Looking Beyond Nantucket for the Early American Whaling Industry
A view of Hudson, New York illustrates the importance of river access to the prosperity of the city. Credit: Public Domain. Despite the global reach of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American whalers, they operated from a small number of ports. As historian Lisa Norling writes, “nearly all of them hailed from southeastern New England.” [1] The dominance of the American whaling industry by a handful of large New England whaling ports is treated as a given by many historians, but exploring the local histories of communities in New York suggests that smaller whaling outposts outside the New England region also contributed to the early commercial development of the United States. These smaller outposts have for the most part been neglected by maritime historians, but as with the case of Hudson, New York, a closer look reveals many of the same characteristics shared with the major whaling centers in places like Massachusetts. The Dutch settled Claverack Landing in present-day Hud...