Nantucket is 30 miles off the mainland of Massachusetts. After an hour-long ferry ride, I stepped off the boat, sucked in the cold sea air, and felt myself transported back to the nineteenth century when Nantucket was one of the richest cities in America thanks to one big commodity: whales.

To escape persecution from the Puritans, who did not like anyone who disagreed with their religion, European settlers on the Massachusetts mainland made their way to the beautiful island called "Nantucket,"-a Native American word meaning "Faraway Land." When the first Europeans arrived in the mid-1600s, they found 1200 Wampanoag Indians already living on the island and whaling. The Indians used the whales that washed up on the shores mainly for food and making tools. But in the 1700-1800s, whale oil became a prized substance worldwide because it was the only source of fuel for lamp lighting, and the best thing to use for lubrication. New uses for whale parts were becoming endless. Whale baleen and blubber were used for carriage springs, corsets for women, fishing rods, bed frames, umbrellas, combs, candle wax, soap, kitchen tools. You name it, whales helped to make it.

In 1819, with the whole world now demanding whale products, the people of Nantucket, with their prime spot on the coast, became the whaling capitol of the world. Most of Nantucket's settlers were Quakers.

Their strong work ethic, combined with their simple lifestyles, turned Nantucket into an economic powerhouse. But, as seems to be a recurring trend in American history, prosperity for the Europeans meant suffering for the Indians. By controlling the whaling industry, the Europeans forced many Indians into "debt servitude," a slave-like condition wherein the Indians found themselves increasingly in debt. Many of them eventually died from disease.

As the number of whales started to decrease because of high demand, the whaling industry entered a more sophisticated age. Boats would journey for up to four years to the South Pacific and around Cape Horn in South America, in hungry pursuit of whales. Contrary to the heroic myth of the Yankee whaler, most of the crew people were young males, disproportionately black, and poor, as harpooning whales is a rather dangerous lifestyle. Some like the young Herman Melville, sought adventure. At the age of twenty he went on a whaling expedition and ended up living with South Pacific cannibals. Other men sought out whaling as a way to climb out of poverty. This was especially true for free blacks who were starting new lives after slavery.

I walked the cobblestone streets of Nantucket, braving the cold rain with my generous tour guide, Prof. Susan Beegel. She described to me the unique, multicultural community of Nantucket that existed during the glory years of the whaling industry. After hearing her stories, I know why Melville chose this island as the inspiration for one of the most important American novels ever written.

In Moby-Dick, the crew of the Pequot came in all shapes and colors from Queequeg, a South Pacific heathen, to Captain Ahab, a demonic Quaker. There are a lot of other funny names like, Daggoo, Tashtego, Stubb, Flask, and Starbuck-supposedly the basis for that big coffee company's name. Nantucket was a multiracial community, which because of its Quaker beliefs, was a hotbed of abolitionist activity. Frederick Douglass made his first public oration in Nantucket. But don't think all the Quakers were saints. Some crews, if they didn't find any whales, would sail to Africa to capture slaves and bring them to South America. Though blacks were welcomed for their cheap labor, especially after the decline in the Indian population, they were not allowed to join Quaker societies. African Americans lived in segregated areas and attended separate schools, until Absalom Boston, the first black whaling captain, went to court to get his daughter into the white schools in 1848.

Melville saw these contradictions about the Quakers, who while emphasizing the equality of humankind and nonviolence, were exploiting their workers in the bloody, ruthless pursuit of whales and profits. Ship leaders would charge up the whazoo for clothes and food, while many poor whalers found themselves more indebted after the long journey than at the beginning! Melville called the Nantucket captains and ship owners in Moby-Dick "Quakers with a vengeance." Unlike Walt Whitman and the transcendentalists, Melville did not take a completely positive view of nature (the ship gets sunk by a whale in Moby-Dick) and also explored the evil side of humans (the crazy Captain Ahab). He saw that American expansionism, both on land and in the sea, had troublesome moral consequences and could lead people to behave in barbaric ways.

Even though Moby-Dick is essentially a boy-book with not a girl in sight, Melville recognized and admired the strength of Nantucket women who had to endure their husbands absences for years at a time. Because the Quaker faith stresses equality between men and women, and because women were alone much of the time, Nantucket women had lives that were unlike any on the mainland. Wives could buy property, control their finances and own businesses. It was women shopkeepers who kept the island going, so much so that there is a street called "Petticoat Row" where most of their businesses were located. Given the independent nature of Nantucket women, it's not surprising that so many of them would have a great impact on our history. Among the women Nantucket can claim as her own are the abolitionist and feminist Lucretia Mott, the first woman astronomer Maria Mitchell, and Mary Ellen Pleasant, a free black woman who became the mother of the California civil rights movement and was worth $30 million by the time she died!

This was the hardest, most exasperating day of my life.

Now that I've learned about Nantucket's fascinating history, I'm actually excited to try and read Moby-Dick. Most people didn't feel that way when it first came out. They probably had my first reaction: and thought: 'that's a really long book'. Only later, in the 1920s, was the novel rediscovered. As Melville's career declined, so did Nantucket's fortunes. The discovery of petroleum in 1859 spelled doom for the whaling industry. Already, many people had left for the California Gold Rush in the previous decade. Many of the Quaker whalers then went into other businesses, with sometimes astounding success. Thanks to the profits of whaling, we now have as a direct result, Macy's Department Stores, Folger's Coffee and my Coleman tent that I've used on this trek. Today, Nantucket survives through its tourist industry of people whose imaginations are still captured by whale harpoons and deep blue seas. And so the first thing I'm going to do when I return to Boston is open up Moby-Dick and begin reading… "Call me Ishmael."

Irene

Please email me at: irene@ustrek.org