The Whaling History of Nantucket Island

Martin Price
3 min readNov 6, 2021

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An island located 30 miles off the coast of Massachusetts, Nantucket (also known as “The Faraway Land”) is a popular tourist destination and home to a year-round population of just over 14,000 people. Today, the island is associated with restaurants, boutiques, and sunny beaches, but Nantucket has a fascinating history dating back to the 1600s and is perhaps best known for its connection to whales.

The island was first spotted in 1602 by Englishman Bartholomew Gosnold, although it had a native population of approximately 1,500. It was settled in 1659 by Thomas Macy, who led a group of Quakers. Visitors to the island can still see remnants of this era when they visit Jethro Coffin House, which was built in 1686 and is the oldest house still standing on the island.

In the late 1600s, settlers spotted whales off the shores of Nantucket and the island quickly became the whaling capital of the world and one of the wealthiest towns in the country. The island’s native population of Wampanoag had a history of whaling, as they processed the whales that washed ashore, but the settlers turned whaling into a more aggressive pursuit. Thanks in part to the instruction of Cape Cod whaler Ichabod Paddock, whaling and the sale of whale byproducts became the foundation of the Nantucket economy, resulting in prosperity for the island.

The island’s first whaleships were about 20 feet long and served by a crew of six (generally five Wampanoag and one white captain). These boats would spear whales with harpoons attached to lines in the boat. These harpoons caused superficial wounds, but the whales would then drag the boats along until they were exhausted, at which point the whalers could finish the job and tow the whales back to the island.

In 1712, a whaling boat encountered storms that pushed it miles away, where it encountered a new type of whale, the sperm whale. These whales were found to offer higher quality blubber and higher quality oil, known as spermaceti, which made them the most desirable whale. By 1760, due to the depletion of the local whale population and the desire for sperm whales, Nantucket whalers started taking longer trips and needing larger boats with the ability to process blubber at sea. These longer journeys took Nantucket whalers all around the world, as far south as the Falkland Islands and as far north as the Arctic Circle, on voyages as long as 5 years.

By 1775, half of the state’s whaling boats were based in Nantucket, which was able to produce more than 30,000 barrels of oil annually. However, as the industry continued to grow and trips began to last longer and longer, the shallow waters of Nantucket were no longer suitable for the larger ships. By the mid-1840s, more than half of the world’s whaling ships were based in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Then, in 1859, oil was discovered in Pennsylvania, making whale oil less desirable. By 1870, Nantucket said goodbye to its last whaling ship. The island soon experienced a population decline of nearly 70 percent.

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Martin Price
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Based in Washington, DC, Martin Price guides the infectious disease laboratory HealthtrackRx as executive chairman and board member.