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.