Saltmarsh Sundays

  COLLECTOR: OLD SCRIMSHAW The heavy, ornate doors close behind you, and the ruckus of the tavern below at once grows distant. Her Serene Tidings was once the pride of a royal armada. Today, like the crown she served, she’s broken. Since your grandfather’s youth, she’s lain, scuttled, in the harbor, her listing decks and berths now hosting city’s most infamous and beloved alehouse.  Yet here, for the first time, you can see the ghosts of her past glory--in the faded frescos above, the peeling gilt along the mantle. It makes the ghoulish collection around you all the more macabre. Shrunken heads leer down, hanging from the rafters like strings of garlic. The floor is a collage of exotic pelts of every size, and every flat surface of the grand cabin is occupied with some manner of trophy—eyes and organs floating in jars, wizened hands pinned to boards, and—overwhelmingly—everywhere, bones. Jawbones, ivory, teeth, skulls; all shapes and sizes. Carved into them, you see intricate...