Green New England Recruits to the Whale Fishery
Weekly arrivals of green Vermonters and New Hampshire men flood into New Bedford seeking fortune and glory in the whale fishery. These young recruits possess stalwart frames honed by forest-felling work, now seeking to exchange axes for whale-lances. Many arrive as green as their namesake mountains, displaying naivety that makes them seem mere hours old to seasoned observers—strutting in beaver hats and swallow-tailed coats with sailor-belt and sheath-knife, or donning sou’-westers and bombazine cloaks.
Comical Missteps of Country-Bred Dandy Whalers
No town-bred dandy rivals a country-bred bumpkin dandy—one who in summer heat would mow his two acres in buckskin gloves to prevent hand tanning. When such a country dandy resolves to distinguish himself in the great whale-fishery, comical missteps ensue at the seaport. In preparing sea-outfits, he orders bell-buttons for waistcoats and straps for canvas trousers—items destined to burst catastrophically in the first howling gale, carrying buttons, straps, and all down the throat of the tempest.
New Bedford’s Whaling-Funded Opulence, Customs, and Summer Scenery
Without whalemen, this land would remain as howling and bony as Labrador’s coast. Despite its scrubby origins, New Bedford has become New England’s most expensive place to live. The opulent patrician houses and lavish gardens derive entirely from Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Ocean ventures—wealth harpooned and dragged from the seafloor. Local custom dictates that fathers provide whales as dowers and nieces receive porpoises a-piece, while spermaceti candles burn recklessly nightly. In summer, avenues of green and gold maples grace the streets, and August brings magnificent horse-chestnut blossoms rising candelabra-wise, with bright flower terraces superinduced upon once-barren rocks.
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