page_title: Whaling in the United States
section_title: Peak
hierarchical_section_title: Whaling in the United States / History / Peak
caption_attribution_description: English: On verso of image: Ship Kodiak . In Folder 135 Subjects (LCSH): Kodiak (Ship); Whaling ships--Alaska; Whaling--Alaska; Whalers (Persons)--Alaska
context_page_description: Commercial whaling in the United States dates to the 17th century in New England. The industry peaked in 1846–1852, and New Bedford, Massachusetts, sent out its last whaler, the John R. Mantra, in 1927. The Whaling industry was engaged with the production of three different raw materials: whale oil, spermaceti oil, and whalebone. Whale oil was the result of "trying-out" whale blubber by heating in water. It was a primary lubricant for machinery, whose expansion through the Industrial Revolution depended upon before the development of petroleum-based lubricants in the second half of the 19th century.
  Spermaceti oil is sourced solely from the head-case of sperm whales. It is processed by pressing the material rather than "trying-out". It was more expensive than whale oil, and highly regarded for its use in illumination, by burning the oil on cloth wicks or by processing the material into spermaceti candles, which were expensive and prized for their clean-burning properties. Chemically, spermaceti is more accurately classified as a wax rather than an oil.
  Whalebone was baleen plates from the mouths of the baleen whales.
context_section_description: The American whaling fleet, after steadily growing for 50 years, reached its all-time peak of 199 ships in 1858. Just two years later, in 1860, just before the Civil War, the fleet had dropped to 167 ships. The war cut into whaling temporarily, but only 105 whaling ships returned to sea in 1866, the first full year of peace, and that number dwindled until only 39 American ships set out to hunt whales in 1876.
  During the winter, some of these same vessels would make their way to the lagoons of Baja California. The peak began in 1855, commencing the period of lagoon whaling known as the "bonanza period", when whaleboats were crisscrossing through the lagoons, being pulled by enraged whales, passing by calves that had lost their mothers and other ships' crews hunting whales. Less than twenty years later, in 1874, the lagoon fishery was abandoned entirely, due to several years of poor catches.
  Several New England ships were lost during the 1860s and 1870s. During the American Civil War, Confederate raiders such as the Shenandoah, Alabama, and Florida captured or burned 46 ships, while the United States purchased forty of the fleet's oldest hulls. Known as the Stone Fleet, these ships were purchased to sink in Charleston and Savannah harbors in a failed attempt to blockade those ports. Thirty-three of the 40 whalers that comprised the Arctic fleet were lost near Point Belcher and Wainwright Inlet in the Whaling Disaster of 1871, while another 12 ships were lost in 1876.
  The use of steam, the high prices for whalebone, and the proximity of the whaling grounds brought the rise of San Francisco as a dominant whaling port in the 1880s. By 1893, it had 33 whaleships, of which 22 were steamers. At first, the steamers only cruised during the summer months, but with the discovery of bowheads near the Mackenzie River Delta in 1888–1889 by Joe Tuckfield, ships begin to overwinter at Herschel Island.
  The first to do so was in 1890–1891, and by 1894–1895 there were fifteen such ships overwintering in the snug little harbor of Pauline Cove. During the peak of the settlement, 1894–1896, about 1,000 persons went to the island, comprising a polyglot community of Nunatarmiuts, Inuit caribou hunters, originating from the Brooks Range; Kogmullicks, Inuit who inhabited the coastal regions of the Mackenzie River delta; Itkillicks, Rat Indians, from the forested regions 200 miles (320 km) south; Alaskan and Siberian ships' natives, whaling crews and their families; and beachcombers, the few whalemen whose tour of duty had ended, but chose to stay at the island.
  Ships continued to overwinter at Herschel into the 20th century, but by that time they focused more on trading with the natives than on whaling. By 1909 there were only three whaleships left in the Arctic fleet, with the last bowhead being killed commercially in 1921.
caption: Whaling steamer Kodiak and crew, undated photo by John Nathan Cobb
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