“Thar she blows …” bellowed actor Stephen Collins as he inhabited the very soul of Herman Melville during his one-man performance of “Sailing Towards My Father” at the Mattapoisett Library on January 6.

A packed house witnessed the talent of Collins as he not only uttered the lines written by Carl A. Rossi, a Pittsfield writer whose works Collins has performed over the years, but for those sixty-five minutes, became Melville.

Rossi’s piece takes you on a journey of exploration diving into the core essence of a writer who has become synonymous with American literature despite Melville’s shunning of what was then a blossoming new style of writing – an American style.

As Collins spoke, we learned how stark Melville’s early years were – the poverty, the longing to be loved by his mother, and the restless spirit he displayed at an early age. Collins, through dialog that Rossi fine tunes to the point of having the audience believe Melville spoke them himself, takes those words and makes them feel real. Writer and performer united in their quest to bring Melville to life.

Throughout the performance, Rossi’s words give us a very clear picture of Melville’s character, his struggle to find a place he could own in the world, and successfully provide for the needs of his family. Alas, we learn he failed more then he succeeded.

After a stint working as a record keeper in Manhattan, Melville boards the whale ship Acushnetfor an adventure that would forever define him. Yet, after returning and writing a very profitable book based on that trip titled Typee, all subsequent efforts, including the eventually well-received Moby Dick, were in a word, failures.

Collins showed the audience that troubled man. He gasped for air, expressed outrage at being kicked aside by Nathaniel Hawthorne to whom he paid homage by dedicating Moby Dickto him, sucked in air as if drowning in despair, and then, tenderly understanding the neurotics in his own family, Collins bled before his audience in imagined ways.

Using only his body, his voice, and a low plain wooden bench, Collins travelled from New Bedford to Hawaii, visited strange ports-of-call where the natives dined on human flesh, and chased whales, taking a Nantucket sleigh ride before tearing into the sea mammals to harvest the precious oil.

Rossi, with Collins at the verbal helm, described the true horror of those mighty ships of commerce and the type of human beings or what human beings became through the effort of gathering spermaceti.

Collins went even further in giving his audience a real sense of listening to Melville speak by playing a soundtrack that floated across the tides of his voice, the sound of the ocean itself in its endless ebb and flow.

As the performance drew to a close, it was clear that Collins had given it his all; he appeared as exhausted as the character himself was at the end of his life.

Rossi calls the play a “dramatic poem.” Collins gave the audience just that.

During the question and answer period following the performance Collins said that he performs primarily at residential retirement communities and senior centers. He explained that, since he is not a card-carrying member of an actors’ union, he can’t be booked into many theater venues. But he has no regrets and enjoys the path he has taken which also allows him the ability to teach his favorite topic, the works of 19th century authors.

Collins’ appearance was sponsored by the Mattapoisett Library Trustees.

By Marilou Newell

The relatively new Buzzards Bay Coalition science laboratory and baykeeper boat building opened in October at the new location at Route 6 and Spring Street. It will now become a future landmark for clean water stewardship and activity centerpiece in Marion.

From this base of operation, the residential R/V Buzzards Baykeeper can be launched for water quality collection and monitoring all the way from Little Compton in Rhode Island to Woods Hole in Cape Cod. As illustrated, it will provide an expanded environmental playground for the Coalition marine dolphin mascot whose purpose of identification for children is spelled out on its apron in the initials C. W. for clean water.

The historic national focus of concern about clean water was brought to a legislative turning point with the passage of the Clean Water Act of 1986, primarily pioneered by the late Senator and previous Governor of Rhode Island, John H. Chaffee. John was my family’s next-door neighbor and close friend. He built his house with a panoramic view of the Potowomut River in East Greenwich. It was right next to our dairy farm that had historically been a Narragansett hunting and fishing ground. There, when I was 14 years old at the start of World War II, my father who was in the Air Force was reported missing in action over Germany. A Native American who worked on our farm adopted me as a blood brother.

Subsequently, and in my teenage years growing up, I walked with him in his ancestors’ footsteps along the waterfront that had also inspired John Chaffee towards a career in environmental conservation.

Today, the Coalition’s focus of conservation involves both land and water. They watch trails, stream flow, and rainwater when it bleeds into the estuaries with harmful pollutants adverse to reproduction. You will know when this raises their coastal red flag for consuming shellfish.

Another focus is in the local herring migrations where the magical phenomenon is known as “anadromous,” meaning the migration up streams from the sea to spawn. My native mentor taught me the meaning of this natural historic heritage that lasted to this very day. Later in life when I became president of the Berkshire Fish Hatchery Board of Directors, one of the members was the late David Cathcart who had been a vital supporting attorney to John Chaffee in Washington. Together, we did research for the Connecticut River Salmon Restoration Program and were awarded a U.S.F.W. National Partnership Award in Washington’s Rayburn Building. We had developed a process in our hatch house to imprint fingerling Atlantic salmon with river acids so that when they later migrated along the coast, they would recognize chemicals of the mother river and return to a location favorable for their own spawning.

Thanks to you as a reader and The Wandererfolks for allowing me to take you on my own personal bay walk. Let me leave you with the Native American conviction that this land is not ours to own or sell because it will be passed on to our children as caretakers and then future generations. This stewardship philosophy is the very heart of The Buzzards Bay Coalition, now expanded to Marion.

By George B. Emmons