Replica of the figurehead salvaged by A. L. Putnam. [2009 and 2018, Dunlap]
Updated on 21 August 2026 | Without A. L. Putnam — a 123-ton, 85½-foot-long, two-masted schooner built in Essex in 1863 and active until 1869 — there would be no figurehead on the Figurehead House at 476 Commercial Street. The ship sailed for H. & S. Cook & Company. The masters were Benjamin B. Handy, Joseph B. Dyer, and Benjamin J. Smith.1 In Cape Cod Pilot, Josef Berger set the rescue scene in April 1867, when A. L. Putnam was 10 months out of Provincetown and in the Indian Ocean — “smooth and lazy under a blazing sun.” Handy was captain at the time.
“From aloft, suddenly, strange news was sung out: ‘Woman all adrift! Two points off the weather bow! Cable’s length away!’ Orders came thick and fast. ‘Stand by, there — stand by to lower away the larboard quarter boat! Jib sheets to the wind’ard! Lower away!'”
“The second mate went out with the boat, made the ‘rescue,’ and then, as he was rowed back, stood in the sternsheets and grinned sheepishly up at the captain. ‘We’ve got her, Cap’n. But you’d better pass me down a strap and tackle if you want to take her aboard.’ Captain Ben took her aboard. And that night, he dusted off his dictionary, sat down and ground out this description of his find:”
“‘A collossal full-length presentment of womankind, modeled with great beauty and vigor and measuring fully eight feet from the placid brow to the underside of the sandaled feet.’ She was a bit cumbersome, so the skipper ordered her sawn amidships, brought her home, and mounted his ‘collossal presentment of womankind’ upon the house, whence she looks down contentedly today.”2
The figurehead we see now is a plaster replica.
1 American Offshore Whaling Voyages: A Database, by Judith N. Lund, Elizabeth A. Josephson, Randall R. Reeves, and Tim D. Smith; and Mystic Seaport Museum Inc., New Bedford Whaling Museum, and Nantucket Historical Association.
2 Cape Cod Pilot (1937), by Josef Berger (writing as Jeremiah Digges), Pages 259-260.