 Delaware
was originally settled by a Dutch party led
by David de Vries of Hoorn (1630), whose intention
was to establish a whaling colony at Zwaanendaal
(site of present-day Lewes). However they
never took any whales and the settlement perished
by 1634.
Delaware
had a small whale fishery of its own in
the 1830s and '40s -- there is even a booklet
by Kenneth R. Martin, former director of
the KWM, entitled Delaware
Goes Whaling.
John
F. Martin (no relation), a seaman aboard
the Lucy Ann of Wilmington in the
1840s, produced the finest illustrated journal
of a voyage ever known in the whaling annals.
Some of his brilliant watercolors are reproduced
in "Whaling in the South Seas."
In
an exhibit case in the same gallery is a
British Greener gun (bow-chaser cannon)
of circa 1844 -- the gift of Henry B. DuPont
of Wilmington -- possibly once used aboard
a Wilmington whaler.
In
more recent times, the famous New Bedford
whaling artist-author Clifford W. Ashley
(1881-1947) maintained a studio on the Delaware
coast (several of his paintings are on exhibition);
and in the 1930s Wilmington was the official
port-of-registry for the huge American floating-factory
whaleships Frango and Ulysses
(see the watercolor by Charles Rosner in
the Modern Whaling Gallery) -- though neither
of those ships ever actually called at any
American port.
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