Whaling in the United States
Commercial whaling in the United States dates to the 17th century in New England. The industry peaked in 1846–1852, and New Bedford, Massachusetts, sent out its last whaler, the John R. Mantra, in 1927. The Whaling industry was engaged with the production of three different raw materials: whale oil, spermaceti oil, and whalebone. Whale oil was the result of "trying-out" whale blubber by heating in water. It was a primary lubricant for machinery, whose expansion through the Industrial Revolution depended upon before the development of petroleum-based lubricants in the second half of the 19th century. Once the prized blubber and spermaceti had been extracted from the whale, the remaining majority of the carcass was discarded. [1]
Spermaceti oil came solely from the head-case of sperm whales. It was processed by pressing the material rather than "trying-out". It was more expensive than whale oil, and highly regarded for its use in illumination, by burning the oil on cloth wicks or by processing the material into spermaceti candles, which were expensive and prized for their clean-burning properties. Chemically, spermaceti is more accurately classified as a wax rather than an oil.
Whalebone was baleen plates from the mouths of the baleen whales. Whalebone was commercially used to manufacture materials that required light but strong and thin supports. Women's corsets, umbrella and parasol ribs, crinoline petticoats, buggy whips and collar-stiffeners were commonly made of whalebone. Public records of exports of these three raw materials from the United States date back to 1791, and products of New England whaling represented a major portion of the American GDP for nearly 100 years.[2]
Historic Aboriginal whaling within the boundaries of today's United States predated the arrival of European explorers, and is still practiced using the exception granted by the International Whaling Commission, which allows some subsistence hunting by Native Americans for cultural reasons.[3] Catches have increased from 18 whales in 1985 to over 70 in 2010.[4] The latest IWC quota regarding the subsistence hunting of the bowhead whale allowed for up to 336 to be killed in the period 2013–2018.[3] Residents of the United States are also subject to U.S. Federal government bans against whaling as well.[5]
History
New England
The commercial whaling fishery in the United States is thought to have begun in the 1650s with a series of contracts between Southampton, Long Island resident English settlers John Ogden, John Cooper and the Shinnecock Indians.[6] Prior to this, they chased pilot whales ("blackfish") onto the shelving beaches for slaughter, a sort of dolphin drive hunting.[7] Nantucket joined in on the trade in 1690 when they sent for one Ichabod Padduck to instruct them in the methods of whaling.[8][9]
The south side of the island was divided into three and a half mile sections, each one with a mast erected to look for the spouts of
In 1715, Nantucket had six sloops engaged in whale fishery,
Expansion
In 1768, the fishery began a huge expansion that was to culminate just prior to the American Revolutionary War.[14] Between 1771 and 1775 the Massachusetts ports alone employed an average of 183 vessels in the northern fishery, and 121 in the southern.[15] During the American Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars there was a complete shutdown of the industry, its peak growth came after the American Revolution.
The first New England whalers rounded Cape Horn in 1791, entering the Pacific Ocean to hunt the cachalot or sperm whale. At first they only fished off the coast of Chile, but by 1792, the sperm whalers had reached the coast of Peru, and George W. Gardner extended the fishery even further in 1818 when he discovered the "offshore grounds," or the seas between 105–125° W and 5–10° S.[16] In 1820, the first New England whaleship, the Maro, under Captain Joseph Allen, hunted sperm whales on the Japanese ground, midway between Japan and Hawaii.[17] The previous year the first New England whalers visited the Sandwich (Hawaiian) Islands, and subsequently these islands were used to obtain fresh fruits, vegetables, and more crew, as well as to repair any damages sustained to the ship.
In 1829 the New England fleet numbered 203 sail; in five years time it more than doubled to 421 vessels,
Peak
The American whaling fleet, after steadily growing for 50 years, reached its all-time peak of 199,000 tons in 1858. Just two years later, in 1860, just before the Civil War, the fleet had dropped to 167,000 tons. The war cut into whaling temporarily, but only 105,000 whaling tons returned to sea in 1866, the first full year of peace, and that number dwindled until only 39 American ships set out to hunt whales in 1876.[24]
During the winter, some of these same vessels would make their way to the lagoons of Baja California. The peak began in 1855, commencing the period of lagoon whaling known as the "bonanza period", when whaleboats were crisscrossing through the lagoons, being pulled by enraged whales, passing by calves that had lost their mothers and other ships' crews hunting whales. Less than twenty years later, in 1874, the lagoon fishery was abandoned entirely, due to several years of poor catches.
Several New England ships were lost during the 1860s and 1870s. During the American Civil War, Confederate raiders such as the Shenandoah, Alabama, and Florida captured or burned 46 ships, while the United States purchased forty of the fleet's oldest hulls. Known as the Stone Fleet, these ships were purchased to sink in Charleston and Savannah harbors in a failed attempt to blockade those ports. Thirty-three of the 40 whalers that comprised the Arctic fleet were lost near Point Belcher and Wainwright Inlet in the whaling disaster of 1871,[25] while another 12 ships were lost in 1876.[25]
The use of steam, the high prices for
The first to go to Herschel was in 1890–1891,[28] and by 1894–1895 there were fifteen such ships overwintering in Pauline Cove.[29] During the peak of the settlement, 1894–1896, about 1,000 persons went to the island, comprising a polyglot community of Nunatarmiuts, Inuit caribou hunters, originating from the Brooks Range; Kogmullicks, Inuit who inhabited the coastal regions of the Mackenzie River delta; Itkillicks, Rat Indians, from the forested regions 200 miles (320 km) south; Alaskan and Siberian ships' natives, whaling crews and their families; and beachcombers, the few whalemen whose tour of duty had ended, but chose to stay at the island.[30]
Ships continued to overwinter at Herschel into the 20th century, but by that time they focused more on trading with the natives than on whaling. By 1909 there were only three whaleships left in the Arctic fleet,[31] with the last bowhead being killed commercially in 1921.[31]
Decline
Modern whaling
Whaling stations operated in Alaska and on the Canadian west coast. American Pacific Whaling Company, with headquarters in
While whaling came to an end on the east coast in the early 20th-century, it lingered and even rebounded briefly on the west coast. A small shore-based whaling operation existed in San Francisco through the early 1970s. During the early 1960s, a small whaling fishery was developed near Astoria, Oregon as a collaboration between a local fishing family and the processing firm BioProducts. A single-ship operation was successful during the early 1960s, making a profit through sales of meat to local mink farms and whale oil to NASA. As synthetic oils came onto the markets, the demand for scientific grade whale oil was diminished and the operation came to a close about 1965.[36] The whale processor has since refocused their operations on processing of other seafood oils and continues to operate today as BioOregon Protein.
Federal ban
In 1971, U.S. Congress passed the Pelly Amendment to ensure that residents of the United States would comply with regulations issued by an international fishery conservation program, including the International Whaling Commission.[5] In 1972, Congress passed the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which makes it illegal for any person residing in the United States to kill, hunt, injure or harass all species of marine mammals, regardless of their population status.[5] Whales who are considered to be endangered are also protected by the 1973 Endangered Species Act.[5] The 1979 Packwood-Magnuson Amendment to the Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 1976 extended the federal whaling ban to foreigners who chose to come within 200 miles of the U.S. coastline.[5][37]
Native whaling in modern times
In Alaska, bowhead whale
The 1855
Recruitment of whalers
This article needs additional citations for verification. (August 2021) |
According to Frances Diane Robotti,[44] there were three types of whalemen: those who hoped to own their own whaleship someday, those who were seeking adventure, and those who were running from something on shore. Generally only those who hoped to make a career of whaling went out more than once.
Since a whaleman's pay was based on his "lay", or share of the catch, he sometimes returned from a long voyage to find himself paid next to nothing, or even owing money to his employers. Even a bonanza voyage paid the ordinary crewman less than if he had served in the merchant fleet. The lay system was a gamble and sailors were never ensured decent wages. Richard Boyenton of the "Bengal" only earned six and a quarter cents after five months at sea, but occasionally sailors got lucky and brought home a significant amount of money after just a couple of voyages. More commonly sailors would earn very little after years at sea. Ships that returned to port less than full of oil were called "broken voyages" while ships that came home overflowing were praised. The Loper returned to Nantucket with its deck and hold chock full of casks of oil while ships like the Brewster prioritized oil so significantly that they threw food and water overboard to make more room for oil.
Going to sea was a young man's adventure, particularly when he wound up in the South Sea paradises of the
Scrimshaw art
A large number of crewmen on American, British, and other countries vessels that participated in whaling in the 19th century created scrimshaw. Scrimshaw is the practice of drawing on whale teeth or other forms of ivory with various tools, typically sailor's knives or other sharp instruments. These images were then coated with ink so that the drawing would appear more noticeable on the whale tooth. It is believed that some instruments used by sailors to perform scrimshaw included surgical tools, as with the work done by whaling surgeon William Lewis Roderick. Other forms of ivory included a whale's panbone, walrus ivory, and elephant ivory. Of course, the most common scrimshaw during the whaling period of the 19th century was made from whale parts.
Other forms of scrimshaw included whalebone fids (rope splicer), bodkins (needle), swifts (yarn holding equipment) and sailors' canes. The time when most scrimshaw in the 19th century was produced coincided with the heyday of the whaling industry which occurred between 1840–1860. More than 95% of all antique scrimshaw whale teeth known were done by anonymous artists. Some of the better known antique scrimshaw artists include Frederick Myrick and Edward Burdett, who were two of the first scrimshanders to ever sign and date their work. Several museums now house collections of antique scrimshaw, such as the New Bedford Whaling Museum in Massachusetts.[46]
See also
- Charles W. Morgan
- Cold Spring Harbor Whaling Museum
- Mystic Seaport
- New Bedford Whaling Museum
- New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park
- Whaling in the United Kingdom
Footnotes
- ^ Zallen, Jeremy (2019). The Dark History of Artificial Light. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. p. 16.
- ^ Starbuck, Alexander "history of the American Whale Fishery, 1989, Castle Books, Secaucus, NJ
- ^ a b "Aboriginal Subsistence Whaling". International Whaling Commission. Retrieved 2014-03-19.
- ^ "Catches Taken: ASW". International Whaling Commission. Retrieved 2014-01-23.
- ^ a b c d e "Overview of Laws and Regulations Protecting Whales | Animal Legal & Historical Center". www.animallaw.info. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
- ISSN 0898-7084. Retrieved 2019-01-06.
- ^ Federal Writers' Project. Whaling Masters. Works Progress Administration.
- ^ Starbuck (1878), p. 17.
- .
- ^ Starbuck (1878), p. 20.
- ^ Starbuck (1878), pp. 21–22.
- ^ Scammon (1874), p. 204.
- ^ Starbuck (1878), p. 168.
- ^ Tower (1907), p. 36.
- ^ Starbuck (1878), p. 57.
- ^ Scammon (1874), p. 211.
- ^ Scammon (1874), p. 212.
- ^ Tower (1907), p. 50.
- ^ Tower (1907), p. 51.
- ^ Bockstoce (1986), p. 94.
- ^ Bockstoce (1986), p. 21.
- ^ Bockstoce (1986), p. 93.
- ^ Bockstoce (1986), p. 97.
- ^ US Bureau of the Census, 1960, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1957, p.445.
- ^ a b Bockstoce (1986), p. 344
- ^ a b Tower (1907), p. 64
- ^ Bockstoce (1986), pp. 255–266.
- ^ Bockstoce (1986), pp. 260–262.
- ^ Bockstoce (1986), p. 269.
- ^ Bockstoce (1986), pp. 272–275.
- ^ a b Bockstoce (1986), p. 345
- OCLC 1112670580.
- ^ Mawar (1999), pp. 339–340.
- ^ a b c Pacific American Steamship Association; Shipowners Association of the Pacific Coast (1913). "A New Industry For California". Pacific Marine Review. 10 (July 1913). San Francisco: J.S. Hines: 36–37. Retrieved 2015-04-03.
- ^ Webb (1988), p. 190.
- ^ Webb (1988), p. 277.
- ^ Philip Shabecoff (July 24, 1982). "Commission votes to ban hunting of whales". New York Times.
- ^ "Bowhead Whales". NOAA Fisheries. Archived from the original on 2017-02-05.
- ^ "Species in the Spotlight: Cook Inlet Beluga Whale". NOAA Fisheries. February 14, 2018.
- ^ "Total Catches". iwc.int. Retrieved 2018-03-22.
- ^ D'Oro, Rachel (August 7, 2017). "Native hunters kill whale that made its way to Alaska river". Star Tribune. Archived from the original on 2018-03-23. Retrieved 2018-03-22.
- ^ Muto MM, Helker VT, Angliss RP, Allen BA, Boveng PL, Breiwick JM, Cameron MF, Clapham PJ, Dahle SP, Dahlheim ME, Fadely BS, Ferguson MC, Fritz LW, Hobbs RC, Ivashchenko YV, Kennedy AS, London DM, Mizroch SA, Ream RM, Richmond EL, Shelden KEW, Towell RG, Wade PR, Waite JM, Zerbini AN (2017). "Alaska Marine Mammal Stock Assessments, 2017 (draft)". Marine Mammal Laboratory, Alaska Fisheries Science Center, NMFS, NOAA. Retrieved 2018-04-08.
- ^ Blow, Richard (September 10, 1998). "The Great American Whale Hunt". Mother Jones. Retrieved 2018-04-08.
- ^ Robotti (1952).
- ^ Mawar (1999), p. 244.
- ^ "Antique Scrimshaw Whale Tooth Collector". Archived from the original on 2008-10-01.
Bibliography
- Bockstoce, John (1986). Whales, Ice, & Men: The History of Whaling in the Western Arctic. University of Washington Press. ISBN 0-295-97447-8.
- Mawar, Granville (1999). Ahab's Trade: The Saga of South Seas Whaling. New York: ISBN 0-312-22809-0.
- Robotti, Frances Diane (1952). Whaling and Old Salem. Bonanza Books.
- Scammon, Charles (1874). The Marine Mammals of the North-western Coast of North America: Together with an Account of the American Whale-fishery. Dover. ISBN 0-486-21976-3.
- Starbuck, Alexander (1878). History of the American Whale Fishery from Its Earliest Inception to the year 1876. Castle. ISBN 1-55521-537-8.
- Tower, W. S. (1907). A History of the American Whale Fishery. University of Philadelphia.
- Webb, Robert Lloyd (1988). On the Northwest: Commercial Whaling in the Pacific Northwest, 1790–1967. University of British Columbia Press. LCCN 89156393.
Further reading
- Busch, Briton Cooper (2004). Whaling Will Never Do for Me: The American Whaleman in the Nineteenth Century. The University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 978-0-8131-9342-7.
- Dolin, Eric Jay (2007). Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0-393-06057-7.
- George, G. D. and R. G. Bosworth (April 1988). Use of Fish and Wildlife by Residents of Angoon, Admiralty Island, Alaska.
- Hohman, Elmo (1928). The American whaleman; a study of life and labor in the whaling industry. New York: Longmans.
- Macy, William Francis (1915). The story of old Nantucket; a brief history of the island and its people from its discovery down to the present day. Nantucket: The Inquirer and mirror press. Retrieved 2013-08-16.
- "Race Revive Old Whaling Days of Old" Popular Mechanics, November 1930
- "A Brief History of Pacific Coast Whaling" by Nicholas J. Lee
- Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration of Massachusetts (1938). Whaling Masters: Voyages, 1731–1925. New Bedford, Mass.: Published by the Old Dartmouth Historical Society.
External links
- Into the Deep: America, Whaling & The World, a 2010 documentary film by Ric Burns for American Experience
- The Papers of Leander Owens, Whaling Captain at Dartmouth College Library
- Frederick W. Maurer "Belvedere" Narrative (1911-1912) Manuscript at Dartmouth College Library
- Francis Brown Collection on the Whaler 'Canada' at Dartmouth College Library
- "Everything You Never Knew About Whaling" 3-part series at Freakonomics Radio, (summer 2023) episodes 549, 550, 551