History W H A L I N G C A P TA I N S
TWO OF THE REGION’S
BY SKIP FINLEY
hen Pilgrims first landed on Provincetown’s shores in 1620, they were immediately stunned by the whales that swam by. In Nathaniel Philbrick’s Mayflower, there’s a story of one anxious passenger, who in a hurried attempt to catch one, overfilled his musket with gunpowder. The ensuing explosion sent the mammal away unharmed as it glided back into the bay. The Pilgrims’ landing on Cape Cod and eventual settling at Plymouth is a story well-told, but it was whaling that drew many to the southeastern coasts of Massachusetts. Herman Melville’s Moby Dick glossed over so much of the gruesomeness and difficulty of whaling. The earth’s largest creatures are believed to have language and familial relationships, but on the Cape, the hunting of these massive beings was a 250-year business enterprise that made Cape Cod, Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, and New Bedford some of the most important ports. For many of those years, the harvest of whale oil ranked among the nation’s largest industries. Records accumulated by historians Alexander Starbuck (1878), Reginald B. Hegarty (1959), and Judith Lund (2010) show that 2,500 captains and 2,700 ships took 15,000 trips and included just over 50 men of color who became whale captains themselves. Many of these captains were appointed during the years of slavery in America, and several were connected to Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket.
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