Nantucket - from farmers to whalers

When, in 1659, the first Englisher settlers arrived on the sandy and boggy little island of Nantucket - a pile of sediment left behind by the last glaciation - their primary interest was farming. They thought that the low-lying scrubby land might suit their sheep. The resident Native Americans, especially the tribe living on the western-side of the island, had long exploited stranded whales and knew how to utilise the huge bodies that sometimes washed in. The whales were numerous then - both right whales and grey whales came close inshore,

Indeed it seems it was the live stranding of grey whale (a species long absent from the Atlantic) some ten years after the first English settlers arrived that inspired the start of shore-based whaling. They forged a harpoon and killed and butchered this one whale and thus started an enterprise that dominated Nantucket for the next two hundred years.

Initially, the whalers used old masts planted in the shore to form look-outs (there were no suitable high points). This was a winter activity and along with the look-out poles the watchers built shacks on the shore for shelter. (These little shacks helped to define the architecture of the island.)

Later, when the near-shore whales (the rights and the greys) started to run out, the whale boats started to venture further out. Then, as legend has it, in 1712,a boat was driven even further off shore by a storm and found itself surround by sperm whales. Capturing one they found the whale's head was full of a remarkable and pure oil. A substance that then inspired an industry that eventually reached out from Nantucket all across the world. The adventures of the  whalemen inspiring Herman Melville to write Moby Dick, which is loosely based on the true story of the loss of the whaleship Essex which really was sunk by a whale.

The Essex story will be retold in a new movie - In the Heart of the Sea - to be released later this year and something that the Nantucket whaling museum has marked with a new exhibition 'Stove by a whale'. Here reported in local paper:

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By 1748, there were sailing ships  in the fifty to seventy tonnes range involved in the whale industry and operating out of Nantucket. Together they brought home 11,250 tonnes of oil.

The architecture tells the story of changing times.

The oldest house on the island: 1686

The local houses are all typically wooden - transporting brick or stone thirty miles from the main land was too expensive. Most, like the ancient one above, are clad in shingles - tiles of wood that weather to grey.

Whaling in its heyday brought great wealth to some and this is still reflected in some of the grand villas in town.

Hadwen Houzse - a granf mansion built in 1845 by whale oil and silver merchant William Hadwen  

1873 - Starbuck Villa

Below a modern shingled building - the light brown singles are new. The trellises are for roses = another specialty of the island and which will bloom from June.

And on top of many roofs across the island are odd little fenced platforms. Legend has it that these are the platforms from which wives watched for their whalemen husbands to come home. However, they were originally built around chimneys and helped care for these key and dangerous structures in the wooden houses. Perhaps they served both purposes.

Roof platform

Even this little tree house has a roof platform

And this is what it was all about. 

The liquid gold that could be scooped from the head of a sperm whale.

This sample on display in the Nantucket whaling museum taken from the head of the same young whale that stranded nearby and whose skeleton hangs from the roof of the museum.

Pure raw sperm whale oil.

Nantucket - some birds and some views from the shore

This is Jetties beach, just outside Nantucket town. Some spectacular real estate backs down through the dunes to the seashore.

Brent goose

Eider duck

A great black back gull battles a spider crab

A rare (near threatened) Piping Plover

Jetties Beach strandline marked by empty slipper limpets,
and fragments of horseshoe ans spider crabs,

Nantucket - signs of whales and whaling

The modern town of Nantucket has many images that point to its whaling heyday - here is a sample.

First here is the famous Nantucket Whaling Museum - appropriately topped with a 'sounding' (diving) sperm whale and with a classic carved whaling scene on its front aspect.

The Nantucket Whaling Museum

Museum weather vane

The harpooner does his work in this giant wall plaque on the front of the museum.

This a classic scene of 'yankee whaling' - the giant sperm whale has been rowed up to in a small boat launched from the mothership (the sailing vessel in the background left). 

The harpooner drives home one or two harpoons. The whale will attempt to flee, but the harpoons have rope attached and the rope will play out and the boat will be pulled through the water. If the whale sounds there may not be enough rope and the boat may be upended. The aim is to tire the whale and again get close to it so that it can be lanced with a long sharp pole. Its vital organs pierced, the final scene was often 'fire in the chimney' - red blood coming from the blow hole - as the animal died.

Emblem on Town Hall

A whaling ship is the symbol of the local chamber of commerce

Other whaling references around the town:

Cachelot (here a house name) is the alternative name for the sperm whale.

Queequeg's - a restaurant names after the character in Moby Dick

another whale weather vane

And there are hundreds of items for sale - like this T-shirt - that carry
the characteristic square headed form of the sperm whale

Whaler's lane

And here is a curious thing - in the back of the town's very nice book shop lurks a dolphin skeleton. 

It stranded on the island but no one seems to know why it is in the shop.

Book store dolphin skeleton/

Nantucket - distracted by daffodils!

My visit to 'Whaling Island' coincides with the annual daffodil festival - a celebration of Spring where locals and visitors go a little crazy and somewhat yellow, with flowers in their hair and their hats. The centerpiece is a parade of classic cars also decked with flowers. 

Let's take a look at what went on on Main Street, Nantucket, today:

On the Trail of Ancient Whalers Again - P'town

Pilgrim monument in P'town

There is a place which has become synonymous with the 'romance' of that phase of whaling when whaling boats had sails and traversed the world principally hunting sperm whales for their oil.

That place is Cape Cod in the USA and in particular the island of Nantucket, home town of the whaleboat Essex which Herman Melville based his classic tale of Moby Dick on.

In its heyday, Nantucket island sat on a super-highway of marine commerce and barrels of sperm whale oil were sent back to Europe to light the streets and oil the machines of the industrial revolution. The advent of the railways broke the marine superhighway and the coastal town of New Bedford became better placed as a whaling centre. Nantucket then faded.

Now Nantucket is a holiday island and part of its attraction is its link to its whaling history.

So these next few blogs are going to detail a journey to Nantucket - ancient and modern.

First a quick look at nearby Provincetown one of the USA's main centres for whale watching and somewhere from which the critically endangered northern right whale can be seen.

Provincetown fishing fleet arrayed along the main pier

Unusual marine debris (actually I think it is an art installation) 

Now here is a curious thing (no not the old dude at the piano) but below you can see some artificial marine debris (fishing buoys) for sale in a tourist shop as decorations.

The false buoys of P|'town 

Buoys decorate a P'town yard

Debris art installation on P'town pier

Jo Toole of WAP's Global Ghost Gear Initiative is delighted to
find some more decorative debris!

Thar she blows - A distant blow marks the breath of a whale