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  • History shows New Bedford wasn't the first, but was the best

  • Whaling didn't begin with the Charles W. Morgan, although most today seem certain that it did. After all, New Bedford is the Whaling City.
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    So it might come as a major shock to discover that others had been whaling before New Bedford.
    The Basques had whaled. Native Americans had whaled and so had the inhabitants of Barrow, Alaska. The Dutch had whaled. The English had whaled and were the first into the Arctic sailing up past Greenland. In the American colonies, whalers on Long Island seem to have been the first in 1644.
    Then there was the pesky matter of Nantucket whaling. In 1916, A. Hyatt Verrill in his book "The Real Story of Whaling" noted, "The first sperm whale recorded from Nantucket was taken in 1712, when a whaler, Christopher Hussey, was blown off shore and found himself amid a school of sperm whales. One of these he succeeded in capturing and the gale abating, he towed his prize ashore."
    This seemingly trivial event was fraught with the greatest importance and led to the establishment of the vast whaling industry and the countless whaleships that made Nantucket famous throughout the world, and which paved the way for the wealth and prosperity of other New England towns that depended upon the whalers for their greatest revenue.
    New Bedford didn't begin whaling, but it brought it to perfection in the Golden Age of Whaling.
    Whaling really began with whales that washed ashore. Then it expanded to small offshore boats and taking whales close to home, towing them in and trying them out on shore. Joseph Russell of New Bedford had an early onshore tryworks. According to Clifford Ashley's wonderful "The Yankee Whaler," in 1765 Russell had four 50-ton whaling ships sailing as far as Virginia.
    When those whales played out, it was necessary to build larger boats that could go into the deep sea. Nantucket was doing that before the American Revolution.
    By the time of the Revolution, whalers had ventured as far as the Caribbean, the Coast of Guyana and Cape Verde.
    The Revolution drove the Rotch family from Nantucket and, after European detours, to New Bedford.
    When William Rotch, William Rotch Jr., and Samuel Rodman arrived in New Bedford, the family founder, Joseph Rotch, had already made his 10-acre purchase in what is now the New Bedford Whaling National Historical Family. The players were in place for New Bedford to eventually overtake Nantucket. They built one of the first international conglomerates. After the Revolution in 1783, the first American ship to enter London (the Beaver) was a Rotch ship. Loaded with oil, it flew the Stars and Stripes as it entered England.
    Before Jefferson's embargo closed American ports and the following War of 1812, Ashley reported that "Practically everything in the matter of stores and gear that went into a whaleship was made in the vicinity — ships, boats, sails, rigging, casks, whalecraft, biscuit and salt beef."
    It took well into 1818 for New Bedford whaling to recover from that war. Daniel Ricketson wrote in his "History of New Bedford," "the whale fishery in New Bedford was entered into with that spirit and perseverance which has brought it up to its present importance. And elevated in commercial pursuits."
    By 1823, New Bedford's fleet equaled that of Nantucket. By 1839, New Bedford was America's leading port, with 69 ships and barks — eight brigs and schooners — all bringing wealth back to the city.
    New Bedford's Arctic whaling started as early as 1848, taking bowhead whales.
    By 1857, the industry was well into its Golden Age that lasted until the Civil War. New Bedford had 329 ships, barks, brigs and schooners and was responsible for half the catch of the worldwide American fleet. In that year, as Ashley reported, New Bedford ships brought in 48,108 barrels of spermaceti oil (the most valuable), 127,363 barrels of whale oil (from right whales, humpbacks etc.) and 1,359,850 pounds of whalebone.
    New Bedford's luck couldn't continue. In 1859, at Titusville, Pennsylvania petroleum was discovered and would eventually replace whale oil for heat and light. In her paper "Friends Here and Hereaway," Mary Jane Taber wrote:
    "George Howland, senior, had remarkable business insight. When told that if he and his contemporaries rushed around the globe killing whales at such a rate, the whales would be exterminated, and the world would sit in darkness, he replied very composedly: 'Let us make hay while the sun shines. Before the last whale is harpooned there will be a substance discovered which for light giving will far surpass whale oil lamps and spermaceti candles.'"
    The Civil War devastated the whaling fleet. Thirty-nine ships were sunk as part of the Stone Fleet to blockade Southern harbors. The South took its vengeance. Seventy ships were burned on two oceans. The Alabama ranged the Atlantic and the Shenandoah the Pacific.
    For a while after the conclusion of the Civil War, oil prices continued to rise. Then prices began to fall. Whalebone kept the fleet going.
    Arctic whaling flourished until in 1871 and 1876, when ships were locked in by ice. No one died, but the ships were lost and owners like the Howlands nearly ruined.
    As Arctic whaling had become more and more important, New Bedford's whaleships were sent West to San Francisco and based there. Ashley noted, "At one time in the '90s more vessels actually were sailing from San Francisco than New Bedford." The ships included the Charles W. Morgan.
    The city that lit the world was losing its fleet. The business was bloody, expensive and too easy to be ruined. Petroleum ruled as in many ways it still does today. In 1924, the Wanderer left New Bedford to go whaling and was wrecked off Cuttyhunk. Clifford Ashley writes that after that "there was not a single Yankee afloat on all the seven seas."
    If anyone knew whaling, it was Clifford W. Ashley. His book "The Yankee Whaler" teaches in great style the history and mechanics of whaling.
    Ashley also was a New Bedford boy who saw the end of whaling. It's fitting to end with his words.
    "The unpoliced ships and grass-grown wharves made a marvelous playground. We learned to swim from the bob-stays of the old hulks. We contrived to paddle and row on rafts fashioned of hatch covers, and used in boarding parties over side. We swarmed over the rigging and slid down the backstays, spun the wheels and on rainy days gathered in the cabins and played games and pretended one thing or another; and always it was something wonderful that smacked of the sea."
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