Sailors Are Happy, Whales are Blue

Taken from Whalingmuseum.org

Leviathan is proving to be a very interesting book, full of all kinds of information about whaling and the times, especially in New England.

So far I've learned that the War of 1812 devastated the whaling industry for a number of years, due mostly to the attacks on shipping from the British, and blockades of harbors. Whalers couldn't fish or sell their fish with all the hostilities on the water. After the war, though, the whaling industry started up again full force, with Nantucket leading the way, followed by New Bedford, MA, the busiest and most commercially successful port for whaling for many years. Checking the 1850 census for New Bedford shows most of the jobs were related to whaling: sailors, captains, pilots, carpenters, riggers, boat makers, block makers, and especially coopers to make the many, many barrels they would need to store the whale oil.

I learned about how the whaling industry expanded to all possible waters, including the Arctic Circle. Whales were being taken with no restraint, to the point that some began to worry they would all soon be gone. There was a letter published in a newspaper of the time, quoted by the author, that was from "Polar Whales" to whalers asking them to please stop fishing for them as they feared they would soon disappear forever--early conservation appeals that went largely unheeded.

Interesting, too, were the reports at the time that whaling ships would sometimes fill their cargo holds with slaves, bought in Africa and sold in South America, since by the mid 1800s the slave trade had been outlawed. On the other hand, crews from Nantucket often included black sailors, as the whaling Quakers of Nantucket believed in equality of opportunity as well as pay for their crews. One noted captain was black, commanding a mostly black crew; they sailed one of the most commercially successful ships of their era.

It had never occurred to me that the Gold Rush of 1849 would disrupt whaling, but it did. Crews on whalers were so attracted by the dream of getting rich quick that they abandoned their jobs in great numbers, especially those whaling ship crewmen working off the coast of California.  The captains of those ships had no choice but to go into port and abandon the enterprise until gold fever was over.

By now, late 1850s, things are starting to wane.  Soon the use of gas to light houses will supplant the use of whale oil and I expect the Civil War will have an effect on fishing of all kinds. But that remains to be seen. I'll keep you posted!