Wellfleet and Provincetown were Cape Cod’s premier whaling ports in the late 1700s and early 1800s. Some whaling ships sailed out of other Cape towns, but these 2 ports were crowded and bustling with ships and crews and related tradesmen and merchants. Both places eventually gave way to Nantucket and New Bedford, but many Cape captains continued to pursue the leviathan in distant seas. Settlers had been intrigued by whales since Native Americans taught them how to use beached whales for food and oil not long after the Mayflower anchored in Cape Cod Bay. They soon erected towers on beaches to look out for whales, which they would pursue in small boats along the coasts. As whale oil grew in importance as a lighting fluid and as whale bone and baleen were used for more household and personal products, sloops and small schooners gave way to larger schooners and square-riggers, such as barks, and even full-rigged ships. And the ships extended their hunting grounds first to the South Atlantic and then to the Pacific and Arctic oceans as their quarry changed from right whales to sperm whales and bowheads. Whaling’s peak years were between 1825 and 1860. The decline is traced to the discovery of petroleum in Pennsylvania in 1859, the loss of many ships in the Civil War, and a surge in other fisheries. Edward Penniman of Eastham went to sea at age 11 in 1842 as a cook and at age 21 as a harpooner aboard the New Bedford whaleship Isabella. By 1860 he was captain of the bark Minerva. When he retired in 1883, he had made 6 voyages as a whaling captain.
In this painting, a sperm whale overturns a whaleboat crew that has harpooned it.
Harpoon styles improved over the years. Early harpoons were double-flued (left). Later refinements included the toggle head, invented in 1848, which was less likely to come loose from the whale.
While whaling crews were on long sea voyages, many of the men whiled away the time making scrimshaw objects, including such intricate pieces as this sewing box.
When Augusta Penniman accompanied her husband on voyages, she kept detailed whaling-trip logs in which she used symbols to indicate kills and misses. In 1868 the Pennimans built a French Second Empire mansard-roofed house (above) with a cupola overlooking the ocean and bay in Eastham. The Penniman House, now a part of the National Seashore, sports a pair of whale jaws at the entrance to its walk.
Cape Codders and the Sea
Coastal packet boats, the first commercial vessels on Cape Cod, flourished in the first half of the 19th century carrying mail, passengers, salt, and other cargo to Boston and New York. These boats were built in local yards from local lumber and captained by local men. The rivalry and pride among the various Cape towns for the fastest and most seaworthy packets stood the Cape men in good stead when the new Republic began to engage in international trade. Cape Codders, in fact, were among the first to sail the American flag into many foreign ports and uncharted seas. Captain John Kendrick of Harwich sailed from Boston in 1787 in the Columbia, the first American ship to circumnavigate the globe. A Brewster captain, Elijah Cobb, was captured by a French frigate during the French Revolution and made a successful appeal to Robespierre for release. After the War of 1812, many Cape Codders captained the first of the transatlantic Liverpool packets. But their true glory awaited them on the decks of the clipper ships, those majestic sailing vessels of the 1840s and ’50s. With their sleek hulls and tapered sterns, towering masts and double courses of sails, their speed and maneuverability in sailing into the wind, the “Yankee clippers” were generally regarded as the finest wooden ships ever made. They counted scores of Cape Codders among their captains, many of whom set transoceanic sailing records that still stand today. To cite only one, and not the most modest example, the following gravestone for Freeman Hatch, 1820-89, can be found in an Eastham cemetery: “He became famous making the astonishing passage in the clipper ship Northern Light from San Francisco in 76 days 6 hours—an achievement won by no mortal before or since.”