Whaling in the United States

Commercial whaling in the United States dates to the 17th century in New England. The industry peaked in 1846–1852, and New Bedford, Massachusetts, sent out its last whaler, the John R. Mantra, in 1927. The Whaling industry was engaged with the production of three different raw materials: whale oil, spermaceti oil, and whalebone. Whale oil was the result of "trying-out" whale blubber by heating in water. It was a primary lubricant for machinery, whose expansion through the Industrial Revolution depended upon before the development of petroleum-based lubricants in the second half of the 19th century. Once the prized blubber and spermaceti had been extracted from the whale, the remaining majority of the carcass was discarded.^[1]

Spermaceti oil came solely from the head-case of sperm whales. It was processed by pressing the material rather than "trying-out". It was more expensive than whale oil, and highly regarded for its use in illumination, by burning the oil on cloth wicks or by processing the material into spermaceti candles, which were expensive and prized for their clean-burning properties. Chemically, spermaceti is more accurately classified as a wax rather than an oil.

Whalebone was baleen plates from the mouths of the baleen whales. Whalebone was commercially used to manufacture materials that required light but strong and thin supports. Women's corsets, umbrella and parasol ribs, crinoline petticoats, buggy whips and collar-stiffeners were commonly made of whalebone. Public records of exports of these three raw materials from the United States date back to 1791, and products of New England whaling represented a major portion of the American GDP for nearly 100 years.^[2]

Historic Aboriginal whaling within the boundaries of today's United States predated the arrival of European explorers, and is still practiced using the exception granted by the International Whaling Commission, which allows some subsistence hunting by Native Americans for cultural reasons.^[3] Catches have increased from 18 whales in 1985 to over 70 in 2010.^[4] The latest IWC quota regarding the subsistence hunting of the bowhead whale allowed for up to 336 to be killed in the period 2013–2018.^[3] Residents of the United States are also subject to U.S. Federal government bans against whaling as well.^[5]