New York has a little-known but quite important whaling history.

Native Americans may have been whaling on Long Island long before English settlers arrived; and it was directly from Long Island in the 17th century that Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, and New Bedford obtained their whaling technology.

New York City was the principal American seaport throughout the 19th century, and its whaling fleet, smaller than those of Nantucket, New Bedford, New London, and San Francisco, was nevertheless a significant factor in the city's maritime economy, as New York was the principal marketing and distribution center for whale oil. (The history of New York whaling is interestingly told by Norman Brouwer in his book, with Nina Hellman, A Mariner's Fancy: The Whaleman's Art of Scrimshaw.)

Meanwhile, there were other thriving whaling ports in New York State, notably Hudson and Poughkeepsie on the Hudson River, and Sag Harbor and Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island.

Not surprisingly, New York City was the main recruiting center for whaling crews for distribution among all of the whaling ports in New England and, later, California. In addition to thousands of immigrants and naturalized Americans in the whale fishery hailing from New York, there were countless African-American and Native American whalemen from New York.

You can see the fine pair of engraved scrimshaw whale's teeth by the Azorian-born whaleman/artist/whaling captain Manuel Enos of Cold Spring Harbor, exhibited in the Scrimshaw Gallery and featured on the cover of More Scrimshaw Artists.

A Long Island branch of the famous Cuffe dynasty sent several young of its young men to sea in whalers.

Sylvanus C. Fullmoon, also a Long Islander, was particularly proud of his "full-blooded" Native American ancestry, and in his journal of the New Bedford whaler Nimrod (1842-45) he transcribed song texts of "The Indian's Lament" ("The Indian Hunter's Prayer") and "The Jewish Maid," both of which are pointedly sympathetic to the plight of downtrodden minorities.

Even after the regular, deepwater "pelagic" whale hunt disappeared from the scene in the latter part of the 19th century, small-scale whaling from shore stations on Long Island continued (as it did on Cape Cod) well into the 20th century.

Pictures of Long Island shore whaling appeared in Harper's Weekly and Frank Leslie's magazine in the 19th century, and in the 20th century the fishery even had an unofficial Painter Laureate in Hjalmar Amundsen, a relative of the famous explorer.

Nowadays there are modest whaling museums at Cold Spring Harbor and Sag Harbor, and a respectable collection of scrimshaw at South Street Seaport in New York City.