Posted on April 26, 2008 by Greg Stone
THE MERCURY NEW BEDFORD, OCT 17-18,1849 Dreadful Suffering At Sea- We have received a letter from Capt. Hosmer, later master of the whaling barque Janet, of Westport, furnishing an account of privations and sufferings of a boat’s crew belonging to the Janet comprising the captain and five others, which is almost without parallel in the […]
Continue ReadingPosted on April 26, 2008 by Greg Stone
Westport’s most gruesome catastrophe befell the crew of the Janet in 1849. While chasing a whale, the master and several members of her crew were separated from the ship and left to drift in their small whaleboat for 2 weeks. Two survivors wrote an account of their ordeal, one written by Captain Francis Hosmer and […]
Continue ReadingPosted on April 26, 2008 by Greg Stone
Westport suffered its share of disasters. The peak of the whaling industry in the 1850’s was matched by the peak in shipwrecks and other disasters. . . .
Continue ReadingPosted on April 24, 2008 by Greg Stone
“My men, you must be well aware that the object of this voyage is to get a cargo of oil,” wrote Captain Edward S. Davoll to the officers and crew of his whaling vessel. . . .
Continue ReadingPosted on April 24, 2008 by Greg Stone
Abbie Maria Dexter Hicks went whaling in 1873. We know this because she kept a diary from June 23, 1873 to September 13, 1874 in a tiny book that measures only 5” by 3” in the collection of the New Bedford Whaling Museum. Her husband was Captain Edward E. Hicks. Two months after their marriage […]
Continue ReadingPosted on June 14, 2005 by Bill Wyatt
Bruce White Most accounts of cotton manufacturing in New England describe a progression from the small rural water-powered cotton-spinning operations, through the larger company town enterprises that extended the spinning of yarn to the manufacture of cloth, to the fully industrialized steam-powered factories of the latter part of the nineteenth century. Despite this trend, however, […]
Continue ReadingPosted on February 23, 2005 by Bill Wyatt
Someone left a clipping from the Personals section of a paper
Continue ReadingPosted on February 1, 2005 by Bill Wyatt
There are references to sailing into and out of Westport in several whaling logs. We print here
Continue ReadingPosted on December 1, 2004 by Greg Stone
Westport Roads We drive them all the time, but rarely give a thought to the roads of Westport. And yet they are of historical interest for a number of reasons. A quick glance at the map on p. 23 of A look at Westport through four centuries (available through the Historical Society or at Partners […]
Continue ReadingPosted on April 22, 2004 by Bill Wyatt
In 1926 summer residents of Westport Harbor petitioned the State to secede from Westport; they felt that they paid much in taxes but received few services and could not vote (because non-residents) on the Town budget. The Legislature kicked the matter back to the Town, and at a Town Meeting of January, 1926, the proposal […]
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