Whaling
and Sealing
One
of the major tourist attractions in Connecticut is Mystic Seaport,
in the town of Stonington. A staff of professional researchers
and historians there has provided materials for several excellent
works on nineteenth-century Connecticut maritime activity, with
special attention to whaling. The most readily accessible of these
is an eighty-page pamphlet that grew out of a master’s thesis
done at the Munson Institute at Mystic: Virginia B. Anderson’s
Maritime Mystic (Mystic: Marine Historical Association, 1962).
A similar but older work by a master of the history of ships is
Carl C. Cutler’s forty-page Mystic, the Story of a Small New
England Seaport, Marine Historical Association Publication
No. 2 (Mystic: December, 1945). A major work with full scholarly
apparatus by a professional historian, James P. Braughman’s The
Mallorys of Mystic (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press,
1972) tells of an important Mystic family that continues in the
maritime business to this day. “Using the Mallorys as subjects,
this study is offered as a business biography .... It is as much
personal history as it is institutional history.... What follows
is business history in its analysis of the interaction of private,
profit-seeking, economic decision-makers and their environment.”
(p. 5)
Standard
general treatments of the whaling business are Alexander Starbuck,
History of American Whale Fishery from its Earliest Inception
to the Year 1876 (New York, 1878; repr. N.Y., Argosy-Antiquarian,
1964); and Edouard A. Stackpole, The Sea-Hunters, The New England
Whalemen during Two Centuries, 1635-1835 (Philadelphia; Lippincott,
1953). See also
Fuller,
Eleanor E. Captain George Denison: A Biography (Mystic:
Mystic Seaport Museum, 1941).
Other
whaling and sealing centers have been dealt with professionally
and extensively in two doctoral dissertations. One, by Robert
Decker, was the basis for his Whaling City (Chester: Pequot
Press, 1976). This sound study of New London, with focus on its
maritime interests, is based on Decker’s 1970 University of Connecticut
dissertation, “The New London Merchants 1645-1909: The Rise and
Decline of a Connecticut Port.” Decker published more interesting
material in The Whaling History of New London (York, Penna.:
George Shumway, 1972). The other dissertation is Richard Michael
Jones’ “Stonington Borough: A Connecticut Seaport in the Nineteenth
Century” (City University of New York, 1976). “A poor fishing
village in the late Eighteenth Century, Stonington Borough became
one of the wealthiest communities per capita in the United States
by the 1850s through the success of its sealing and whaling fleets
.... Much of this paper is an examination of the seal and whale
fisheries and their economic impact on Stonington Borough.” (from
the abstract) Other relevant works:
Busch,
Brinton Cooper. “Elephants and Whales: New London and Desolation,
1840-1900.” American Neptune 40(April, 1980):117-26. Desolation,
also known as Kerquelen Island, is in the Indian Ocean. The whale-oil
business was undone by the discovery of land-based oil. One attempt
to keep the business alive was to go after new animals: the seal
and walrus—in new places: the South Atlantic and the Indian Ocean.
This piece describes the business, including physical and social
conditions on board ship. Both were terrible. See also Muster
of Desolation: Reminiscences of Capt. Joseph J. Fuller. Edited
by Brinton C. Busch. Mystic: Mystic Seaport Museum, 1980.
Holoway,
Charlotte Molyneux. “The Old Whaling Port.” Connecticut Quarterly
3(1897)2:206-21. A heavily illustrated sketch of whaling and
whalers in New London, with photographs of whaling captains and
ships as they looked in 1897.
—“The
Last Shot in the Artic.” Connecticut (Quarterly 4(1898)2:;
163-74. The story of one of the last of the whaling voyages from
New London.
Kihn,
Phyllis. “The Sea Journal of Captain Ebenezer Hooker Mix, 1717-1818.”
CHS Bulletin 40(January, 1975)1:8-18. Sealing in New Guinea;
one disaster piled on another.
Martin,
Nancy. “The Voyage of the Zephyr.” Journal of the NHCHS
26(Winter, 1978)1:20-26. The Zephyr sailed in 1815 from
New Haven on a sealing voyage to the Pacific. A disasterous three-year
expedition is investigated by the author, who believes that the
failure of the voyage doomed New Haven’s China trade.
Sweeney,
Cherie. "Conflicting Cultures, Composite Communities: A Wethersfield
Woman Goes Whaling, 1858-1861," Connecticut History
39 (Fall 2000) 2:127-149. First Mate Thomas Williams wrote Eliza
Griswold proposing marriage when he returned from a whaling expedition
2-1/2 years later. She accepted. They were married, and three
months later he was off again for another three plus years. Next
time she went with him. This article, which provides ample context
and some historiographic sophistication, describes her life at
sea, her reactions (subdued in proper Victorian mode), and relations
(distant) with the crew.
Tefft,
Nelson. “Deposition of Nelson Tefft and Others of the Whale-Ship
Brooklyn.” American Neptune 9(]uly, 1949).
Trowbridge,
Thomas, ed. “The Diary of Mr. Ebenezer Townsend, Jr., The supercargo
of the Sealing Ship ‘Neptune’ on her voyage to the South Pacific
and Canton.” Papers of the NHCHS 4(1888):1-H6. The voyage
took place in 1796-99. The editor’s father was “possibly the most...
extensive shipowner in New Haven” at that time. The 350-ton ship
carried a crew of forty-five, who killed 80,000 seals. The sale
in Canton brought “pecuniary results [which] have never been equalled
by a New Haven ship.” (p. 2)
—, ed. “Narrative of A Sealing and Trading
Voyage in the Ship Huron, from New Haven, Around the World,
September 1802 to October, 1806.” Papers of the NHCHS 5(1894);
149-72. The account is by Joel Root, the supercargo.
Williams,
C. A. “Early Whaling Industry of New London.” Papers of
the New London County Historical Society 2(1895). Superseded by
Decker, above.
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