This whaleboat is not a replica it’s real. Late in her career she served as larboard boar on the schooner John R. Manta of New Bedford in 1025. Though this was the last American whaling voyage ever completed in sail, hand =-whaling methods and whaleboat usage had remained virtually unchanged for generations.
This whaleboat hands on the schooner’s larboard quarter. The gear aboard a whaleboat is made up of. Two “irons,” or harpoons, rest over the bow on the “clumsy cleat,” a think pine thwart that has a rounded notch cut on the after side, into which the boatsteere braces himself by one leg against the motions of the boat.
Five men row this boat. The whaleboat carries two tubs of line, oars, paddles, hatchet, shoulder gun, bomb-lances, spade, drug, water keg, and many other things, in all 48 articles and a least 82 pieces.
