Native American Whaling
Unlike some of the native peoples of the Pacific Northwest such as the Macah, Nootka and Coastal Salish there is little recorded evidence that eastern woodland native peoples either developed whaling cultures or systematically hunted great whales prior to European influence. Hunting small cetaceans and utilizing the carcasses of stranded whales and "drift" whales that washed ashore is a fact common to many littoral peoples and the native use of these resources for food is documented. As European colonists began to regularly hunt great whales sighted from shore native peoples joined them becoming actively engaged in the hunt and integral members of the initial colonial shore whaling operations and the pelagic whaling of later decades.

Explorations and Settlers from Europe
Many early European explorers wrote descriptions of the quantities and types of whales found in the coastal waters of North America foreshadowing the American whale fishery. Jacques Cartier as early as 1535 described beluga’s and other great whales in the St. Lawrence river. Samuel de Champlain wrote a description of Basque whaling for right whales there in 1610. The Pilgrim Fathers William Bradford and Edward Winslow in 1620 wrote: "Cape Cod was like to be a place of good fishing, for we saw daily great whales, of the best kind for oil and bone." These were probably right whales (Eubalæna glacialis), the animal that served as the foundation of North American commercial whaling. The bone to which they were referring is the baleen that the mysticete and rorqual whales have growing in the tops of their mouths instead of teeth. Mysticetes such as the right whale and rorquals such as the humpback whale filter their food through this baleen. Baleen is made of keratin, the same material as human fingernails and after it was extracted from the mouths of the whales was put to use in a wide variety of tools.

Wood engraving by William P. Bodfish, American (fl. late 19th century). "Whaling Off Long Island - Drawn by W.P. Bodfish" from Harper's Weekly, January 31, 1885. While this illustration depicts shore whaling 200 years after its inception on the coasts of Long Island the techniques of flensing a large whale on the beach remained essentially the same. This scene took place off Southhampton on January 15, 1885 when a small school of right whales, 30 to 60 feet in length came close enough to shore for the local citizens to engage in their traditional whaling activity.

The first recorded instance of the colonists efforts to organize community efforts to exploit drift whales was in Southampton, Long Island in March of 1644. Over the next 30 years this organization developed into actual shore-whaling operations, where small boats were launched into the surf when whales were sighted offshore. By 1672 the colonists and their Native American neighbors were working together hunting whales along the coasts from small sailing vessels. While the New Yorkers were developing their seasonal whale fishery generally between October and March, whalers on Cape Cod Bay at Wellfleet had also established a thriving shore fishery during the same months of the year. Whales were captured using harpoons with wooden floats attached to long ropes. After the animals were tired out from dragging the wooden floats through the water, they would be slain using long lances, towed to shore and their blubber removed and boiled down into oil in large iron pots called try-pots. The baleen or whalebone was also removed from the mouths of the whales and the carcass left to rot. As the whalers of Eastham, Massachusetts described this phase of their whaling operation 1706, "ye Rest of ye Boddy of ye Lean of whales Lye on shoare in lowe water to be washt away by ye sea." (Starbuck, History of the American Whale Fishery, 1878, p. 30)

Decline of shore whaling and commencement of deep-sea voyages
The seasons of the 1720’s saw a noticeable decline in whales off the coasts of Cape Cod and Nantucket and during that time the whalers began to outfit single-masted sailing vessels called sloops to pursue the animals into deeper water. These voyages led the whalers further out to sea northward into the well-known whaling grounds off Newfoundland, into the St. Lawrence River and further north. Voyages proceeded through the Straits of Belle Isle along the coast of Labrador into the Davis Straits west of Greenland. When whales were captured the blubber would be removed and stored raw in barrels until it could be boiled out later on shore. While the cool temperatures of these northern voyages kept the blubber from spoiling, the oil was of a poorer quality than that obtained while the blubber was fresh.

The development of a colonial whaling industry
With the advent of the systematic hunting of sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus) that began from Nantucket after 1712, American commercial whaling grew dramatically in its economic importance. Sperm whales differ from other types of whales in several important ways but they were hunted for two major reasons. The first reason is that sperm whale oil burned cleanly and brightly and was a superior lubricant. Secondly, the spermaceti found in the head of the sperm whale was used in the manufacture of the finest grade of candles and colonial exports of candles to England was a profitable business. Occasionally ambergris was found in the bowels of the whales and this material was extremely valuable as a perfume fixative. It was literally worth its weight in gold! Two-masted schooners and small square-rigged brigs gradually replaced the single-masted sloops. With these vessels whalemen pursued sperm whales out into deep water throughout the North and South Atlantic as far as the Coast of Guinea in Africa and the Coast of Brazil in South America. The adaptation of try-works to use on shipboard enabled these vessels to stay at sea for longer periods while boiling out their oil. This try-works installation of two iron pots in a brick furnace onboard ship was the major technological innovation that enabled the success of the Yankee whaling industry. Also at this time the light, cedar planked, double-ended whaleboat came into general use. While double-ended boats had been employed in the whale fisheries of Europe for many years the unique design of the Yankee whaleboat allowed the whalers great versatility, speed and maneuverability. This design remained in use throughout the history of the American whale fishery. Two years prior to the start of American Revolution in 1774, the colonial fleet numbered 360 vessels hailing from 15 New England and New York ports. It as around this time that the port of Dartmouth, later to be called New Bedford, was beginning its rise to greatness as a whaling port.

The impact of war and the Embargo of 1807
American whaling came to a disastrous halt during the American Revolution as British Naval vessels blockaded American ports and harassed American shipping on the high seas, capturing or destroying many vessels and impressing many American sailors into His Majesty’s Naval service. American whaling ports suffered but Nantucket in particular was strangled during the war, as whaling was the primary industry there. After the war, with heavy duties placed on the importation into England of whale products, some Nantucket whaling families emigrated back to France and England or north to Nova Scotia to continue their avocation and to avoid the heavy taxes. The post-war 1790’s were a short period of re-growth between the American Revolution and the War of 1812 as spermaceti candles and sperm oil for lighthouses was in demand in both the U.S. and Europe. During the Napoleonic wars neutral American shipping was cut off from ports in England and France. In response, President Thomas Jefferson enacted the Embargo Act that forbade American vessels from embarking on foreign voyages. This loss of foreign markets once again impeded American whaling commerce. Three years after the repeal of the act in 1809, the War of 1812 with England once again shut down American ports bringing maritime commerce to a halt.

The golden age of Yankee whaling
After the Treaty of Ghent in 1814 that ended the War of 1812, American shipping was free to carry on and the whaling ports began to grow. New Bedford in particular built its whaling fleet from 10 vessels in 1815 to 36 vessels five years later. Like Nantucket, the bulk of these were employed in sperm whaling voyages and New Bedford vessels were hunting throughout the oceans of the world. At this time the classic American whaleship came into general use. These sturdy vessels were generally square-rigged ships of about 300 tons with the brick tryworks built onboard. They had wooden planks hanging from the starboard side (right side of the vessel looking forward) where the officers of the vessel could stand to cut in the whales tied up alongside. There were usually 30-35 men onboard and they carried between three and five whaleboats. They would be outfitted with whaling gear and provisions enough to last for a cruise of up to four years. Many of these vessels were built for the purpose of whaling but many others were converted merchant ships. In 1841 alone, 75 whalers sailed out of New Bedford and the city was fast becoming one of the wealthiest in the nation. New Bedford was not alone. In 1834, 38 East Coast ports between Wiscasset, Maine and Wilmington, Delaware were endeavoring to make money in the whale fishery. Most of them failed. Industrial infrastructure and whaling expertise separated through intense competition those ports that could maintain success in the fishery from those that could not. The New Bedford fleet reached its peak in 1857 when 329 vessels valued at more than $12 million employed over 10,000 men. The Whaleman’s Shipping List newspaper listed 20 ports in 1855 and most of these were the venerable New York and New England regions that also made up the list of whaling ports from before the American Revolution. There was one important addition to that list, however, and it was San Francisco, California.

Arctic whaling and the Civil War
In 1849 the Sag Harbor whaling master Thomas Welcome Roys sailed the ship Superior through the Bering Straits and into the Western Arctic. His quarry was the bowhead whale (Eubalæna mysticetus). With the hunting of this species a new chapter in the history of American whaling had begun. The bowhead whale is a very fat animal with thick blubber and baleen plates up to thirteen feet long. The stocks of this whale in these waters had never been commercially exploited but it was dangerous work in the icy seas. While markets for whale oil and baleen had been steady for many years, the baleen market spiked around the time of the Civil War as the dictates of women’s clothing fashion in the form of hoop skirts and corsets brought long, flexible baleen into a pricey marketplace. At the same time the necessity for sperm whale products for lighting purposes was superceded by the discovery of petroleum in Pennsylvania in 1859 and the market for sperm whale products slacked. This slack marked the end for ports like Nantucket that had never wholly embraced Arctic whaling. Interestingly enough, Provincetown, Massachusetts, a port that specialized in short voyages and small vessels continued successful whaling for many more years, but the peak of Yankee whaling had been passed. Access to the Western Arctic was easier from San Francisco and the New Bedford whaling merchants moved offices and agents there so that they could continue their business on both coasts. The opening of the transcontinental railroad in 1869 further consolidated the duel coast whale fishery. Voyages to the Eastern Arctic also increased at this time but bowhead whale populations there had been commercially exploited for two hundred years and filling the ships often required the crews to winter over, a proposition equally dangerous as whaling in the Western Arctic. The Civil War, like the wars before was very bad for the whaling fleet. Confederate cruisers like the Shenandoah, the Alabama and the Florida destroyed over 50 Yankee whalers. Additionally New Bedford contributed 37 old whaling vessels to the war effort in the form of the "Stone Fleet." These vessels were filled with rocks and sunk at the mouths of Southern harbors in an attempt to block shipping in and out. After the war, two Arctic disasters, one in 1871 and another in 1876 claimed 30 New Bedford vessels and 15 from other ports. Whaling ports lost millions of dollars in these disasters and as vessels were lost owners could seldom afford to replace them as the markets for whale products continued to decline.

The end of Yankee whaling
Many reasons are listed as excuses for the decline of Yankee whaling including the invention of the electric lamp in 1879 and the 1906 development of spring steel. The bottom line, however, is the American refusal to adopt new technology. Americans did employ steam-assisted sailing vessels while whaling out of San Francisco in the final decades of the Arctic fishery, however, Americans never systematically employed steamboats and harpoon cannons of the type invented and adapted to whaling by the Norwegian Svend Foyn in the late 1860’s. While the Motor Ship Patterson did whale out of San Francisco returning from her final voyage in October of 1928, mostly Americans limped along whaling under sail for the first 25 years of the 20^th century. It was at this time that the great American whaling collections began and the fishery became the stuff of history. Many artists and photographers recorded in pictures the romantic old sailing ships like the Charles W. Morgan, the Rousseau, the Desdemona, the Wanderer and the schooner John R. Manta. Historian Elmo Hohman writing in his book The American Whaleman (New York, 1928) captured the essence of the end of Yankee whaling. He wrote: "When the Wanderer, tired of dragging out her days in the uncongenial atmosphere of the twentieth century, at length piled up on the rocks of Cuttyhunk in 1924, the [Charles W.] Morgan was left as the sole (and inactive) survivor of a fleet which once whitened every sea." The last American voyage under sail was made in the schooner John R. Manta, Antone J. Mandly, master out of New Bedford in 1925. As the final vestige of this history the larboard whaleboat from that vessel is now in the collection of the New Bedford Whaling Museum.

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