Geographical determinism and the growth of the American whaling and sealing industries

Summary

ABSTRACT.From the 18^th century New England ports dominated deep-sea whaling, above all for sperm whales. After the American Revolution loyalist Quakers took the techniques to British and French ports, and Pacific waters. The hunt for whales and seals in waters remote from Europe and America played a major role in rapid social, political and ecological change.

RÉSUMÉ.Les ports de Nouvelle Angleterre dominaient la pêche à la baleine en haute mer, et en particulier celle du cachalot, depuis le XVIII^e siècle. Après la révolution américaine, les Quakers loyalistes transmirent leurs techniques aux ports français et britanniques et jusqu'aux eaux du Pacifique. La chasse à la baleine et au phoque dans des eaux éloignées de l'Europe ou de l'Amérique joua un rôle prépondérant dans le rapide changement social, politique et écologique.

From the moment in June of 1602 that Gabriel Archer set eyes on the Acushnet River on the south coast of Massachusetts his commentary was aimed purely at its advantages to commercial navigation. Companion to English explorer Bartholomew Gosnold(1571–1607), he observed with a seaman's eye that the place “may happily become good harbors, and conduct us to the hopes men so greedily do thirst after.” His was an immediate recognition that here, along the complicated west side of Buzzards Bay, was a broad, deep, and protected haven with unlimited potential for development. Facing southeast, the mouth of the Acushnet River is protected from the prevailing southwest wind by a peninsula at its mouth, allowing safe passage for vessels bound in. Periodic northerly breezes allow any outbound vessels safe passage to the broad Atlantic. Archer's prophetic observation truly resonated down the ages, as by 1765 Bedford Village had been built on the west bank of the river and by the 1850s the harbor of the Acushnet had become home to one of the greatest whaling fleets in history. By the 1890s the harbor was a rail head and a center for sea-borne coal distribution and one of the largest textile manufacturing cities in the U.S.A. Today the port of New Bedford on the banks of the Acushnet River is home to the largest profitgrossing fishing fleet in the United States.