![]() The Start of Deep-Sea VoyagesĪs the seasons of the 1720’s saw a noticeable decline in whales off the coasts of Cape Cod and Nantucket, the whalers began to outfit single-masted sailing vessels called sloops to pursue the animals into deeper water. The whalers of nearby Eastham described this phase of their whaling operation in 1706: “ye Rest of ye Boddy of ye Lean of whales Lye on shoare in lowe water to be washt away by ye sea” (Starbuck, History of the American Whale Fishery, 1878, p. The baleen was also removed, and the carcasses were left to rot. Their blubber would be removed and boiled down into oil in large iron vats called try-pots. After the animals were exhausted from dragging the floats, they would be killed with long lances and towed to shore. Whales were captured using harpoons with wooden floats attached to long ropes. While the New Yorkers were developing their seasonal whale fishery generally between October and March, whalers on Cape Cod Bay had also established a thriving shore fishery in Wellfleet, working during the same months. By 1672 the colonists and their Native American neighbors were working together to hunt whales along the coast from small sailing vessels. Over the next 30 years this organization developed into actual shore-whaling operations, where small boats were launched into the surf when whales were sighted offshore. The first record of the colonists’ attempts to organize community efforts to hunt drift whales was in Southampton, Long Island, in March of 1644. Baleen was used to make a wide variety of products, such as tools, buggy whips, and corset stays. Mysticetes (such as the right whale) and rorquals (such as the humpback whale) filter their food through baleen, which is made of keratin, the same material as human fingernails. The bone to which they referred is the baleen that the mysticete and rorqual whales have growing in the tops of their mouths instead of teeth. In 1620, the Pilgrim fathers William Bradford and Edward Winslow wrote: “Cape Cod was like to be a place of good fishing, for we saw daily great whales, of the best kind for oil and bone.” These were probably right whales (Eubalæna glacialis), the animal that served as the foundation of North American commercial whaling. Samuel de Champlain wrote a description of Basque whaling for right whales there in 1610. As early as 1535, Jacques Cartier described belugas and other great whales in the St. Many early European explorers wrote descriptions of the quantities and types of whales found in the coastal waters of North America. They became integral members of the first colonial shore-whaling operations, as well as the ocean (pelagic) whaling ventures of later decades. Native use of these as food resources is documented.Īs European colonists began to regularly hunt great whales sighted from shore, Native Americans joined them and became actively engaged in the hunt. They did hunt small cetaceans and utilized the carcasses of “drift” and stranded whales that washed up on shore. Unlike some native peoples of the Pacific Northwest, there is little recorded evidence that eastern woodland native peoples either developed whaling cultures or systematically hunted great whales before Europeans arrived in the Americas. ![]() Chronology of Yankee Whaling Native American Whaling
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