‘Down to the seas again,’ a local seafaring saga

“Voices From the Vault,” a performance piece written and directed by Carol Galligan, is scheduled this year for the Saturday evening after Thanksgiving at the Shelter Island Historical Society’s Havens House. One segment of this year’s “Voices” follows:

Long before Ahab quested after Moby Dick for vengeance, Americans were pursuing the whale in almost every ocean in the world for the oil to light the lighthouses on their shores and the lamps of colonial families. They set out from dozens of eastern ports for the open seas and the golden age of whaling thrived in waters thousands of miles beyond these shores.
The crews who signed on for whaling voyages never knew what they might earn or for how many years they might be away. The voyage continued until the hold was filled. To quote an old folk song, “the dangers were many and the pleasures were few.”
The discovery of oil in Pennsylvania in 1859 sounded the death knell for whaling. Corsets and stays kept the whaling industry profitable on a small scale into the early years of the 20th century but when the hourglass figure fell out of fashion, a thrilling but dangerous chapter in American history came to a definitive close.  
In 1925, a man named George Francis Dow published a book, “Whale ships and Whaling,” subtitled “An account of the whale fisheries in colonial New England.” Someone, whose name we do not know, researched their copy of that book carefully, making special note of ships based in Greenport, Shelter Island and Sag Harbor and those notes found their way to the Havens House vault. And so we learn of our neighbors’ adventures, so many long years ago.

June 10, 1723: The sloop Ranger, off Eastern Long Island with Captain Ludlow in command, attacked by bloodthirsty pirates.

1807: The ship Union, with Captain Gardiner in command, struck by a whale’s head. Sank in mid-ocean off the Brazilian banks, the crew in whale boats reached the Azores 12 days later.

July 9, 1812: The schooner Mount Hope, captured by the British and burned.
 
1838: The Daniel Webster’s captain,  Stratton H. Fairlow,  killed by a whale at age 27. First Mate in charge for the rest of the voyage.

1838: The bark Fanny’s captain, Charles W. Payne, killed at age 30.
November 1843: The Silas Richards, 454 tons, captained by Nicol Richard Dering, the youngest son of Henry Dering, returned from New Zealand.

1850: The Ann Alexander out of New Bedford, struck by a whale and sank in just a few minutes.

September 14, 1850: The Mary Ann, 380 tons, captained by Nicol R. Dering, cleared for California.

1861: The Panama, 464 tons, captured and burned by the rebel privateer Calhoun. 

1862: The Estelle purchased by Lodovic Stone, sunk off Charleston in Savannah Harbor to prevent the entrance of blockade runners.

1865: The Perry, chased from the mouth of the Bering Straits south for several hours, finally escaping from the rebel privateer Shenandoah. 

1871: The Nantucket, valued at $58,000, abandoned in the ice at Cape Nome.