Carleton D. Morse Whaling Collection, 1762-1964

The Morse Collection of books, manuscripts and periodicals relating to the whaling industry was presented as a memorial to Carleton D. Morse (Brown Class of 1913), by his widow and daughter in 1958. It includes personal narratives and classics of whaling literature, along with correspondence; manuscript logbooks and journals; commercial papers; legal documents; memoranda; reports; personal memoirs; photographs; engravings; clippings and ephemera. Among the commercial papers are invoices and receipts for ships' outfits, merchants' records for repairs, freight, passengers, fuel, and taxes; Charter Party documents; as well as correspondence of a personal nature.

The books have been catalogued individually, and can be identified through JOSIAH. To pull up a title list, do an "author" search for "Morse Whaling." The manuscripts have been arranged and described as a collection, and an EAD finding aid is available. A link to the finding aid is provided below.

(NOTE: Two manuscript collections that arrived with the Morse materials are the papers of Malvina Pinkham Marshall and the Pinkham family and the Papers of Marshall Johnson. These have been arranged and described separately because they had no apparent connection to whaling.)

The Morse Collection, in combination with whaling collections at the Providence Public Library and the New Bedford Whaling Museum, provides an outstanding resource for studying the economic, historic and social influences exercised by whalers on the development of 18th and 19th century New England.



Format(s): Books, Serials, Pamphlets, Manuscripts, Graphics, Letters, Documents
Library: John Hay

---

Access to the collection:

Online Catalog (BruKnow):
General description of the collection available on BruKnow
Morse Whaling Collection (Brown University)

Other Online Access:
Digital Collection: Manuscripts and ship images from the Morse Whaling Collection
RIAMCO: Guide to the Carleton D. Morse whaling collection