The cooper, or barrel maker, on an American nineteenth-century commercial whaling voyage occupied such a valuable position that his life was not risked hunting whales. The cooper was both part of the action and distanced from it, enabling him to create, through his collection of casks of whale oil, the archive of the whaling voyage. A close reading of one cooper’s logbook from the 1850s allows us to consider the process of whaling from his standpoint, as well as to theorize how the cooper was like the archivist, the chronicler, of the voyage. The cooper gave the ocean a history by creating its archive with his barrels, bearing them safely to shore, and sharing them with the world. The single cooper discussed here presents readers with two archives – his barrels of whale oil and his private logbook – which expose two different temporalities in which the potential archives of scholars exist.

中文翻译：

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在一位 19 世纪捕鲸木桶匠的手中：在海上寻找自己

在美国 19 世纪的商业捕鲸航行中，桶匠或桶制造商占据了如此宝贵的地位，以至于他的生命不会冒险捕鲸。库珀既是行动的一部分，又是远离行动的一部分，这使他能够通过他收集的鲸油桶创造捕鲸航行的档案。仔细阅读一位库珀 1850 年代的航海日志，我们可以从他的角度考虑捕鲸的过程，并从理论上推测库珀如何像航海的档案管理员、编年史家。库珀用他的桶创造了海洋档案，将它们安全地运送到岸上，并与世界分享，从而为海洋创造了历史。