16thc Whaling Station Clothing at Red Bay,Labrador by Elaine MacKay

16thc Whaling Station Clothing at Red Bay,Labrador
by Elaine MacKay

At the end of the summer of 2012 Kelly Grant recommended me for a Parks Canada contract to draft a set of garments based on textiles found at Red Bay Labrador. The patterns would be used to build costumes for the interpreters at the Visitors’ Centre in Red Bay which was a prosperous Basque whaling station from about 1530 until the early 1600s.

It seemed like a relatively straightforward contract. Fascinating - yes. After all, how often does one have the opportunity to sift through the archeological notes of a sixteenth century burial? My job looked even more doable because modern reproductions of the clothing had been installed at the Visitors’ Centre during the early 1990s I had envisioned that my patterns would be straight shirts based on rectilinear design, and baggy breeches gathered at the waists. Nevertheless, I knew from experience that there are always one or two new, key bits of information to be learned from any in-depth analysis. The findings from this study blew my preconceptions out of the water, and challenged my former beliefs about early dress.

The garments I was to copy came from two graves in the cemetery on Saddle Island in Red Bay Harbour. Acidic and moist soil conditions in the graves dissolved the skeletal and any linen fibres but preserved the animal fibre. Miraculously, the woollen garments were for the most part left intact and found in the position in which they were worn, in a ghostly reminder of the men who had once lived and worked harvesting oil from the sea.

My Red Bay contact sent me pictures of the display reproductions and a print-off of a chapter of a book on Spanish costume. Neither was particularly helpful. The pictures actually proposed more questions than they answered. “Why does it appear that he is wearing his shirt backwards?” “Why is the hem of that shirt on the outside rather than the underside where it belongs?” The costume book text described the dress of the higher class but said nothing of the common man so I started researching elsewhere. Most of the articles written by archaeologists focused on the maritime archaeology and the various artifacts found at Red Bay. They mentioned the burials but didn’t elaborate on the clothing so I looked in other areas. Through Ryerson University library Refworks I found a Ph.D. thesis by Élise Dubuc who had worked with Parks Canada during the dig in the 1980s. In her appendix were beautifully detailed patterns which she derived from the textile artifacts in the style of Janet Arnold. I later learned that Dubuc also headed the reproduction of the garments for the Red Bay exhibit. Unfortunately the thesis was written in French and my meagre French comprehension didn’t take me far. Three emails to Elise went unanswered so again I had to look elsewhere. Fortunately her bibliography was a great starting place.

One archaeological newsletter mentioned in the bibliography looked specifically at the whalers clothing so I contacted the publisher (Canadian Conservation Institute) for a copy. In my “thank you” reply, I asked if CCI had any more information on the clothing. “Yes” was the answer, “Quite a lot actually.” Bingo! I’d found my information source. Even then I had to jump through hoops to get the information. There was a question of ownership of the documents and to whom I should ask for permission to study them. After a number of false leads, which included a museum in the North West Territories, I was given permission to study the documents at CCI. I drove up to Ottawa for an intensive two days of research. On day one I visited the Museum of Civilization because they also had a display featuring the Basque whalers. I spent the second day in Ottawa at CCI. I was directed to a 2’X6’ table where the staff had stacked piles off documents and correspondence which had anything to do with the costumes.

These documents included the original patterns of the grave textiles along with Dubuc’s patterns which she deduced from the fragments. There were letters of correspondents from dye analysis expert Penelope Walton, and detailed examinations of the garments. Some of my initial questions were answered. I learned that the tunics were not based on rectangles with underarm gussets but were tailored with a shaped arm-scye and sleeve head. One spectacular discovery was the shape of one pair of breeches which was based on a circle rather than a rectangle. They were unlike anything that I had seen documented in any costume history text. Other questions still hung over my head. I didn’t understand why the hem was turned to the right side until much later.

If you want to know the answer to that question, an article describing my process in detail will be published in CSO Journal within a couple of weeks. A second article will be published in the January issue of Piecework. In the second article I describe developing a pattern for the knitted hat of one of the whalers. If you like, I can post excerpts of my articles after they have been published. It is a truly fascinating project and I felt incredibly lucky that I had the chance to take it on.