Whaling Museum, New Bedford

The New Bedford Whaling Museum in New Bedford, Massachusetts, the world’s largest museum devoted to whaling, founded in 1903 by the Old Dartmouth Historical Society. New Bedford was the leading American whaling port in the mid-1800s, when its fleet hunted sperm whales for oil that lit lamps before petroleum. The collection holds the half-scale whaleship model Lagoda, complete whale skeletons, scrimshaw, logbooks, and the largest scrimshaw collection in existence.