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Whaling in the North Atlantic: From Earliest Times to the Mid-19th Century. (1986). 117 pp. Purchas, S. 1625. Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas His Pilgrimes: Contayning a History of the World in Sea Voyages and Lande Travells by Englishmen and others. Volumes XIII and XIV (Reprint 1906, J. Maclehose and sons). Schokkenbroek, Joost C. A. (2008).
The whaling industry spread throughout the world and became very profitable in terms of trade and resources. Some regions of the world's oceans, along the animals' migration routes, had a particularly dense whale population and became targets for large concentrations of whaling ships, and the industry continued to grow well into the 20th century.
Even so, on the eve of world war in 1939 the industry was facing difficult times with declining whale stocks, rising costs and falling demand as manufacturers switched to whale oil substitutes, such as palm oil. The Second World War devastated the whaling industry. The European market for British-caught oil disappeared almost overnight.
The first evidence for whaling in Scotland is from Bronze Age settlements where whalebones were used for constructing and decorating dwelling places. Commercial whaling started in the Middle Ages , and by the 1750s most Scottish ports were whaling, [ 1 ] with the Edinburgh Whale-Fishing Company being founded in 1749.
A film chronicling the American whaling industry from its origins in New England in the 17th century, through the golden age of deep-sea whaling, up to its decline following the Civil War. Narrated by Willem Dafoe , this film binds the story of American capitalism on the rise with a case study in maritime culture.
Moby-Dick; or, The Whale is an 1851 epic novel by American writer Herman Melville.The book is centered on the sailor Ishmael's narrative of the maniacal quest of Ahab, captain of the whaling ship Pequod, for vengeance against Moby Dick, the giant white sperm whale that bit off his leg on the ship's previous voyage.
Essex departed from Nantucket on August 12, 1819, on what was expected to be a roughly two-and-a-half-year voyage to the whaling grounds off the west coast of South America. The route towards Cape Horn was an indirect one dictated by the prevailing winds of the Atlantic Ocean .
She is the world's oldest surviving (non-wrecked) merchant vessel, the only surviving wooden whaling ship from the 19th century American merchant fleet (of an estimated 2,700 built), [7] and second to USS Constitution, the oldest seaworthy vessel in the world. Charles W. Morgan was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1966. [1]