It is funny how sometimes in life unrelated, and often minor decisions, become the important ones.

I moved back to Massachusetts from Oklahoma because, in spite of my friends there and things I had accomplished of which I am quite proud, circumstances made a move a good thing. I house sat on Cape Cod for what turned into a couple of years when it was supposed to have been six months.

Cape Cod definitely is not a friend to those needing affordable housing, and I ended up moving to New Bedford at the end of house sitting because for what I would have been paying to rent a bench near a beach I could get a whole apartment in the highly renovated downtown historic district, which put me a few blocks from and an easy walk to the New Bedford Whaling Museum where I chose to volunteer some time to get involved in the community.

Before becoming an active volunteer, a person has to attend 10 weeks of classes for three hours a week to become familiar with what the museum offers, information about the whaling industry and all things whale, the history of the city of New Bedford, and the minutia of many of the items on display.

Having taught for 38 years, I was not interested in being a docent who would be showing school field trips around, and, so volunteered to work in the library. Because the library was being moved from its location a few blocks away to its new home in the new wing of the museum, there was no work for the longest time until the library was all set up.

When that finally happened I was assigned to ship log transcription, and my first assignment was a doozy.

The president wanted the log of the bark Catalpa transcribed in record time, so it was divided among three people, two of us who were new. Thankfully I had been taught the Palmer Method of penmanship by nuns in elementary school, and that combined with all the student work I had had to wade through over the years, I was able to get accustomed to the handwriting in the log rather quickly.

The Catalpa was a whaling ship that was to go to Freemantle, Australia, to rescue 6 Fenian prisoners, and bring them  to the United states, while having the whole voyage appear to be a standard whaling expedition with only the captain and the agent of the Clan na Gael who was footing the bill for it knowing the true nature of the voyage to limit any chance that the true nature of the expedition would be discovered.

The ship left New Bedford, hunted a few whales to look legitimate, and since the crew was paid based on the amount of whale oil brought home, keep them thinking they were part of a standard hunt.

Eventually the ship arrived off Australia, the rescue was pulled off, the ship was able to fend off  being boarded by a British gun ship suspicious of its having been just loitering off shore for a number of days when by coincidence the six prisoners had escaped, averting an international incident if the gun boat had fired on an American ship flying the American flag just outside Australian territorial waters, and getting the prisoners to New York.
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It is a great story, and one worth looking into.

The result of the Catalpa expedition was that the Irish people’s desire for independence was given a huge boost and it has been seen as the spark that led to that independence.

Being as 2016 is the hundredth anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rebellion, the museum planned and has mounted an exhibit, Famine, Friends and Fenians, to tell the story of the expedition from planning to execution with many artifacts donated by the descendents of those involved, and to tell the story of the Irish involvement throughout the history of New Bedford that to most people doesn’t have that history.

My transcription team’s work is part of that exhibit., and I watched as for about three weeks a crew of people assembled the exhibit treating each medal, map, picture, pipe, cane,, article of clothing, flag, picture and document with the greatest respect because they were representations of normal people who had done an extraordinary act.

Beyond the account of the Catalpa, the exhibit covers the Irish donation to the new colony in 1673, Frederick Douglass’s self imposed exile to Ireland with the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, the Famine, New Bedford’s Quaker population’s  sending relief during the famine, and some Irish cultural things  presented by that country’s cultural secretary.

There was a pre-opening event the night before the actual opening to the public, and as usual with these events lots of good catered food and, in this case, plenty of Guinness. Everyone who contributed to the exhibit was invited as were many of the local dignitaries.

The exhibit is impressive.

But then, during the speeches and thank yous, as people stood around sipping their wine and accepting offerings from the hors,d’oevre waiters, a rather posh looking gentleman of noble carriage, turned toward the bust of poet John Boyle O’Relly and placed his almost empty wine glass on the little shelf upon which the bust stood, and walked away.

So, my last contribution to the exhibit was to take his glass away from the bust to prevent possible spillage on that part of it, and told the woman who had been standing next to him that I hadn’t had to do anything like that since my last middle school field trip to an art museum.

So much for his noble carriage.