15
Old-Time Nantucket - The Present Town by Edouard A. Stackpole ON THIS OCCASION, I believe I may be pardoned by slipping im mediately into the past. When Melville made his first, and only, visit to Nantucket in July, 1852, the Island had but just recently recovered from its worst physical disaster-the Great Fire of 1846-which had destroyed its business section and wiped out its entire waterfront. This, coupled with migration to California in the 1849-1852 period, had taken many of its enterprising younger people from the island, and the fall ing off of the whaling industry had brought about a definite pause in the maritime fortunes of this old town in the sea. As a matter of fact, the whaling fleet had dwindled to eighteen vessels in 1851, and in the following year three vessels were sold and two were condemned and a third burned at her stocks on Brant Point. Of the four vessels which sailed in 1857, three were sold and one lost at Madagascar. While New Bedford, Stonington and New London flourished, Nantucket steadily declined, and in 1869 the last whaleship from this port sailed and never returned. But the reputation of this venerable old port lingered, and the history of its past accomplishments remains to this day as a factor in the deter mination of its future. You may well say: "Why is this true?" All I can say is that its story has been so well told by the various writers, who left a mark on the world of literature that it is well documented. Melvihe was among these literary figures, all of whom found the Nantucket story filled with romance as well as factual statement. It was a combination of Quakers and mariners who lived here and gave a strength of character to the tales. What has remained to this day is the old town, a municipality which has remained virtually intact since the last whaleships sailed away. It is this old place where we may still find the tracery of old Nantucket, woven together with the ancient dwellings and their counterparts of to day. Protected, at least for the present, by a State law, known as the "Historic Districts Act", it withstands the nibblings of the commercial present which seeks to invade the past, and the old dwellings hold up well against the exigencies of the times. What constitutes the character of Nantucket is the history of its past. When the first whaleboats engaged in taking whales off the south shore of the Island in the 1670's they were not the first to take part in this New England practice. But they were the first to launch a new branch of the whale-fishery, and this was the custom of fitting out small sloops to go
