I pulled this card from the stack and instantly felt the spray of seawater and the tension of a harpoon rope straining against the power of something far too large to control.
This is no tourist snapshot. It’s a painting—an artist’s concept of a whaling scene, likely imagined from stories passed down, museum displays, or old journal entries. The men are mid-chase in a longboat, bearing down on the massive, thrashing tail of a whale. Behind them, the tall masts of their ship rise from the sea like a cathedral of sails. There’s no engine noise, no modern equipment. Just raw wood, rope, and determination.
On the back, it reads:
“EARLY WHALING DAYS – NANTUCKET, MASSACHUSETTS.
Artist’s concept of whaling scene in the days of ‘wooden ships and iron men.’ Many such scenes are depicted in the famous Whaling Museum on Nantucket Island.”
That phrase—wooden ships and iron men—sticks with me. It’s the kind of phrase that was likely romanticized over the years, but when you stare at the scene for a while, the reality sinks in. These were dangerous, brutal jobs. Men were away from home for years. They worked with sharp tools, in small boats, in unpredictable seas, hunting creatures far more powerful than themselves.
Nantucket, of course, was at the heart of it all. Before it was a summer getaway, before the boutiques and bed-and-breakfasts, it was a global hub of the whaling industry. The streets that now host art galleries once saw barrels of oil hauled in from the docks. The same shores where people now collect seashells once rang with the sounds of shipbuilding and the cries of men returning from the edge of the world.
This postcard reminds me of how much has changed—and how much hasn’t. There’s still that lure of the sea. The call of the unknown. The desire to set out and wrest something meaningful from the chaos of the world.
I’ve never hunted whales. Never crewed a ship. But I’ve stood on the wind-whipped shores of places like Nantucket and imagined what it might have felt like to leave everything behind in search of something bigger. A paycheck, sure—but also a story. A legacy. Something worth writing home about.
And maybe, just maybe, someone did. Maybe one of those letters made it home, folded in with news of storms, sightings, and scars earned offshore. Maybe it even came with a sketch—something like the one on this postcard. A visual tale of men with calloused hands and sharp eyes chasing shadows across the waves.
It’s just a postcard. But it makes me stop and think. That’s the power of these old paper windows. They show us what we missed—but also remind us we’re part of the same story, still unfolding.
Until next time,
Will
