She Floats!

Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • June 19, 2017

On Saturday, June 3, 2017, Finger Boatworks launched a Haven 12 ½ christened Hijinks .  This is the first boat that Finger Boatworks has built and the lionshare was completed by Tyler Winger.  Finger Boatworks does of course have a connection to me – its owner is my husband, Eric, a former U. S. Coast Guard officer who is also a naval architect.  Finger Boatworks (FBW) also maintains many island wooden boats and a few others as well.  Currently, FBW is building an Alerion – a boat originally designed by the “Wizard of Bristol” – Nathanael Herreshoff – in the early twentieth century.  Herreshoff designed the Alerion so that he could sail the boat himself – this in the day when they wore suit and tie, and hat of course!  By then, Herreshoff was an older gentleman who had designed many boats.

Boat building on Nantucket is now few and far between.  There are a few who have built for themselves, but very few who now build for specific clients or to sell.  Boat building did happen historically on Nantucket.   A large boatyard located in the area of Brant Point with a marine railway existed – even building a few whaleships.  Whaleboats were also built on the island.  In fact, in the early eighteenth century, they lifted the laws banning the cutting of trees on the island so that men could head out to Coatue to cut cedar for the whaleboats.  The issue with building on Nantucket was that it was too expensive and boats could be built more easily and cheaply off-island since that is where all the wood to build island boats was coming from to start!


I like to think of Maria, and her brothers and sisters, wandering around the yards, picking up shavings, smelling the fragrance of wood shavings, specifically the cedar, and listening to the rhythmic noise of the saw.  Just around the corner from them was a small boatshop – likely whaleboats – and up the street, a cooperage.  The eldest Mitchell child, Andrew, would run off to sea at a young age and found himself on a naval ship during the Civil War.  He later left the life of the sea and became a farmer – not the first time we had heard that one.  He could have been greatly influenced by the boats surrounding him and the sailors and officers of whaleships and merchant and fishing ships.  He could have also been influenced by his father with his rating of the chronometers and his work with the US Coast Survey.  The Mitchell family had many ship captains through their front sitting room.  He could have been influenced by spending his time in a boatshop.  And, he could have been further influenced by the fact that his maternal grandfather, a whaleship captain, was lost at sea when Andrew’s mother, Lydia Coleman Mitchell, was just fourteen years old.


Boat building is an ancient craft.  Whether it be small or something like a freighter, it is still a craft that we rely on for multiple purposes whether it be transportation, pleasure, livelihood, food.

Look for Hijinks in the harbor this summer.

 

JNLF

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Mallow!

By Jascin Leonardo Finger • August 31, 2026
I’m sure you’ve seen it as you trek about the island – near the beaches and ponds. This image is of the swamp or marsh mallow that we have on Vestal Street in our garden out front of the Observatory. It can grow in drier places – though it’s not as lush as at Capaum Pond or out in Quaise. It’s in the Hibiscus family – and is fairly tropical looking and always a delight to see.  “When in bloom, one of the most showy plants of the Island, for a mass of the magnificent, large flowers on the edge of a blue pond causes one’s heart to thrill at the wealth of deep pink colour . . .” from Nantucket Wild Flowers, Alice O. Albertson (cousin of Maria Mitchell), 1921. JNLF

A Piece of a Clay Pipe

By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • August 24, 2026
I have always wanted to find a piece of a clay pipe. I know – weird – but if you have ever read any of my blogs here for the MMA then you know I have a thing for pottery shards. I sort of figured I would not find a piece of a clay pipe – not even a piece of a stem. But the other day, walking in a place where I have found quite a few shards, I found a piece of clay pipe! Now, I’m not talking about water pipes – I am talking about tobacco pipes. And I know very little about clay pipes. Yes, I am a curator of a historic house museum, but this family did not smoke. They were Quaker and among the many things they abstained from, tobacco was one of them. Therefore, I am not up on clay pipes so I am doing a bit more research.  For one, age can be determined by the width of the hole inside the pipe. So based on this one, I would say it’s fairly late. Since they were so fragile, and those holes pretty small, if it got filled with tobacco, the person just broke off the stem creating a shorter pipe and one that was not clogged with tobacco. Apparently, stems could be recycled – in fact, 15,000 broken stem pieces were uncovered at a historic walkway at Colonial Williamsburg – they were used as fill! And pipes were made into the early twentieth century – falling out of favor around World War One. It makes sense – they were cheap, easy to make, and affordable. Typically, one could last a few years – unless you dropped it of course. An,d pipes were used by men, women, and (eh, em) yes, children. I can see that Nantucket may not have had a lot of tobacco smoking residents – not just that some were Quaker – but because of the Quaker influence. I t does not mean people here do not smoke – I just think there may have been fewer smokers on the island in the nineteenth century and earlier. JNLF

Maria Mitchell In Her Own Words

By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • August 17, 2026
August 19 {1857}. There are four great men whose haunts I mean to seek, and on whose footsteps I mean to stand: Newton, Shakespeare, Milton, and Johnson. To-day I told the driver to take me to St. Martin’s, where the guide-book says that Newton lived. He put me down at the Newton Hotel, but I looked in vain to its top to see anything like an observatory. I went into a wine-shop near, and asked a girl, who was pouring out a dram, in which house Newton lived. She pointed, not to the hotel, but to the house next to a church, and said, “that’s it – don’t you see a place on the top? That’s where he used to study nights.” It is a little, oblong-shaped observatory, built apparently of wood, and blackened by age . . . .” Blackened no doubt by the wood ash and soot found in the air throughout over-crowded nineteenth century London. We always think about London being very foggy in the nineteenth century but frankly a lot of it was wood and coal ash as the nineteenth century grew older, particularly as factories developed and belched all of that into the air – think Sherlock Holmes in the 1880s. But Maria Mitchell, while starting in Europe as a young woman’s chaperone, also knew that this tour of Europe was a great learning experience – the equivalent of a college education she could not have. Doors were thrown open to her around Europe – in particular at all of the observatories that dotted the continent. She was not just well-known – she was famous. JNLF
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