The opportunity to sail aboard a 19th century whaling ship that once frequented Far North waters in the 1800s is about to become a reality for Jan Ferguson, who has a very special interest in the period and the whaling industry.
Ms Ferguson, curator and manager of the Butler Point Whaling Museum, founded by her parents Laetitia and the late Dr Lindo Ferguson, across the harbour from Mangonui, will join the captain and crew of the 'Charles W Morgan' during the ship's 38th voyage this northern summer.
"I feel privileged and very excited to be offered the opportunity to be a part of this historic voyage"
she said.
The 'Charles W Morgan,' the last remaining wooden whaling ship in existence, frequented New Zealand waters from 1846, visiting the Bay of Islands and Mangonui for supplies, Maori crew and 'light relief.'
Ms Ferguson will be joined by fellow New Zealander Caroline Fitzgerald, a documentary film-maker based in Dunedin, who has been granted a Fulbright Travel Award for the project. While aboard they will be working on a documentary film, Black Sails, that will tell the story of the American whaling fleets that worked New Zealand waters.
Ms Fitzgerald's connections with the Far North go back to her great-great-grandparents, Henry and Marianne Williams, in Paihia. She has had two books published telling their stories through letters written pre-1840.
Her first documentary film, The Drowning Country, about a Dunedin woman who invented the kapok life jacket during World War I, was screened at this year's Mangonui Waterfront Festival.
"This is a once in a lifetime opportunity," she said.
"To sail aboard this wooden sailing ship is a unique experience. Without these ships there would have been no whaling by the Americans in New Zealand waters. Many Maori worked these ships, and for a film-maker to document this experience will give me a tiny insight into life aboard about 200 years ago."
The two women, who will be the only New Zealanders on the voyage, will join the ship in Provincetown, Cape Cod, on July 12. The 'Morgan's' 38th voyage, her first since 1921, will take her to historic ports across southern New England.
"We will be spending a day and a night from Provincetown," Ms Ferguson said.
"That means a night in the fo'c'sle. We are hoping the food from the galley isn't the authentic whaler's rations, with weevils and all."
The 'Morgan' left Mystic Seaport on May 17 for New London, Connecticut, where she is completing her fitting out and will undergo sea trials. She will resume the voyage (which can be followed online at www.mysticseaport.org/38thvoyage) on Saturday.
Typical of whalers of her time, she is a little over 100 feet in length, very beamy, with three masts, davits on her sides carrying four 25-foot whaling boats (which were about a third the length of their enormous prey), huge fire pits on deck called tryouts (which meant the blubber could be boiled down on-site and stored for years without spoiling in the casks that filled the hold), a crew of 35, and everything required to support a huge, complicated endeavour.
Sailors aboard the swift, sleek clippers of the time looked down upon whaling ships, calling them 'tubs', with their crew of 'blubber men', but the men aboard the whalers got the job done. If the clippers were the greyhounds of the sea, the whalers were the bulldogs.
The 'Morgan' was designed to take aboard as much oil as possible during a three- to five-year voyage. Whales were hunted and killed from the whale boats, which were fast and manoeuvreable, so the ship herself did not need speed.
Her five-year restoration, carried out at Mystic Seaport's Museum of America and the Sea, required more than 50,000 board feet of live oak and other woods for framing, planking and other structural elements.