Tier 1 — Susan Veeder (1816–1897) and Eliza Brock (1810–1899)
Two complete, illustrated, day-by-day voyage journals already digitized by the NHA. This is the rare local case where Corpus A is a cabin, a calendar, and sixteen watercolors.
They are quieter than Mitchell or Essex. That is why they work as VR/AR extras and as second chairs, or as a season-two hero pair.
Why Tier 1
- Full scans + (for Veeder) an NHA-held transcript used by a WPI team to map the Nauticon.
- Visual corpus: Veeder’s island watercolors; Brock’s whale stamps, poems, letters copied into the back of the book.
- Shipboard place is buildable in VR in a way Fair Street childhood is not.
- Trauma is real but specific: Veeder gave birth at Talcahuano; the child Mary Frances died at 14 months in Tahiti. Protocol required; not Essex-scale.
Primary material
Susan C. Austin Veeder — ship Nauticon, Sep 1848–Mar 1853
| Source | Where |
|---|---|
| Journal, complete scan | https://nha.org/digitalexhibits/nauticon/index.html and NHA exhibit page with paged PDFs |
| Published as Islands Seen by Ship Nauticon 1848–53 | Cite the edition NHA used |
| Additional Nantucket journals | NHA collection (WikiTree notes onshore journals exist) |
| WPI 2020 interactive map | Transcript + lat/long spreadsheet of entries — ask NHA for that research file rather than re-keying |
| Voyage facts | Ship built 1848 Mattapoisett; owners G & M Starbuck; 1445 bbl / 4600 lb baleen; sons Charles Jr. (12) and David (6) aboard |
| Likeness | NHA photo GPN768 (used in island women’s exhibits) |
Contents the model must be able to stand in: Talcahuano; Pitcairn and Fletcher Christian’s house; Sandwich Islands; Arctic ice 13 days; polar bear; sixteen island watercolors.
Cutoff for the voyage-self: March 1853 landfall. An old woman in New Bedford (d. 1897) is a different file.
Eliza Spencer Brock — ship Lexington, 21 May 1853–25 June 1856
| Source | Where |
|---|---|
| Complete scan | https://www.nha.org/digitalexhibits/brocklog/ |
| Exhibit index | Azores, Cape Verde, New Zealand, Hawaii, South Pacific, Okhotsk; isolation line: “if it was not for hope the heart would break.” |
| Gift note 31 July 1922 | Son Joseph C. Brock to NHA; he had been aboard at age 6 |
| Extra matter in the MS | Poems, letters, “Nantucket Girls Song,” account of Citizen wreck (Capt. Thomas H. Norton), whale-taken stamps |
Captain Peter C. Brock (1805–78). Isolation and weather are the voice, not oratory.
B / C
- Other wives’ logs in the same NHA digital set (Azubah Cash on Columbia) as comparison, not merge.
- Period shipboard medicine, childbirth at a Chilean port, what “spoken a ship” means.
- Neither woman should lecture 21st-c. marine conservation in-character.
Partners
| Org | Role |
|---|---|
| NHA | Lead. Journals, photos, Boardman embroidered tribute to Veeder, Whaling Museum. |
| New Bedford Whaling Museum | Nauticon later New Bedford voyages; Veeder died there. |
| WPI Nantucket project alumni / NHA digital | Existing map + transcript. |
| Theater Workshop of Nantucket | Spirits Within Us already scripted Veeder. Collaborate; don’t compete. |
Programs
- Cabin VR / kiosk. One watch, one watercolor, one Q&A bounded by that week’s pages.
- AR watercolor overlay. Point the phone at a map; Veeder’s island painting sits on the water.
- Dual Veeder × Brock. Two wives, overlapping Pacific years, different tones (illustrated wonder vs. hope-against-break).
- Object lesson. Journal as object; whale stamp; a child’s presence on the ship.
- Grief protocol for Mary Frances. Do not make the dead child a surprise mechanic.
Production steps
- NHA reproduction license for scans + transcript. Budget conservation-quality images of the 16 watercolors for textures.
- Date-index every page into the RAG store (WPI spreadsheet as scaffold).
- Two dated selves (1848–53 and 1853–56). No blended “whaling wife.”
- Cabin set: bunk, desk, small pane, rolling idle. Optimized MetaHuman for Quest.
- Voice: two actors; Veeder slightly more descriptive, Brock more spare. Captions — handscript is hard.
- Eval with maritime historians of women at sea and with MMA/NHA education (child visitors will ask about the baby).
Budget band
$100k–$200k for one cabin + one woman + AR paintings. Dual cabin ~1.5×, not 2× (shared ship art). Cheaper than Essex because the moral design is narrower and the text is already scanned.