Presenting a portrait of the ship SERINGAPATAM, this scrimshawed whale tooth is dated and hold a lenghthy written inscription. Also showing a whale and a whale boat in pursuit of one of the aquatic behemoths, this has desirable characteristics for a 19th Century scrimshaw artifact.
Inscribed (beneath the ship): "SERINGAPATAM" "Commanded by Captain E.Courtenay. Returned from a voyage to the South Seas with an excellent cargo of sperm oil on the 12 of March in the year of our lord 1842" (beneath the whale boat in pursuit of its catch) " A whale boat in chase of a Sperm Whale."
SERINGAPATAM was a 358 ton ship built in Bombay in 1799 as an East Indiaman. Owned by Crichtons of London in the South Sea trade, Courtenay is her listed captain from 1839-1842, where it's in the American Board of Foreign Commissioners' record that this ship visited Kosrae in Micronesia in 1840 and introduced the first pig and venereal disease to the island.
