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Reluctant Whaler Girl LLC
Closed for
Fall Opening Prep
Come back in a few weeks and we will have late summer and fall products all ready for you!
call us at (207) 600-2317
Welcome to
Reluctant Whaler Girl LLC
Cosmopolitan AND Cosy
Annie in Ruffled Sailor Suit Age and Location Unknown
Meet Annie Chase, who very reluctantly sailed on whaling ships with her parents as a child. Annie refused to talk about it in public, but did reveal much to us, her descendants, in secret bedtime stories!
Now, these bedtime stories are secrets no more. You hear them here for the first time, and can purchase the home decor, clothing, and accessories that they inspired.
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About Annie
Annie on First Landfall Port Russell, NZ c 1870
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Annie's life was full of contrasts: childhood on a floating furnace and at violin at finishing school; marrying well and for love only to enter bankruptcy and early widowhood,
a haunted childhood, and the capacity to raise resilient and loving children; a hatred for whaling and a devotion to every living thing.
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Nautical AND Earthy
Nautical AND Earthy
Annie's Unique Prints & Products
All of our Reluctant Whaler Girl Products are designed from family photographs and our own illustrations of Annie's secret bedtime stories.
They are a love story from our family to yours.
And, hang on tight: The product art and are so original that you may feel like Annie on the morning that her father brought them safely off the coast of west Africa and she heard the wise and wide beat of drums. (A hurricane blew them from the Azores straight there, when they had been aiming for Brazil! )
So that happened.
Goth AND Emo
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On Goods Designed from Pictures from Our Family Albums
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On Goods Designed from Illustrations of Annies Bedtime Stories
Whaling was Terrible
We intend no sugarcoating: Annie's father, with the help of Annie's mother terrorized and decimated whales and the glorious eco-systems within which they had for so long co-existed. They mistreated the talented & valiant crew, sometimes grievously. We owe more than we can repay.
In one small way, this is why we chose print-on-demand manufacturing: it makes your goods when you order them. No stock, no overstock, less waste. Our manufacturing arm, Printful, is #4 on one list of 'The 12 Best Ethical & Eco-Friendly Print-On-Demand Companies, aims to get the best makers of the best goods for the least exploitation and smallest carbon footprints.
Our Creative Team
Annie Employing a Ship's Hold with Cosy Granddaughter Janet
Louise Annie Louise Anne Janet Betty Amy Louise 'Lady Captain' Herself Daughter G-Daughter G-Daughter G-Daughter GG-Daughter
From 'Lady Captain' Louise to proprietor Amy Louise, our creative team has stayed in physical and familial affinity through more clsoe to two centuries of fine weather and fog.
Ever since Louise joined Amos for every voyage after his captiveity on Pohnpei Island inthe south Pacific durting the American CIvil War, to todayaws we offer Anie's store
Watch for when We are also going to set up a store where you can design and produce your own family products in ''creative teams' of ancestors and descendent!
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Proper Whaling Legacies
A Sumptuously Laden Family Table and a Festive Family Gathering
Our family table sets places for our ancestors and descendants. So do family tables of crew and officers of peoples who originated near whaling routes, such as the Wampanoag of the mainland coasts and of Gay Head, Martha’s Vineyard, and such as
Azorean, Cape Nevian, Portuguese, West African, Brazilian, Peruvian, Polynesian, Melanesian, Micronesian & Australasian Peoples.
Such family tables impart strong roots, secure footing, and
beckoning futures to the youngest among us. Creative teams, indeed!
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When the store gets some traction, we will inquire of the organizations linked below howif they would want to use a small precentage of our profits, as we feel would be only fitting
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Row on Over
The New Bedford Whaling Museum's 4 Years a"Whalin' with Annie on the occasion of her first time on land.
along with Annie's daughter, Louise ,at her most innocent.
Write us at:
Reluctant Whaler Girl LLC
488 Hanover Street, Suite 3
Manchester, NH, 03104
email us at amy@reluctantwhalergirl.com
phone us at 207-600-2317 (area code: Goreham, Maine)
In all our blue and white ship products, we use a photograph of a
of an Albert Cook Church photograph of the Niger in full sail
entitled 'In Arctic or Antarctic Seas' (our emphasis), from
the Boston Herald of 1938 in an article about the commemoration of the last sail of the Annie had a clipping of this in her scrapbook. Creative team member Tony Fisher went to the Herald's files and received permission to take a photograph of the Herald photograph of the original photograph.
The book, just above, is opened to a page in the New Bedford Whaling Museum's book, 4 Years a Whalin'. The book features a log of a four-year journey on the Niger that Amos and Louise took. The book is illustrated with some of painter Charles Raleigh's huge panels of the Niger. The paintings were painted across a span of years at around the time that the log was written. This one is called 'Sailing Day, Off Palmer's Island.' (We think that most of the paintings were done a few years before Amos' sail for which the log was written.)
These panels used to surround the Creative Team when they visited the museum, as they lined its main halls. Being thus surrounded, we got a sense of her life to scale; from the 1/4 sized replica of a whale ships' cabin, we got a deeper sense of Annie's despair.
Pirates, take note: the Raleigh paintings are out-of-copyright, so others offer prints of these paintings for sale. We never would to that, nor would we make products from them. The pirated prints appear to all be taken from NBWM-produced prints that they produced from images of their own panels.
The above painting reminds us of how much Annie may have hated sailing day. But as she grew, she may have felt less apprehension as she learned that whaling mail was much faster than any one ship could sail. Letters passed along the great chains of the whales' migration, the ships, and the harbors. Sometimes they got letters even faster than on land, where distances were spanned by much slower transports than was a ship at full sail. At sea, Annie even received a letter on board from her aunt about Annie's own pending arrival, telling Annie that they were aware it was about six months out! We aim for whaling ship mail speeds in getting back to you!
Cosmopolitan Cosy
Edgy AND Elegant
Nautical AND Earthy Goth AND Emo
Prep AND Beat Luxe AND Rugged Whimsical AND Classic
Feverish AND Cool
AND
Annie starts to notice certain crew... it is finally time to disembark... Amy L. Phillips-Losso
We grew up imagining how Annie felt to be on the seas in a tiny dark cabin sewing and reading the bible, and never getting to walk on any land but that of the larger harbors of three continents. (Her father and mother claimed the smaller islands were too dangerous. As she got older, she disagreed.)


Who knew, but when Covid came, our creative team had a few chops:
As Covid becomes endemic, we hope we are not too outrageous to hope that Annie’s goods will remind us to keep on keeping on in these ways.