Sailors Cosh and Club made from the Penis Bone of an Arctic Walrus

A Sailors Cosh and Club made from the Penis Bone of an Arctic Walrus ‘Odobenus Rosmarus’
Mounted with two silver bands in the form of buckled belts
English or American
Old smooth creamy white patina
Mid 19th Century
Size: 48cm long – 19 ins long
See: Finch & Co catalogue no. 12, item no. 106, for an Eskimo hunting club made from the penis bone of an Arctic Walrus
In 1604 Stephen Bennett, an English sailor and adventurer, brought back to London a living young walrus he had captured in the Bear Islands. It excited much curiosity; ‘The King and many honourable personages beheld it with admiration for the strangeness of the same, the like where of had never before beene seene alive in England’.
Known by sailors as the ‘sea horse’, 19th century naturalists believed the walrus to be the connecting link between mammals of the land and those of the sea. The male walrus lacks any externally visible penis, and in order to control body temperature in freezing Arctic waters, it is internal and supported by a large bone, a ‘baculum’. Mating takes place on land in the late spring and early summer.

Sailors Cosh and Club made from the Penis Bone of an Arctic Walrus

Main image

SOLD

Mini image
Mini image
Mini image

ENQUIRIES

+44 (0)7768 236921
+44 (0)7836 684133

enquiries@finch-and-co.co.uk
Mini image
Mini image
Mini image

ENQUIRIES

+44 (0)7768 236921
+44 (0)7836 684133

enquiries@finch-and-co.co.uk