Whaling Ships at Delano Bay, Baffin Island

watercolor, 22” x 30” (unframed)

$3,500

The first organized whale hunting enterprises in the American colonies appeared on Long Island, NY in 1645. By 1720, less than a century later, whales had begun to become scarce along the island shores. At that time, whalers began outfitting small sloops and brigs for longer voyages which took them north along coasts of Newfoundland and Labrador.

By 1732, whaleships from Boston were venturing into Arctic seas as far north as the Davis Straits between Greenland and Baffin Island. Although this area would be one of the most productive whaling grounds for more than a century, it was also a very dangerous place, fraught with hazards to the frail wooden ships.

Arctic whaling took place during the brief summer months when ships probed along the ice packs as they melted looking for open leads among narrow bays and rock-strewn channels. The danger of the ships being crushed by the shifting ice packs was a constant fear.

One such incident occurred in the late summer of 1871 on the coast of Alaska in the western Arctic. While whaling near the shore of Icy Cape, thirty-three New England whaleships were cut off from the open sea by the sudden advancement of the pack ice moving down from the north. All the trapped ships were abandoned, and the crews made their way through the ice in their own whaleboats. The 1,200 marooned sailors were then rescued by other ships that had not been trapped and brought to Hawaii.

This event was a catastrophe for the whaling industry in New England, and particularly for New Bedford. The whaling business, whose fleet suffered heavy losses during the Civil War from Confederate Raiders on the high seas, never fully recovered after the disaster at Icy Cape.

The business continued to decline in the 20th Century as the marker for whale oil waned and bone was no longer in demand. The last whaling voyage under sail from New England took place in 1924. At the peak of the whaling industry in 1857, New Bedford was home port for 329 whaling ships, employing some 10,000 men. Of those, only one Yankee whaler exists intact today, the CHARLES MORGAN, built in 1841, is preserved at the Mystic Seaport, in Mystic, Connecticut.