WHALING

WHALING. Whaling, or the commercial hunting of whales, results in oil, ambergris, whalebone, meat, and other various by-products. Whale oil is used as a lubricant and as an additive in soapmaking, while ambergris is valued as a fixative in perfumes.

Native Americans had long hunted the great beasts by the time European settlers began to colonize the New World in the early seventeenth century. For the most part, indigenous people processed whale carcasses that washed up on beaches; however, some used canoes to pursue whales that swam into coastal waters.

By 1640, white settlers, who had brought with them knowledge of European whaling techniques, had established their own organized whaling efforts in Long Island and in parts of New England. The colonial whalemen towed harpooned whales to shore from small boats. They then removed blubber and bone, extracting the oil by boiling the blubber in large cast iron kettles called trypots.

Eventually, whale numbers near shore declined, and the colonists began hunting whales in single-masted sloops. As demand increased, whalemen undertook longer voyages of up to several years to find their quarry. The year 1774 saw the peak of colonial whaling when at least 350 vessels sailed from ports in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New York. Nantucket Island and New Bedford in Massachusetts eventually became important whaling centers. Other significant whaling ports included Provincetown, Massachusetts; New London, Connecticut; San Francisco; and Sag Harbor, New York.

Just two years later, the industry was collapsing because of the British blockade of colonial ports during the Revolutionary War; in addition, the Embargo of 1807 and the War of 1812 forced whaleships to lie idle. Several resourceful shipowners, the Rotches of New Bedford for example, went to France and conducted whaling from foreign shores.

Whaling burgeoned during the peaceful years that followed, and by the mid-1800s, the industry counted 736 vessels and seventy thousand people. Sperm whale oil peaked in 1843 with a production of 5.26 million gallons. Whale oil production reached 11.59 million gallons in 1845, and more than 5.65 million pounds of whalebone was retrieved in 1853.

The discovery of petroleum, a product superior to whale oil for lighting, in 1859 signaled the beginning of the end for the lucrative whaling industry. Other factors contributing to the decline of whaling included the loss of thirty-seven New Bedford vessels that were sunk during the Civil War followed by the Arctic disasters of 1871 and 1876, in which forty-five more New Bedford ships were lost to ice. The development of spring steel, which replaced the market for whalebone, coupled with diminishing whale populations, also contributed to the industry's downfall. The last American whaling vessel made final port in San Francisco on 28 October 1928, although several whaling voyages under the American flag were made from foreign ports until around 1938.

International Whaling Commission

After World War II, a convention held in Washington, D.C., resulted in the creation of the International Whaling Commission (IWC), an organization of twenty-four countries that participated in whaling. Regulating most of the world's whaling activities, the commission set specific limits on the numbers and species of whales that could be hunted. Today, the IWC lists forty-eight members worldwide, from Antigua to the United States. Besides setting catch limits and creating sanctuaries, the commission funds whale research.

The attempt to place limits on whaling has become a volatile issue. Many nations do not recognize IWC authority and have continued to hunt whales. In response, environmental and wildlife groups, among them Greenpeace, an environmental activist group, have made attempts to stop all whaling. The Japan Whaling Association contends that whaling is an integral part of Japan's history and culture and defends the country's continued whaling. Norway, the only country that objected to the IWC's 1982 moratorium on whaling, continues its whale hunts; in 2000, Norway took 487 small whales that yielded 713 tons of meat (valued at roughly $2.5 million) and ninety-six tons of blubber.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Busch, Briton Cooper. Whaling Will Never Do for Me: The American Whaleman in the Nineteenth Century. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1994.

Ellis, Richard. Men and Whales. New York: Knopf, 1991.

International Whaling Commission. Home page at http://www.iwcoffice.org.

Ronnberg, Eric A. R. To Build a Whaleboat: Historical Notes and a Model Makers Guide. Bogota, N.J.: Model Shipways Co., 1985.

Webb, Robert Lloyd. On the Northwest: Commercial Whaling in the Pacific Northwest, 1790–1967. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1988.

Works Progress Administration. Whaling Masters. New Bedford, Mass.: Old Dartmouth Historical Society, 1938.