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Whaling has been an important subsistence and economic activity in multiple regions throughout human history. Commercial whaling dramatically reduced in importance during the 19th century due to the development of alternatives to whale oil for lighting, and the collapse in whale populations.
Whaling in the United States. Commercial whaling in the United States dates to the 17th century in New England. The industry peaked in 1846–1852, and New Bedford, Massachusetts, sent out its last whaler, the John R. Mantra, in 1927. The Whaling industry was engaged with the production of three different raw materials: whale oil, spermaceti ...
To the left, the black-hulled whaling ships. To the right, the red-hulled whale-watching ship. Iceland, 2011. Number of whales killed through time. Whaling is the hunting of whales for their usable products such as meat and blubber, which can be turned into a type of oil that was important in the Industrial Revolution.
The Whaling Disaster of 1871. Plate 1, portrayed by John Perry Newell. The whaling disaster of 1871 was an incident off the northern Alaskan coast in which a fleet of 33 American whaling ships were trapped in the Arctic ice in September 1871 and subsequently abandoned. It dealt a serious blow to the American whaling industry, already in decline.
The term whaler is mostly historic. A handful of nations continue with industrial whaling, and one, Japan, still dedicates a single factory ship for the industry. The vessels used by aboriginal whaling communities are much smaller and are used for various purposes over the course of the year. The whale catcher was developed during the Steam ...
The indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast have whaling traditions dating back millennia, and the hunting of cetaceans continues by Alaska Natives (mainly beluga and narwhal, but also the subsistence hunting of the bowhead whale) and to a lesser extent by the Makah people (gray whale). In the twentieth century there was a commercial ...
Essex. (whaleship) Essex was an American whaling ship from Nantucket, Massachusetts, which was launched in 1799. On November 20, 1820, while at sea in the southern Pacific Ocean under the command of Captain George Pollard Jr., the ship was attacked and sunk by a sperm whale. About 2,000 nautical miles (3,700 km) from the coast of South America ...
History of Basque whaling. The Basques were among the first people to catch whales commercially rather than purely for subsistence and dominated the trade for five centuries, spreading to the far corners of the North Atlantic and even reaching the South Atlantic. The French explorer Samuel de Champlain, when writing about Basque whaling in ...