COMMERCIAL PRODUCTS OF THE SEA IN THEIR 
RELATIONS TO NEWPORT* 
By H. R. STORER, M. D. 
We are all of us living upon the very edge of the 
ocean. In former days the business life of Newport was 
wholly maritime. The town has its ship-yards, its rope- 
walks its distilleries, its slave-market. Its merchant ves¬ 
sels brought wealth from distant lands. Its deep-sea hunters 
pursued the whale in our own and in foreign waters. Of 
recent years there has been in all these respects a very 
great change, and with the growth of Newport in favor 
as a watering-place the city has become the summer resi¬ 
dence of the rich and fashionable, employers of many gar¬ 
deners, stablemen, and other personal attendants. Year 
after year the townspeople have come to depend upon pro¬ 
viding for the needs or fancies of these visitors as the 
means for their livelihood, and the vocations of fifty years 
since have gradually disappeared. 
The old commerce of Newport has entirely ceased. 
Steam has replaced the air as propelling power, railroads 
have absorbed much of the former water-traffic, and the 
few sailing-vessels that still remain run almost exclusively 
along the coast as carriers of coal and lumber. And finally, 
coal-oil, gas and electricity have almost completely taken 
the place of the already well-nigh exterminated whale. 
The great whaling centres, New Bedford, Nantucket, Sag 
Harbor and New London, have sunk into obscurity as 
such, and Newport with them, and with the exception of 
two small localities, Provincetown and a village near Mon- 
* Abstract from the President’s Annual Address, read before the Society at the 
Annual Meeting, May 6, 1897. 
