New Bedford Whaling
F1. Maritime HistoryDefinition
Massachusetts whaling industry of the nineteenth century.
New Bedford whaling was the sperm-whale and right-whale hunting industry centered on New Bedford, Massachusetts, the world’s whaling capital from roughly the 1820s to the 1850s. At its 1857 peak the port owned over 300 whaling vessels and processed the majority of US whale oil and spermaceti, making it among the wealthiest American towns per capita. The 1859 arrival of petroleum kerosene, the loss of ships to the Confederacy and to Arctic ice in 1871, and declining stocks ended its dominance.
Source: New Bedford Whaling Museum and US whaling fleet registers; port peak documented 1857.