only the uppermost masts out of water; while fixed by infatuation, or fidelity, or fate, to their once lofty perches, the pagan harpooneers still maintained their sinking lookouts on the sea. And now, concentric circles seized the lone boat itself, and all its crew, and each floating oar, and every lance-pole, and spinning, animate and inanimate, all round and round in one vortex, carried the smallest chip of the Pequod out of sight. 

But as the last whelmings intermixingly poured themselves over the sunken head of the Indian at the mainmast, leaving a few inches of the erect spar yet visible, together with long streaming yards of the flag, which calmly undulated, with ironical coincidings, over the destroying billows they almost touched;—at that instant, a red arm and a hammer hovered backwardly uplifted in the open air, in the act of nailing the flag faster and yet faster to the subsiding spar. A sky-hawk that tauntingly had followed the main-truck downwards from its natural home among the stars, pecking at the flag, and incommoding Tashtego there; this bird now chanced to intercept its broad fluttering wing between the hammer and the wood; and simultaneously feeling that etherial thrill, the submerged savage beneath, in his death-gasp, kept his hammer frozen there; and so the bird of heaven, with archangelic shrieks, and his imperial beak thrust upwards, and his whole captive form folded in the flag of Ahab, went down with his ship, which, like Satan, would not sink to hell till she had dragged a living part of heaven along with her, and helmeted herself with it.

Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago. --Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

 Related post

•  Isaac D. Rose (1811-1890)
  https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2015/08/isaac-d-rose-1811-1890-whaleman-and.html