Historic Nantucket Dildo Coming To The Big Screen At Film Festival

In the winter of 1979, Nantucketer Barry Thurston was working inside an old house on Pine Street that dates back to the 1700s when he made a startling discovery.

“He called up my parents and said ‘I found something in your chimney,” recalled Lizzie Congdon, whose mother Connie, and late father Tom Congdon bought the home that year. “They said ‘What is it?’ And he said… ‘I’ll show you when I see you’.”

Inside the box that had been tucked away on a ledge inside the chimney and forgotten for nearly a century were letters and other items that likely belonged to Martha “Mattie” Coffin, the wife of the former homeowner, Captain James B. Coffin.

Among letters, a pipe, bottle, and clothing inside the box was the most peculiar item: a 130-year-old, five-inch plaster dildo.

“We were teenagers at the time, and we said ‘Of course our house has a dildo in it’,” Congdon said with a laugh.

The dildo from Nantucket’s whaling era - sometimes called a “he’s at home” by historians - was an artifact that opened a window into a little-discussed aspect of the island’s history: the sexual lives of women married to whaling captains and crew members who would often be away at sea for years at a time.

James B. Coffin was a whaleship captain who spent most of his life at sea and was later appointed U.S. consul. Little is known about Mattie, his second wife, other than what was found in the chimney on Pine Street.

The story of the discovery of the dildo and the history it represents will hit the big screen this week at the Nantucket Film Festival. “The Dildo From Nantucket,” a short film directed by New York-based producer Mike McGuirk, was selected to be screened by the festival and will premiere Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. at The Dreamland theater.

The film will feature members of the Congdon family, their home, and scenes from around the island.

“This story, it honestly started after hearing about this as a child and I thought it was a myth,” McGuirk said. “I thought it was a fabrication and a myth and something that people would make fun about it. Years later, I was on the island and working on a production of Jay Craven’s and I started talking to some locals and found out it was the real thing.”

Thurston’s discovery back in 1979 was not immediately covered by the local press. The Nantucket Historical Association didn’t want the dildo either. The late Tom Congdon would eventually be interviewed by the local radio station years later and write his own account for a magazine published by Forbes. But the dildo was largely forgotten until writer Ben Shattuck composed a comprehensive, excellent account of the discovery and history behind the “he’s at home” on Lit Hub in 2015.

Shattuck’s story was a jumping-off point for McGuirk, who noted the writer’s observation that despite the myth that “he’s at homes” were a widely known and common artifact among whaling historians, both the New Bedford Whaling Museum and the Nantucket Historical Association do not possess one in their collections.

The Congdon’s whaling-era dildo may, in fact, be a one-of-a-kind item remaining from that time.

“I approached the film, at first, as a very traditional Ken Burns, straightforward documentary about the history of Nantucket and the Congdon family that discovered the dildo,” McGuirk said. “I got to a certain point with the film, and after screening it, the film was really funny. And I wanted to bring out those comedic elements. I started to find different historians and actors and people who have a relation to the story.

“I come from a very normal, a bit conservative, Catholic family, so we don’t talk about my latest project that much,” McGuirk added with a laugh. “Although they are very supportive.”

As Shattuck wrote after interviewing Connie Congdon, “Sex, desire, and loneliness, she meant, went on in nineteenth-century Nantucket. But we all know that; I don’t think most of us are shocked when we hear it. What happened in the bedroom two hundred years ago remains pretty much the same—because here we are, the products of all that coupling. What I think people are shocked by is that the dildo—that uncomfortable, erect object—doesn’t fit the image of a nineteenth-century woman. Would anyone be “shocked” to know that a man separated from a woman for years masturbated? It’s the equipment that charges the shock. To satisfy desire, a tool had been labored over and secreted away, and therefore freighted with uncomfortable importance.”

That intrigue over the dildo - and the history that it represents and the story that it tells about the woman who stashed it away - drove McGuirk to finish a project that had been in the works for years.

“Most of the people that I come across are generally really excited and intrigued by the object,” McGuirk said. “The theme of the movie came together as though the dildo was this feminist icon, and I think it kind of is. It typifies the history of the island, and what’s not talked about. It opens the door to a deeper conversation. This dildo is unique because it was probably given as a gift and it’s really a romantic item for a whaling wife with a husband at sea for years at a time”