A Shipwreck, a Robot and an Archival Treasure Hunt Reveal the Diverse History of the Whaling Industry

Last month, scientists identified a 207-year-old shipwreck in the Gulf of Mexico as the Industry, a whaling ship that tipped over in a harsh 1836 storm.

Researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) made the thrilling discovery while taking a new remotely operated vehicle (ROV) for a test run through the ocean floor. The expedition was led by James P. Delgado, a maritime archaeologist and senior vice president of Search Inc., a cultural resources management firm. At Delgado’s suggestion, NOAA scientists on the ship Okeanos Explorer started to examine the immersed wreck in late February, reports Maggie Astor for the New York Times.

Situated around 70 miles from the mouth of the Mississippi and 6,000 feet underwater, the shipwreck was first found by an energy company in 2011 and then by an autonomous vehicle in 2017, yet had actually never been fully analyzed, according to an NOAA statement. The two-masted wooden 64-foot-long brig had penetrated the seafloor and mostly disintegrated, though its outlines are still visible in the underwater robot’s photos, records Mark Price for the Miami Herald.

Scientists scanned the wreck with sophisticated cameras to produce a three-dimensional model of the capsized ship. According to the Times, they were hinted to its identity when they discovered a 19th-century tryworks or cast-iron furnace insulated by blocks that would run at high temperatures on the ship to render whale blubber right into oil.

Inside the whaling industry

Prior to the invention of petroleum-based kerosene, Americans’ demand for safe indoor lighting led fleets of New England whaling ships to hunt whales along the Atlantic coast and in the Gulf of Mexico. Whale oil, especially that extracted from sperm whales, generated a bright, clean flame with marginal odor, per Yale University. By the late 1840s, more than 700 of the 900 circulating whaling ships hunting worldwide’s oceans were U.S. ships.

Numerous Massachusetts towns– especially New Bedford– ran as centers for the whaling industry. Records suggest that Industry was built in 1815 in Westport, Massachusetts, according to the Boston Globe’s Tiana Woodard.

Whaling was a harsh and dangerous undertaking, per the New Bedford Whaling Museum. Yet probably remarkably, Industry’s watery demise was rather distinct: of the 214 whaling trips cruised in between the 1780s and 1870s, Industry is the only known whaling ship to have sunk in the Gulf of Mexico, per the Globe.

Industry’s discovery additionally exposes a little-told aspect of whaling history: particularly the vital roles that Black Americans and Native Americans played in the inceptive whaling industry of the early 19th century. At a time when most industries were segregated by race, white, Black, Indigenous, and multiracial crewmembers worked together on whaling ships, historian Judith Lund, formerly of the New Bedford Whaling Museum, informs the Globe.

On the high seas, the demanding and physically grueling work of whaling might have forced an extra equitable setting, where crewmembers of color were considered as equal to their white friends, Lund states.

The racial divide

” Most people did not care what color you were as long as you might toss a harpoon and do what was essential to get the oil,” Lund tells the Globe.

Industry also has a direct link to Paul Cuffe, a popular and successful Afro-Indigenous merchant, abolitionist, and philanthropist from New England, per the Globe. According to Alex Kuffner of the Providence Journal, Cuffe, whose father was a freed slave and mother was a Wampanoag Indian, was a renowned Westport whaling captain and one of the wealthiest individuals of color in the United States at the time. One of his own sons, William, served as a navigator on the Industry, and his son-in-law Pardon Cook was one of the ship’s officers.

” The discovery shows how African Americans and Native Americans succeeded in the ocean economy despite dealing with discrimination and other injustices,” NOAA administrator Rick Spinrad says in the declaration.

The family member equality onboard whaling ships contrasted dramatically with the reality of ports in the American South, where enslavers could seize and sell Black and Indigenous Americans into slavery. According to the Times, the opportunity of being sold into enslavement signified that whaling staff often steered clear of southern ports if they could assist it.

The faith of the crew

When Industry sank in the Gulf of Mexico, as a result, the threat of slavery would have surely been a principal concern of its stranded team. “If the Black crewmen had attempted to go ashore, they would have been imprisoned under local laws,” Delgado notes in the NOAA declaration. “And if they could not pay for their stay while in prison, the prisoners would have certainly sold them into enslavement.”

After NOAA officials identified Industry, they got in touch with librarian Robin Winters of the Westport Free Public Library to see if she could reconstruct even more of Industry’s tale. Winters embarked on a six-month archival treasure hunt to find out the fates of the ship’s crew, she informs the Globe.

And in very early March, she ultimately advanced: a small story from an 1836 edition of the Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror, offered by independent researcher Jim Borzilleri, related that the crew of the trashed Industry had actually been scooped up by the Nantucket-based ship Elizabeth, per the Times.

“This was so privileged for the men on board,” Delgado includes the statement, marking that, thanks to the generosity of the northern-bound ship, the enduring crew of Industry seemed to have made it back to New England intact.

Read the original article on Smithsonian Magazine.

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