new bedford whaling museum library and archives
a librarian at the Westport Free Public Library, tracked down a 17 June 1836 article in the Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror that reported the Industry’s crew had been picked up at sea by another Westport whaling ship, Elizabeth, and her crewmen were eventually returned safely to Westport. “This was so fortunate for the men onboard,” said Delgado. “If the black crewmen had tried to go ashore, they would have been jailed under local laws. And if they could not pay for their keep while in prison, they would have been sold into slavery.” Whaling and its role in American history have been studied from many angles, but the typical whaling history most people have learned about concerns the big square-riggers and crews: the fictional Captain Ahab of the Pequod and Moby-Dick, the real-life Captain Pollard of the Essex, and the well-documented ship and crew of the last surviving wooden whaling ship Charles W. Morgan, for example. During
Boat-steerer and foremast-hand fastening a harpoon to its shaft. this same period, whaling provided men of color an opportunity for steady employment, upward mobility, and relative independence as compared to the experiences
of their brethren ashore. “Imagine, then,” said Delgado, “the circumstances for these sailors…sailing as free men from Westport and touching at American ports where slavery existed…. With this in mind, seventy miles out in a stormy Gulf, did the crew fear trying to row for shore in their boat, or have a greater fear if a passing ship headed for a Gulf port might pick them up? Fortunately for Industry’s crew, the whaling brig Elizabeth of Westport… was close by and rescued them all.” Monica Allen is the Director of Public Affairs for NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research.
new bedford whaling museum library and archives
Industry is also connected to the life of Paul Cuffe, a well-known Massachusetts sea captain, entrepreneur whose father was a freed slave and mother was a Wampanoag Indian. Cuffe started whaling as a teenager and rose to become a successful shipbuilder, merchant, abolitionist, philanthropist, founder of an integrated public school, and among the leaders of a project to settle freed black people in a new colony in Africa. His son William served as Industry’s navigator and his sonin-law, Pardon Cook, was an officer onboard. Cook is believed to have made the most whaling voyages of any black person in American history. (left) Paul Cuffe’s son, William Cuffe, is listed in this 1828 logbook as Industry’s boat steerer and navigator. 40
SEA HISTORY 179, SUMMER 2022
