What does the number of ships that were sent out for whale hunting indicate about whale hunting during 1800s? Why were whales hunted then?
Answers
Answer:
Abundantly laden with the riches of the ocean”: Why whales were hunted
Whaling was an exceptionally dangerous business both physically and economically. In the Yankee whale fishery injuries and death were common to almost every voyage. Many vessels were lost. Few individuals got rich whaling and most of those were owners and agents. The answers to why so many people went whaling are many and varied but the underlying principle is that whale products had a strong commercial value if one knew how to exploit it.
“Success to the old Marcella may she speedily return to her original haven abundantly laden with the riches of the ocean.”
Original verse from the journal of Henry Smith kept aboard the bark Marcella of New Bedford, 1840-1841, Benjamin Ellis, master. (KWM # 742)
In Men and Whales, Richard Ellis writes that, until the beginning of the twentieth-century, whaling was considered an admirable occupation. “. . . it is only through the lens of hindsight that the whaleman’s job becomes malicious or cruel. . . Oil was needed for light and lubrication; baleen was needed for skirt hoops and corset stays. That whales had to die to provide these things is a fact of seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenth-century life. . .“
Whale products
The primary products of the Yankee whale fishery were sperm oil, spermaceti, whale oil and whalebone and occasionally ambergris if any were discovered.