Sealers, marginality, and official narratives in Antarctic history (or The Golden Whale and the insvisible seal)

ANDRÈS ZARANKIN; ADRAIN HOWKINS; MELISA A. SALERNO

Fort Collins

Workshop; SCAR Antarctic History, Humanities, and Social Science Workshop; 2015

The Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research/Colorado State University

Our research project is interested in the early encounters between humans and Antartica; in particular, between sealers and the South Shetland Islands in the nineteenth century. Without a doubt, sealers have received marginal attention when compared to other historical actors in Antarctica (such as the leaders of twentieth-century scientific expeditions). Since great part of the ships visiting the South Shetlands came from the Unites States, we have recently decided to visit some city ports in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut that in the nineteenth century were major centers for the nineteenth-century whaling and sealing industries. We were surprised to find out that sealers' stories were almost invisible (especially when compared to whalers'). These circumstances have led us to reflect on the causes (heterogeneous or convergent) of the historical negligence of sealers in both Antarctic and American history.