Museum's eBay Find Was Too Good To Be True

A page from the first natural history of whales by Cold Spring Harbor Whaleship captain Thomas W. Roys, part of which is seen at left, was recently acquired by the Cold Spring Harbor Whaling Museum, above, in an eBay auction has been returned to a Virginia museum after it was discovered to have been stolen.

By Peter Sloggatt
psloggatt@longislandergroup.com

There’s an old saying that says, if something seems too good to be true, it probably is.

That was the case when the Whaling Museum and Education Center was the winning bidder in an eBay auction of a significant artifact relevant to Cold Spring Harbor’s history as a whaling port.

Turns out that artifact — the first known description of the natural history of whales – which the Cold Spring Harbor museum won with a $1,599 bid, had been stolen from another museum.

The saga began in spring 2016 when former curator Fred Schmitt alerted Whaling Museum Executive Director Nomi Dayan of an important document up for auction. Schmitt, a scholar of the early whaling industry, had come across hand-drawn “Descriptions of Whales” created by Captain Thomas W. Roys dating to 1854, and suggested it would be a significant addition to the museum’s collection.

Roys (1816-1877) is considered to be the most prominent Long Island whaling captain and American founder of the whaling industry. After joining a whaling crew out of Sag Harbor as a greenhand, he devoted his life not only to hunting whales but to scientific study of the marine mammals. He was the first American to sail through the Bering Strait, and the first industrial whaler to discover the Bowhead whale.

While commanding the Cold Spring Harbor whaleship the Sheffield in 1854, Roys answered a query about his knowledge of whale species and their habits with a detailed report. His 24-sheet booklet was filled with pencil drawings of whale species, his observations about their size, appearance, and behavior, their products, and when and where to best hunt each species.

“This is a one-of-a-kind artifact penned by a key figure in our local and national whaling history,” Dayan said. “Not only is Descriptions of Whales a clear snapshot of the foremost scientific understanding of whales at the time, but today the manuscript is viewed as the first whale textbook.”

The museum acquired the piece from Skinner Auctioneers for $1,599.

When Schmitt visited the museum to see the artifact himself, he felt he had seen it before. And with good reason. Turns out the very sheet had been used as an illustration in the biography of Roys the former curator had authored 30 years earlier. When he and Dayan went to the book they found the image was credited to the Mariners’ Museum in Virginia.

A call to Jeanne Willoz-Egnor, director of Collections Management at the Mariners, revealed that the piece did belong to the Mariners’ Museum, but had been stolen.

It was an inside job, according to Willoz-Egnor, who said Roy’s manuscript was one of thousands of pieces systematically looted from the institution over a six-year period by an archivist, Lester Weber. Willoz-Egnor said the former employee had raided artifacts and cut pages from scrapbooks in the museum’s collection, then rearranged collections, instituted a new numbering system, and methodically erased donor and acquisition information to cover his tracks.

The stolen items found their way to eBay to be sold to the highest bidder.

A collector in Switzerland blew the whistle on the scam in 2006. After making several purchases, the man became curious about the rich source of high-quality artifacts and began snooping around. Though the eBay account was listed under Weber’s wife’s maiden name, Lori Childs, the collector was finally able to link her name to an obituary archived online that tied her to Lester Weber.

Weber was fired by the museum, and charged with the theft. But he continued to sell stolen artifacts even after his arrest.

Weber was convicted in 2008 and sentenced to four years in prison. His wife was sentenced to 15 months. Of the nearly 6,500 items the couple is believed to have stolen, 5,500 pieces remain unaccounted for.

Roy’s Descriptions of Whales will be returning to the Mariner’s Museum. And according to Dayan, several other items sold in the same auction lot were also tracked down. Among them are a 1776 logbook from the whaleship Minerva.

The Virginia museum’s president was grateful to his Cold Spring Harbor counterparts for “their diligence and compassion regarding the Roys Manuscript. All of us at The Mariners’ Museum were incredibly proud and humbled that our fine colleagues in Cold Spring Harbor would go to the lengths that they did in an effort to make us whole,” Howard H. Hoege III, president and CEO of Mariners’ said.

In Cold Spring Harbor, doing the right thing was never in question.

It was difficult losing a great find “of tremendous scholarly importance to our collection, but rewarding to do the right thing and return this object home,” Dayan said.