There was no whaling from South Carolina, and few South Carolinians ever went whaling on northern ships.

But in January 1880 Harper's Weekly reported a "Whale Captured in the Harbor of Charleston... a huge ‘right' whale, which had probably been driven from his usual haunts in the sea by the stress of weather.... The news of the capture soon spread everywhere, and thousands of persons came to see the monster."

It is also notable that in South Carolina and Georgia were fine stands of live oak, harvested for use as ship's timbers in northern shipyards in the 19th century; and that much of the cotton used for sails and other New England textiles was grown in the American South, and was loaded onto ships in Savannah, Charleston, and the Gulf ports for transport to northern factories.