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Image provided by: Suffolk Cooperative Library System
Please mention The Long Islander Newspapers when doing business with our advertisers COLD SPRING HARBOR Museum's eBay Find Was Too Good To Be True By Peter Sloggatt psloggatt(@ longislandergroup. com There's an old saying that says, if something seems too good to be true, it probably is. That was the case when the Whal- ing Museum and Education Center was the winning bidder in an eBay auction of a significant artifact rele- vant to Cold Spring Harbor's history as a whaling port. Turns out that artifact -- the first known description of the natural his- tory of whales - which the Cold Spring Harbor museum won with a $1,599 bid, had been stolen from an- other museum. The saga began in spring 2016 when former curator Fred Schmitt alerted Whaling Museum Executive Director Nomi Dayan of an important document up for auction. Schmitt, a scholar of the early whaling industry, had come across hand-drawn \De- scriptions of Whales\ created by Cap- tain Thomas W. Roys dating to 1854, and suggested it LonglslanderNews.com THE LONG-ISLANDER « APRIL 5, 2018 * A13 would be a sig- nificant addition to the museum's collection. Roys (1816- 1877) is consid- ered to be the most prominent Long Island whaling captain and American founder of the whaling industry. After joining a whaling crew out of Sag Harbor as a greenhand, he devoted his life not only to hunt- ing whales but to scientific study of the marine mam- mals. He was the first American to Eres on / AE) /1’4m S fl 4 ”an”. I Jar fiffflfiwdd Pri T4 P /Fio /W,?( kad as AR +, ion? i'n Ad /(t7/lé‘ét.//m,¢wufdl&g X3 ot | Mf/ es Ze (Z? ”if, f “affl’fié’xfi fee «' Zarate -pw Z terrs® £47“ MM ‘fiffi ff Z {a a Ms. aem fi -F 4 43.5qu my I (Ran jaet, ”an”, sf trey ree /* (Mg/c mes ile oceanw/ (xx/g‘wfi Je stodes: (5am; +7 sail through the Bering Strait, and the first industrial whaler to discover the Bowhead whale. While commanding the Cold Spring Harbor whaleship the Sheffield in 1854, Roys answered a query about his knowledge of whale species and their habits with a detailed report. His 24-sheet booklet was filled with pen- cil drawings of whale species, his ob- servations about their size, appear- ance, and behavior, their products, and when and where to best hunt each species. \This is a one-of-a-kind artifact penned by a key figure in our local and national whaling history,\ Dayan said. \Not only is Descriptions of Whales a clear snapshot of the fore- most scientific understanding of whales at the time, but today the man- uscript is viewed as the first whale textbook.\ The museum acquired the piece from SkinnerAuctioneers for $1,599. When Schmitt visited the museum to see the artifact himself, he felt he had seen it before. And with good rea- son. Turns out the very sheet had been used as an illustration in the biography A page from the first natural history of whales by Cold Spring Harbor Whaleship captain Thomas W. Roys, part of which is seen at left, was recently acquired by the Cold Spring Harbor Whaling Museum, above, in an eBay auction has been re- turned to a Virginia museum after it was discovered to have been stolen. of Roys the former curator had au- thored 30 years earlier. When he and Dayan went to the book they found the image was credited to the Mariners' Museum in Virginia. A call to Jeanne Willoz-Egnor, di- rector of Collections Management at the Mariners, revealed that the piece did belong to the Mariners' Museum, but had been stolen. It was an inside job, according to Willoz-Egnor, who said Roy's manu- script was one of thousands of pieces systematically looted from the insti- tution over a six-year period by an archivist, Lester Weber. Willoz-Egnor said the former employee had raided artifacts and cut pages from scrap- books in the museum's collection, then rearranged collections, instituted a new numbering system, and me- thodically erased donor and acquisi- tion information to cover his tracks. The stolen items found their way to eBay to be sold to the highest bidder. A collector in Switzerland blew the whistle on the scam in 2006. After making several purchases, the man became curious about the rich source of high-quality artifacts and began snooping around. Though the eBay account was listed under Weber's wife's maiden name, Lori Childs, the collector was finally able to link her name to an obituary archived online that tied her to Lester Weber. Weber was fired by the museum, and charged with the theft But he continued to sell stolen artifacts even after his arrest. Weber was convicted in 2008 and sentenced to four years in prison His wife was sentenced to 15 months Of the nearly 6,500 items the couple is believed to have stolen, 5.500 pieces remain unaccounted for. Roy's Descriptions of Whales will be returning to the Mariner's Mu- seum. And according to Dayan, sev- eral other items sold in the same auc - tion lot were also tracked down Among them are a 1776 logbook from the whaleship Minerva The Virginia museum's president was grateful to his Cold Spring Har- bor counterparts for \their diligence and compassion regarding the Roys Manuscript. All of us at The Mariners Museum were incredibly proud and humbled that our fine colleagues in Cold Spring Harbor would go to the lengths that they did in an effort to make us whole,\ Howard H. Hoege IIL. president and CEO of Mariners' said. In Cold Spring Harbor. doing the tight thing was never in question It was difficult losing a great find \of tremendous scholarly importance to our collection. but rewarding to do the right thing and return this object home.\ Dayan said
