James A. (Jim) Tuck, an archaeologist who has sifted through coastline soil looking for stories that go back centuries here and afar, gave a talk Saturday night at the Barnacle Club. Mr. Tuck, a resident of Hines Point, has been exploring the earliest history of whaling in Labrador waters. His search has taken him back to a time well before the Vineyard was discovered by European explorers.

Well before Bartholomew Gosnold came to the Cape and Islands in 1602, Basque whalemen were up in Labrador harvesting right whales and sending the oil back home, primarily northern Spain.

Mr. Tuck did most of his work in Red Bay, Labrador. He began in the late 1970s and through his work and that of others’, he has been able to retell the tales of an enterprising community, the precursor to the New England whaler.

The Basques are a seagoing people. They are known to have crossed the Atlantic routinely to harvest cod for food and bring it home. Less known was their prowess for harvesting whale products and whale oil for energy. Red Bay was an outpost, a place where the men hunted whales in 26 to 27-foot-long narrow boats, with a crew of seven, similar in many ways to the whaling boats of the 19th century.

“The whale ships were floating warehouses,” he said. Ships weren’t used for pursuing the whales.

With weather often adverse, Basque whaling ships, the galleons measuring over 50 feet in length, would anchor in the small harbor. They would take down much of their rigging to avoid harm from storms that often blew up to 70 m.p.h.

Red Bay is a natural harbor, a place where the Basque whalers could kill the whales and tow the dead animal to the shore for rendering. Mr. Tuck shared pictures of what the scene might have been 500 years ago.

Drawings showed what the Basque whalers might have worn, based on pieces of clothing that were recovered in discovered graves.

The recovery of clothing was a huge discovery. “The soil was acid in the bogs,” he said. So the soil would dissolve whatever human remains were buried at the site, but would preserve some of the clothing.

“Bogs are very sterile environments,” Mr. Tuck said. They discovered clothing made from wool. He said one could understand the wealth of a whaler by the clothes he wore. The lower-class men wore clothing that was not dyed, but was colored by the type of wool used. In that period, those of higher status wore clothing with color. They also discovered glass drinking glasses, utensils and tools.

He showed illustrations of buildings with familiar looking ceramic tile roofs. As adverse as the place may have been even in summer, the whalers set up their temporary homes. They assembled large shallow holes in the ground surrounded by rock to build fires, the early day equivalent of the 18th century tryworks associated with the New England whaling era. At first they’d start the fire under the large iron pots using wood. But once the fire was burning well and producing oil in the pots, the men would take pieces of spent whale blubber and feed it to the flames. Hence, Mr. Tuck said, “Essentially, the whales burned themselves.”

Whale oil was rendered and stored in wooden barrels. The barrels were cut at home, transported across the sea and assembled at the station. Archaeologists found plenty of evidence of barrels and cooper tools.

Mr. Tuck also spoke about the sunken remains of a galleon that is believed to be the San Juan, a ship that sank in 1565 during a terrible northeast gale. Using what is left of the vessel, the parts of the original were copied and reassembled. The original planks and timbers were returned to the bottom of Red Bay, for safekeeping, knowing that they would be better preserved in the cold water than if brought ashore.

In its day, the mid-1500s, Red Bay was believed to be the largest whaling port in that region. The harvesting of right whales was so effective as to cause the animal to be fished to commercial extinction in that area, Mr. Tuck said. As a consequence, to remain productive the whalers left Red Bay and moved to other parts of the Atlantic to hunt.

Today the area at the edge of the Atlantic has a very small resident population. “I think 250 people live there. There is not a single fisherman there today,” Mr. Tuck said.

Mr. Tuck spoke very little about his own contribution to archaeology. He is considered one of Canada’s top archaeologists. Two years ago he was honored by his peers and received the prestigious Canadian Archaeologist Association’s Smith-Wintemberg Award, at the association’s 42nd annual meeting in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Only 16 archaeologists have received the award since 1978.

His slide show was put together using illustrations and photographs that have been accumulated from 1978 to 1991.

“I make annual trips, every summer,” Mr. Tuck said. “I usually go from late June to October.”

The Barnacle Club dinner was held at the American Legion Hall in Vineyard Haven. Alan Wilder, the active president, put together a seafood chowder that was loaded with the key ingredients, from quahaugs and mussels to lobster. The hearty meal and talk was enjoyed by over 20 members.