BEARINGS 9 



sels.-^® And thereafter, as the prestige and prosperity of Nan- 

 tucket declined, the degree of concentration in Buzzards Bay 

 showed a steady increase. 



But the localization of whaling was not so much a matter 

 of regions as of ports. The merchants of only five seaport 

 towns — Nantucket, New Bedford, Fairhaven, New London, 

 and Sag Harbor — dominated the industry throughout its 

 period of importance. In 1843 New Bedford fitted out one- 

 third of all American whalers 5 the remaining members of 

 the quintet contributed another one-third j and all other ports 

 were forced to combine in order to muster the last one-third. ^^ 

 By 1857 New Bedford's fleet had risen from one-third to 

 one-half of the total j and as the smaller ports dropped out 

 with the waning fortunes of the business after the Civil War, 

 this one city rapidly absorbed a growing percentage of the 

 diminishing total tonnage. 



It is notable, too, that the leading whaling ports, with the 

 single exception of New Bedford, were relatively small towns, 

 even when judged according to contemporary standards of 

 population. Boston, New York, Baltimore, and the other 

 great Atlantic cities were content to retain the merchant ship- 

 ping and the carrying trades for which they were best fitted. 

 Now and again, when they made half-hearted attempts to 

 engage in whaling, their ventures were uniformly unsuccessful. 



Rooted in both the land and the people were the forces 

 which thus threw the world's whaling trade into the hands of 

 a few small ports situated along a short stretch of New Eng- 

 land seacoast. The unfruitful and back-breaking soil which 

 early drove all of tide-water New England to seek a liveli- 

 hood from the sea existed here as elsewhere j and, together 

 with the broken and indented coastline which afforded numer- 

 ous safe harbors, it sufiiced to explain why men went down to 

 the sea. But why did the choice fall upon whaling rather 

 than upon fishing or the merchant trade? It was true that 

 the villages to the north of Cape Cod were nearer to the great 



10 These figures were derived from a list of whaling ports and their ves- 

 sels which was published in the Whalemen's Shipping List, Vol. I, p. 32, on 

 April 4, 1843. 



11 Ibid. 



