A Mixed Heritage Brand 

;Reluctant Whaler G sells exclusively bespoke goods that Annie would have loved to have on board to make her dead boring and violence-soaked life much better. Since Annie is Us,  everything we sell is something you'll also love to have on board! And our experience in retail ownership and visual  merchandising lend my product designs just that mass appeal and never-before-seen quality we yearn for today. 

Annie is one of a handful of children we know by name who sailed a whalin, and not many more who are renowned through the centuries.  Since we have always lovee and serve chilren, we maintain the highest ethical standards in support of their recognition and celebration. This drives us to face facts: Annie's father – with the willing participation of Annie's mother – terrorized, brutalized, and decimated whales and the glorious eco-systems within which they had for so long co-existed. They cheated and mistreated the talented & valiant crew, sometimes grievously. We owe more than we can repay. 

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I’ve never used the term heritage to characterize my family history, but since it is a retail trope, I will use it for the recognition it brings, framing it as a mixed heritage. Our whaling era history is uncannily parallel to our earliest history in America thorugh tales of four brothers. The adventurous Amos and his brother fellow captain Joseph Chase ran to sea in 1850’s from Limington Maine, the same area settled by the even more adventurous Aquilla and brother Thomas, arriving from England in 1625.  It still seems remarkable that our everyday family gatherings consisted of adventurous women raised by Annie.

Everything they shared was predicated on how terribly wrong it was: 

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Amos’ standing at the gangplank as crew signed on,  his thumb held over the small print beneath the signature line, that declared that he was sole arbiter of their fate for as long as he wished 

Amos, a dishonest to crew, vicious and violent, no matter – made all the worse – by his being the sweetest of men a shore.

Amos and Louise, bankrupted by a mutiny on their last leg home, loosing all their retirement, and it serving them right. 

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Annie, a constant presence in our mother’s childhood (see snaps), to their consternation, bizarrely turned away when her grandchildren were arguably the most in danger: playing in the sand at the beach. 

Annie never speaking of it in social settings, but only in bedtime stories, most tellingly with never one word about the whales. 

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Well, her great-granddaughter has certainly corrected that record by revealing her stories for the first time here. As sole product designer and proprietor, I was given the middle name Louise, after lady captain Louise, who was ex offcio first a  a Mate, doing whatever worked, except steer the ship (which she would have if it came to that). Give that my first name reflects Amos’ is it any wonder I've gone into family archiving and then writing and illustrating our stories, and now in offering these products, each as unique as the life of Annie, one of only a handful of children like her who ever lived!  

I am a a high-school dropout and a PhD.  As a teenager, I fully co-owner of two stores selling the Great Works and the crafts needed to found an egalitarian society. My experience in retail visual  merchandising lend my product designs just that mass appeal and never-before-seen quality we yearn for today.