Whaling crew lists are lists of crew members who took part in whaling expeditions operating out of New England and the wider East Coast of the United States in the nineteenth century. At this time, the whaling industry in this part of America was a substantial economic activity, one which employed approximately 70,000 people at its peak in the 1840s and 1850s, while the wider whaling industry went back as far as the seventeenth century in North America. The industry was memorably captured in Herman Melville’s classic novel, Moby-Dick, a tale of Captain Ahab and his whaling crew’s quest for vengeance against the eponymous whale which allegedly bit off the captain’s leg in an earlier voyage. That whaling became central to one of the great American novels of the era points to the centrality of the industry to life in New England at the time. These lists of crew members are a very useful genealogical resource for anyone researching an ancestor that might have been a whaler or involved in the wider marine life of the northeast of the United States in the nineteenth century.[1]
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History of the whaling industry in New EnglandHistory of the whaling industry in New England
Whaling as an industry goes back to the Neolithic era in Korea, at which time rock engravings indicate that coastal communities there were whaling by the sixth millennium BCE.[2] In medieval times, whaling became a more systematic industry in Europe, and by the sixteenth century there is frequent mention in economic records of ‘train oil’ in countries like England and Ireland, a term which means whale oil derived from the Dutch traan for ‘tear drop’. This whale oil was useful in many different ways, principally for making soap and various types of lamp oil. Later it was even used to make margarine and other foodstuffs in an age before the mass availability of palm oil and other vegetable oils.[3]
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With its proximity to the bounteous Newfoundland fisheries, a fishing industry developed early on in the period of English colonization of North America in New England. By the 1650s there were some tentative moves towards whaling, but it was really in the eighteenth century that the industry took off here. By the early nineteenth century, when whaling crew list records commence, the New England whaling industry was a very large one, with ships sailing frequently out of ports in Massachusetts and Connecticut like Salem and New London, though New Bedford was the thriving heart of the industry.[4]
As it expanded as an industry here in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, more and more whalers began operating out of New England and venturing ever further afield in search of the whale oil that was needed in ever greater quantities as lamp oil in an age prior to electrification and for an ever growing range of industrial processes. Some ships based out of Massachusetts even voyaged as far as western Africa or south towards the Falkland Islands. At the height of the whale oil boom, New Bedford was, per capita, the wealthiest city or town in the United States and over 70,000 people were employed in the New England whaling industry.[5]
All good things come to an end. In the case of the whaling industry, a combination of factors in the 1850s, 1860s, 1870s and 1880s led to a steep decline in demand for whale oil across the western world. First, there was a very rapid shift from using whale oil as fuel for lamps to petroleum in the 1850s and 1860s. Then the need for lamps to light the interior of homes and streets began to decline altogether after Thomas Edison switched on his Pearl Street Station in New York in 1882 and began the electrification of the world. Finally, overfishing in mid-century was leading to a gradual decline in profitability anyway before these other market factors made their presence felt. The whaling industry struggled on in New England into the twentieth century, finding a new market as an ingredient in margarine, but eventually in 1927 the last New England whaling ship returned to port and the industry came to an end.[6]
Whaling crew lists and where to find themWhaling crew lists and where to find them
During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, lists of crewmen heading out of whaling expeditions from ports such as New Bedford, Fall River, Salem and New London in Massachusetts and Connecticut were compiled and kept. This followed a government act of 1803 which required the captain of each ship to deliver such a list to the customs collector at the port before leaving on the voyage. The legislation was imposed in order to keep a record of those lost at sea and to monitor any crimes that might be committed by crewmen during the voyage. Given that at its height in the mid-nineteenth century, there were over 70,000 men employed in the whaling industry, records of millions of individual trips to sea on these lists built up over the period between the 1800s and the 1920s.[7]
The crew lists were rather unsystematically stored in municipal archives and the offices of harbor authorities in the ports for many decades before they were more systematically preserved and catalogued in local libraries and archives during the twentieth century. A huge proportion of these records have been digitized by the New Bedford Whaling Museum and Mystic Seaport Museum, in association with other institutions such as New Bedford Free Public Library, and are available and fully searchable online.[8] Over 160,000 of these records relating to New Bedford and other ports in New England are available through MyHeritage for the years between 1807 and 1927.
What information can be found in whaling crew listsWhat information can be found in whaling crew lists
Crew lists contained a fairly detailed amount of information. At its heart these were exactly what they say they were, a list of the individuals heading out as crewmembers on a whaling ship. Yet it went beyond this. More detailed crew lists would also contain a lot of key details on each crewman, notably his age or even date of birth, place of residence, his position or rank within the crew and perhaps some physical characteristics such as hair color, height and complexion. These were often recorded as crew lists were also intended as ways of recording crews in case smuggling activity or even piracy was engaged in while at sea. Beyond this, the name of the ship and the captain leading the expedition were provided, as well as, obviously, the port of embarkation and the intended destination, along with the date of departure and an expected return date. These recording procedures became more systematic and detailed over time, but this gives a sense of the kind of genealogical information a person can expect to find on whaling crew lists.[9]
See alsoSee also
Explore more about whaling crew listsExplore more about whaling crew lists
- Massachusetts, Whaling Crews, 1807-1927 records collection on MyHeritage
- New England’s ‘Seventh State’: Life along the coast at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
- Changing New England Records in the 1800s at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
- Hidden Treasure in New England Town Records at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
References
- ↑ https://www.newbedford-ma.gov/library/whaling-database/
- ↑ Bong W. Kang, ‘Reexamination of the Chronology of the Bangudae Petroglyphs and Whaling in Prehistoric Korea: A Different Perspective’, in Journal of Anthropological Research, Vol. 76, No 4 (Winter, 2020), pp. 480–506.
- ↑ https://www.scran.ac.uk/packs/exhibitions/learning_materials/webs/40/whaleoil_overview.htm
- ↑ B. C. Brundage, ‘The Early American Whale Fishery’, in The Historian, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Autumn, 1948), pp. 54–72.
- ↑ Mark Foster, ‘New Bedford – Whale Oil Refining Capital’, in The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archaeology, Vol. 40 (2014), pp. 51–70.
- ↑ Lance E. Davis, Robert E. Gallman and Teresa D. Hutchins, ‘The Decline of U.S. Whaling: Was the Stock of Whales Running Out?’, in The Business History Review, Vol. 62, No. 4 (Winter, 1988), pp. 569–595.
- ↑ https://whalinghistory.org/av/crew/about/
- ↑ https://www.whalingmuseum.org/online_exhibits/crewlist/about.php
- ↑ https://www.newbedford-ma.gov/library/whaling-database/