A Whale of an “Excitement”:
Today, New London, Connecticut, prides itself on its whaling legacy. But the town’s whaling “excitement” during the 1840s and ’50s wasn’t actually the first but the third episode in the town’s economic history. (For the story of New London’s founding and its early role in coastal shipping, see Part 1 of this story; and for New London’s engagement in the profitable West Indies trade and its subsequent part in the Revolutionary War, read Part 2 and Part 3.)
Whales, of course, were hardly a new thing; the finny mammals had cruised offshore waters since time immemorial, venturing into Long Island Sound on occasion long before a town called New London took root on shore. Early on, Native Americans recognized the importance of this giant marine resource; they reportedly ate whale meat and made use of whale oil as a fuel.
White settlers, once they arrived, embraced the utility of whales, too. Whale oil made a clean-burning, long-lasting lamp fuel. The huge bones and teeth of the oversize mammals got recycled into a wide variety of practical and ornamental objects.
In 1647, a Connecticut man named Whiting foresaw enough profit in whale-chasing to petition the General Court at Hartford for a formal whaling privilege. The court acceded to this request, granting Whiting the exclusive right to hunt whales off the coast for as long as seven years, requiring only that Whiting and his associates “make trial and prosecute a design for the taking of whale.” Come up with a workable business plan, in other words.
While we don’t know whether Whiting made a success of his whale business, we do know that other New Englanders were pursuing the dangerous occupation, at least sporadically. A seaman named William Hamilton, for example, reportedly killed a sperm whale off the coast of Nantucket in 1670.
With New London’s prime seaside location, it’s little wonder that its residents, too, engaged in some early whale-hunting. On January 13, 1718, one New Londoner penned a note to his diary confirming that he’d hired his whale-boat out to an acquaintance for 20 shillings (a sum roughly the equivalent of ten days’ wages) “to go a-whaling to Fisher’s Island till the 20th of next month,” with a promised bonus of three pounds ten shillings (over a month’s wages) “if they get a fish.”
There were “whales a-plenty” in those days, as a later historian observed, and “to be had for the catching.” But actually catching the gigantic prey was the problem. Whaling was a far more dangerous endeavor for both sailors and ships than the earlier coastal and West Indies trade. Nevertheless, the potential profit cast its own economic spell. And thus, despite the dangers, a few adventurous souls continued to pursue the mammoth creatures.
In May, 1784, the New London Gazette reported that one Captain Squire had departed with his sloop Rising Sun on a hunt for whales. The outcome of this expedition, too, is lost to time. But other whale hunters about this same time were clearly in luck; a pair of brigs leaving Long Island in 1785, for example, returned happily laden with over 300 barrels of whale oil apiece.
The potential for whale-sized profits piqued the interest of New London entrepreneurs. About 1805, Dr. Samuel H.P. Lee (the inventor of a patented “miracle cure” for yellow fever) helped organize a whaling venture dubbed the “New London Company.” This consortium of investors acquired a pair of whaling vessels, the Dauphin and the Leonidas; both ships would make a series of successful whaling runs between 1806 and 1807.
The Napoleonic Wars tossed an unexpected monkey wrench into the whaling works, as trade embargoes shuttered New England ports and grounded vessels between 1808 and 1814. But once the international conflict finally died down, seafaring activities could finally resume. And resume they did!
Demand for whale oil and related products had continued to grow. Householders were eager for whale oil to fill their lamps; spermaceti was a sought-after ingredient in candles, cosmetics, soap, and industrial lubricants.
A “whaling excitement” seized New London in 1819, thanks in part to two local seamen-turned-merchants. A brig called the Mary, owned by New Londoner Thomas N. Williams, ventured south to the banks off Brazil, returning home less than eleven months later with 744 barrels of whale oil and 78 barrels of spermaceti. Fellow merchant Daniel Deslon outfitted not one but two whaling ships, one of which (the Carrier) returned to New London’s harbor roughly the same time as the Mary carrying 928 barrels of whale oil.
When the Mary repeated her success on her second voyage, this time returning with two thousand barrels of valuable whale oil, New London’s maritime community sat up and took notice. The hazards of whale-hunting were still very real. But the hefty profits spurred a flurry of copycat endeavors. Suddenly, local shipyards found themselves swamped with orders for new vessels. Ships of all shapes and sizes were hastily converted into whalers and pressed into service. Agents’ boots pounded the docks as far away as New York seeking possible ships to buy.
By 1830, New London’s harbor had come alive again. Six new commercial whaling companies had been formed. City wharves were jammed by up to fifty whaling ships at a time. Warehouses were stuffed with boxes of spermaceti and bales of whalebone. Over the next few years, New London’s merchants and tradesmen would rake in a cool $2 million annually from the whaling trade.
Making big money, of course, required a huge initial investment, and the cost to outfit a whale ship was large indeed. In addition to the initial cost of purchasing a ship, owners had to provision the vessel for what was typically a two-year voyage. For a crew numbering 30 to 35 men, a ship’s stores might include 250 barrels of pork, 50 barrels of flour, and hogsheads of staples like rice, corn, vinegar, codfish, peas, and molasses. Harpoons, lances, and line were required to kill the massive beasts. And two to three thousand empty wooden barrels had to be stowed aboard, all of which the owners hoped would arrive filled with whale oil when the ship finally returned to port.
In addition to the services of a ship’s carpenter and cooper, some whale expeditions brought a doctor along. When a physician wasn’t aboard, the captain typically would keep a well-stocked medicine chest.
During the early part of the whaling boom, ships like the Mary needed to venture only as far as the Banks of Brazil to fill their barrels. But as the commercial trade grew and whale populations declined, later expeditions were forced to set sail for the Pacific islands, Baffin Bay’s beween Canada and Greenland, the Indian Ocean, or the Arctic. Some whaling expeditions deliberately charted a route that circumnavigated the globe.
The ship’s log book would meticulous record the details of the trip – “wind, weather, bearings, discovery of a wreck, calling at ports, provisions purchased or consumed, sickness, death, mutiny, desertion,” as one historical account noted. The successful capture of a whale could be celebrated in the log’s pages with a pen-and-ink drawing “of the monster in his dying agony.”
Upon a whale ship’s happy return to New London, profits would be distributed by contractual formula. A captain might be entitled to 1/16th of the proceeds from the cargo, for example; the first mate, 1/25th; second mate, 1/40th; and so on down the line; a lowly seaman might receive a meager 1/125 share. After deducting salaries and the costs for equipment, insurance, and other expenses, the ship’s owners would pocket the remainder.
So, how much did all that actually represent? Well, with whale oil selling at wholesale at 20 to 30 cents a gallon, an ordinary seaman might stroll away from his two-year journey with $190; the captain would receive $1,484; and the ship’s owners would smile all the way to the bank with an astonishing $14,440. And that was just from the profits of the whale oil; those receipts might double once shares of highly-prized spermaceti and whale-bone were included.
New London became a world-wide whaling capital indeed. During the halcyon 1840s, as many as 100 New London-based vessels might be out at sea at a time. Some 2,000 men – half the town’s population – could be off on a voyage.
Between 1844-45 alone, over 100,000 barrels of whale oil were successfully brought into port, each barrel holding 31-1/2 gallons and selling for about $6.30. The year 1846, for example, saw 78 whale vessels registered at New London, with another fifty headquartered in nearby Stonington and Mystic. New London’s ships, it was said, “aggregated 26,200 tons” and – coupled with its fishing fleets – “employed a small army of some 3,000 men.”
The town’s wharves bustled with activity. “All the available space about the wharves was crowded with oil-casks brought, full of oil, from the vessels to be tested,” one account reported. These barrels would be draped with seaweed and drenched with sea water daily to ensure the contents stayed fresh. “[G]reat piles of empty casks, yellow pine lumber and iron hooping” were visible in every direction. Coopers’ shops busily churned out stout oak casks for whale oil. Ships’ carpenters, caulkers, riggers, stevedores, and painters all plied their trades.
Life for New Londoners was intimately tied with whatever was happening in its harbor. Church bells would ring in celebration if a long-overdue ship finally arrived. Wharves would be crowded with women and children whenever a returning ship docked, “half frantic with joy at the prospect of meeting dear ones after years of absence.”
Sometimes, however, a happy reunion was not to be; instead, families would be greeted by the sad news that a beloved husband or father had died from a fever in the tropics, succumbed to the Arctic cold, or been fatally injured during a whaling operation.
The headstones in New London’s old churchyards reflected the dangers of the sea. One sad inscription memorialized the loss of three separate seafarers in the Adams family:
“In memory of Pyram Adams, Esq., who died July 1, 1776, aged 64 years, and of his three sons, William, who died at St. Pierre’s, Martinico, April 4, 1778, aged 33 years; Alexander, who was lost at sea in the year 1782, aged 35 years; and Thomas, who died in the island of St. Helena, September 8, 1815, aged 55 years.”
And even such inscriptions fail to tell the whole story; some sailors were simply buried at sea, their names now forgotten.
Fortunes were certainly amassed during New London’s “halcyon Forties.” But her prosperous whaling days would prove short-lived. A mild recession swept the U.S. in 1845, followed by another in 1853-54. Three years later, the Panic of 1857 hit, triggered by the end of a speculative railroad bubble. And three years after that, America would find herself swept up in the painful whirlwind of war.
The Civil War was unkind in more ways than one to sea-faring vessels; hostile forces weren’t the only source of their destruction. A famous “Stone Fleet” of aging ships left New Bedford harbor on Thanksgiving Day, 1861, under the direction of the U.S. government, each heavily laden down with rocks. These stout old vessels were destined to be scuttled at the mouths of Southern harbors to keep supplies from reaching Confederate towns. Many whalers were among them.
One aging whale ship, a barque called the Nile, escaped being dispatched to the bottom of Charleston Harbor in 1861 only because she happened to be out on a whaling mission at the time. A massive three-decker, with squared bow, broad beam, and forward flanks lined with six feet of solid oak as protection against Arctic ice, she had eleven years of continuous whaling behind her. She would later be captured in the summer of 1865 by a Confederate steamer (the privateer Shenandoah). But unlike six other nearby vessels, which were looted and burned by the Confederates, the Nile was allowed to simply sign a document acknowledging her capture. After taking aboard 120 men from the other captured vessels, she was released and made her way to San Francisco – and “there had the satisfaction of learning that the war had come to an end some months before.”
After the war, whaling continued for a while, though not with the vigor of previous years. All told, between 1718 and 1908, an estimated 1,100 separate whaling voyages took place out of New London. At one point the town was said to have been the second-largest whaling port in the world, second only to New Bedford, Massachusetts.
But by 1881, New London’s prosperity — like the whale trade itself — was at low ebb once again. The dignified stone Custom House still loomed beside her harbor, rubbing shoulders with aging shipping-offices, warehouses, and piers. Gray hulks of old whaling ships remained tied to her docks, swinging slowly on the tide. “Nature is slowly breaking them up,” a visitor observed, “their spars, broken from their fastenings, hang at every conceivable angle above the decks, their cordage is frayed and rotten, flakes of paint have peeled from their seamy sides, and down in their great empty holds the bilge-water ripples [as] the tides come and go.” Sanguine old salts cherished hopes that “the flood will return again” and that whaling prosperity would someday return. It was not to be.
One final whaling expedition departed New London on September 24, 1908. When Capt. James Buddington shouted the order to hoist the sails of the schooner Margaret and throw off her lines, he likely had no idea he was making history. But the ship’s return seven months later, in April 1909, would mark the end of the last commercial whaling voyage, not just from New London, but in Connecticut history.
The whaling industry had died. But a legacy was born.
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Did you know there was a link between the whaling industry and California? I didn’t! Many thanks to a helpful reader for pointing out that during the Gold Rush, former whaling ships (many of them from Massachusetts) were chartered for one-way voyages around the Horn to San Francisco, where they were unceremoniously abandoned in the harbor. A California State historic marker also marks the site of a former whaling station (where for a short time whale oil was extracted) at Ballast Point (Pt. Loma), San Diego.