International Whaling Era

The international whaling era covers commercial pelagic whaling from the early 1700s through the 19th century, hunting sperm and right whales for oil, spermaceti, baleen, and ambergris. American ports led it: Nantucket first, then New Bedford, Massachusetts, the world whaling capital by the 1840s and 1850s with a fleet of several hundred ships. The trade collapsed as petroleum kerosene displaced whale oil after 1859 and stocks thinned; later factory-ship Antarctic whaling led to the 1946 International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling.