Whale Products in Commerce. III 
most important industries growing out of the whale 
fishery. And as early as 1760 there were eight factories 
in New England and one in Philadelphia.** Other 
allied industries were greatly promoted, as cooperage, 
machine-shop products, cordage, and more especially 
boat and ship building. Thus in 1851 the New Bedford 
fleet alone added forty-eight ships, and in 1852 six new 
ships were being built in the New Bedford yards.* 
The development of such interests gave rise to new trade 
relations and movements. The growth of these allied 
industries reflected the growing importance of trade in 
whale products, and their success depended on the 
commercial prosperity of the fishery. The changing 
economic conditions, by which this commerce was largely 
destroyed, might have effected these industries adversely 
in the important whaling centers, and have brought a 
general economic crisis in such a place as New Bedford,— 
but the change was gradual; the markets declined slowly; 
and most of the industries were able to transfer their 
interests to other growing lines of activity. Ship and 
boat building alone suffered heavily but perhaps not so 
much from the failure of whaling commerce as from the 
general decline of the American merchant marine and 
American supremacy in ship building. 
3 Weeden, I, 655. 
4 Ellis, p. 419. 
