From September 1848 to March 1853, Susan Veeder (1816-1897) sailed with her husband, Captain Charles A. Veeder, on a whaling voyage aboard the ship Nauticon. The journey took her around Cape Horn to ports in Chile and thence to Oahu, Tahiti, and as far north as the Fox Islands in the Arctic. On board, Veeder filled a journal with gentle watercolors and careful penmanship chronicling her experiences and creating panoramic views of ports as seen from the ship's deck. Her vistas preserve the bustling activity of life in a nineteenth-century whaling port with great freshness and charm. In her journal, Veeder records the full range of shipboard events - from the birth of her own child, "a fine daughter weighing 9 lbs" who would tragically not survive, to whale chases and shipboard accidents, crew mutinies, and the exchange of supplies and gossip [a gam] with passing ships and local peoples.

This embroidered narrative depicts different stages of the whale hunt stitched around scenes from Veeder's journal, in the manner of illuminated manuscripts.