Summary: | Six Inuit children pose in the deckhouse of the whaling schooner Era, Cape Fullerton, Hudson Bay, Canadian Arctic, March 1904. They are identified as "three girls," In Too [?], Francis Santo, and Tom Palmer, and "three boys," Arthur Gibbons, Tom Luce, and Heyward. Infrastructure Lifestyle Title supplied by cataloger. Several of these names also refer to masters and officers of American whaling vessels, suggesting that they were the fathers of these children. The schooner Era was built in 1847 at Boston, Massachusetts. She was a New London whaling vessel until her last voyage out of that port in 1892; her masters included James Monroe Buddington, John O. Spicer, and George Comer. She was wrecked off Miquelon Island, July 27, 1906. Taken by Captain George Comer (1858-1937), a sealer and whaling captain from East Haddam. He went to sea while still in his teens and was later master of vessels from both New London and New Bedford. Comer participated in voyages involved in polar expeditions and was noted for his studies of Arctic peoples and their environment.
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