Bliss’s Patent American Taffrail Log–which was introduced around 1871 and which received a medal at the Centennial Exhibition of 1876–was based on the inventions of Captain Truman Hotchkiss, a sea captain living in Stratford, Connecticut. This example incorporates two features designed by John and George H. Bliss in the late 1870s. One is a register with three dials that read tenths of a mile, ten miles, and 100 miles. The other is a rotator designed to prevent sea-weed accumulation. It was probably made before 1884 when the Bliss brothers obtained another patent for a further improved rotator.
Ref: T. Hotchkiss, "Nautical Log," U.S. patent #45,042.
T. Hotchkiss, "Screw Propeller," U.S. patent #63,520.
J. & G. H. Bliss, "Ships’ Logs," U.S. patent #178,261.
J. & G. H. Bliss, "Rotators for Ships’ Logs," U.S. patent #208,061.
Simply carved and without any engraving, this food chopper, or mincer, was made in two pieces from a sperm whale’s jawbone. Its blunted, curved blade was used to chop soft foods such as bread dough, fruits, sausage, and animal fats. This example was donated by former Secretary of the Institution Spencer F. Baird (1823–1887) to the Smithsonian, where it became one of the earliest objects in the maritime collections.
Whaling crews used mincing knives to cut the blubber strips into thin slices down to, but not through, the thick whale skin. This process increased the surface area of the blubber and helped it melt faster in the try-pots. Cut in this fashion, the sections of whale blubber and skin were known as “bible leaves” because they resembled the pages of a book.
The work of carving blubber from a whale carcass and hauling the long, narrow strips of flesh, called “blanket pieces,” aboard the ship onto the deck was called “boarding.” The boarding knife was an extremely sharp, double-edged sword blade at the end of a short wooden pole. It served a variety of purposes, from cutting a hole in the whale’s flesh for the blubber hook, to cutting the long strips of flesh into shorter sections for further processing.
These tools were kept extremely sharp to cut the whale’s flesh easily. With the decks and tools so slippery from the whale processing, using them was reserved for the ship’s officers.
