North Pacific Right Whale, 1872

Image © Charles Melville Scammon

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About the Artist

Charles Melville Scammon was a 19th Century American whaleman, naturalist, and author. He was the first to hunt the gray whales of both Laguna Ojo de Liebre and San Ignacio Lagoon. Drawn from the observation of a whaleman himself, Charles Melville Scammon’s "Natural History of the Cetaceans and other Marine Mammals of the Western Coast of North America" (1872) is an important book in the history of whaling and includes a collection of black and white sketches of diverse subspecies of American whales.