[On October
18, 1851, the first edition of Herman Melville’s
epic novel Moby-Dick was
published in London (under its initial
title, The Whale). So this week
I’ll AmericanStudy Melville’s novel and other histories and stories related to
the book’s ostensible subject, the world of whaling. Leading up to a special
weekend post on a wonderful colleague at the New Bedford Whaling Museum!]
On how the
divergent whaling histories of two neighboring islands led to distinct subsequent
and ongoing identities.
The Massachusetts
islands of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard are less
than 25 miles apart as the crow flies (although the typical ferry route is apparently
more like 70 miles), but when it comes to the history of the whaling industry,
the two are much farther apart. As I highlighted in yesterday’s post, for more
than a century Nantucket was the center of the
New England and American whaling industry, a focus which might well have
been precipated by a single event: per island historian Obed Macy and his
1835 book The History of Nantucket,
sometime in the mid-17th century a “scragg whale” (likely a gray
whale in modern parlance) entered
Nantucket harbor and was killed by the early English settlers; Macy and
others trace the island’s dominance of the whaling industry from that singular
(and quite random) starting point. While Martha’s Vineyard certainly hosted whaling ships of
its own, the industry came to prominence significantly later on the island
than it did on Nantucket, and was thus always competing with other sizeable fishing
trades like that in swordfish. (For a very thorough history of Martha’s
Vineyard, see my paternal
grandfather Arthur Railton’s magisterial and highly readable 2006 book The
History of Martha’s Vineyard.)
Whatever the
particular factors that led to Nantucket’s dominance in the whaling industry
(not just over its island neighbor but over the rest of the world, at least
until the rise of New Bedford that I charted yesterday), by 1851 Melville could
write in Moby-Dick’s Nantucket-set
Chapter 14, “Two thirds of this terraqueous globe are the Nantucketer's.
For the sea is his; he owns it, as Emperors own empires.” That divergence had
already by that time produced one striking American historical distinction
between the two islands: Nantucket voted to remain neutral at the
start of the American Revolution, thanks in large part to its need for
shipping access and protection for its whalers; while Martha’s
Vineyard joined the rest of Massachusetts in rebelling against the English.
But it was in the late 19th century, as the whaling industry began
its gradual but irreversible decline (again as I traced in yesterday’s post),
that the divergence between the two islands truly began to resonate. Nantucket had
by that time also experienced a couple of significant natural events that
hastened whaling’s decline there: the July
1846 “Great Fire” that forced many inhabitants to leave the island; and the
increasing silting
of Nantucket harbor, which made it more and more difficult for large
whaling ships to enter (compared to the deep harbor of New Bedford in
particular).
When, for both
those local and much broader reasons, whaling declined in Nantucket, the island’s
dependence on the trade meant it did not have much else to offer residents; most
of them left (the island’s
population was about 4000 by 1887), and the island remained largely
unpopulated and isolated until the mid-20th century. In part because
of its more diverse commercial identity, Martha’s Vineyard was able during the
same period to shift much more quickly and dramatically, becoming throughout
the late 19th century host to a number of resort
communities and summer residences. While Nantucket has over the last
half-century developed its own such summer and wealthy populations, I would
argue that the Vineyard remains far more of a summer resort community; one
reason why two of
the last four presidents have made it a vacation site of choice, after all.
And if so, then the two islands’ divergent, and at least somewhat random, histories
with the whaling industry continue to echo significantly down into our 21st
century moment.
Next whaling
post tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other whaling contexts or connections you’d highlight?
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