Historic Feature: The American Whaling Ship Parker

Kelly Gleason investigates an anchor in the bow section of the Parker shipwreck site. Photo Credit: Tane Casserly

The New Bedford whaler Parker was lost on September 24th 1842 at Kure Atoll during a fierce storm. The seas crashed through the cabin windows at 2:00 AM, and immediately the vessel went onto the reef. The ship had struck on the north side of the atoll and became a complete wreck in under an hour, very few provisions (1 peck of beans, 15 pounds of salted meat) being hastily salvaged by the unlucky survivors. Cutaway masts and some of the floating spars were fashioned into a crude raft, for the lowered boats had been stove in by the seas. It took the exhausted men eight days to drift and warp this raft to the island on the southeastern side of the atoll. There, some of the ship remains of the wrecked British whaler Gledstanes (lost in 1837) provided firewood and building materials. The Gledstanes' dog, having gone wild during his years of isolation, provided some variety in the crew's diet of seabirds and seals, however brief.

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