New Jersey hosted a small, short-lived whale fishery of its own, but there were other significant contributions -- notably the Cunningham & Cogan shoulder gun (specimen on display in the "Whaling in the South Seas"), manufactured at New Bedford by Patrick Cunningham, a native of Newark, and Bernard Cogan of Newark, based on an 1877 patent issued to Herbert W. Chapman of Newark.

Even so, perhaps New Jersey's chief importance to American whaling throughout the 19th century was in furnishing large numbers of young men -- including African Americans and recent immigrants -- for the whaling fleets of New York, New Bedford, New London, and Sag Harbor. Typically, these hailed from Newark, Elizabeth, Camden, and Trenton.

Whaleman-artist Robert W. Weir, Jr. (1836-1905), son of the drawing instructor at West Point and brother to two famous artists, completed three whaling voyages in the 1850s and saw action in the Union Navy before becoming a professional engineer, an occasional book illustrator and contributor to Harper's Weekly magazine, and a permanent New Jersey resident (his splendid watercolor Shooting a Whale With a Shoulder Gun, exhibited in "Whaling in the South Seas," was likely painted in New Jersey circa 1866).

A charming rendition of the Old Testament scene Rebecca at the Well, engraved on a sperm-whale tooth by whaleman J.B. Mason of Belleville, New Jersey, is usually on view in the Scrimshaw Gallery.