Gulf of Mexico (WGNO) — In 1807, the country banned slave ships from entering the country. Little was done to enforce the new law and illegal slave ship continued to secretly transport African to the United States into the 1860’s.
Slave ships would have been sharing the ocean water with another type of ship that carried free men of color. These were whaling ships.
The ocean is a universe of mystery, for anything can be hidden beneath the waves. Recently a discovered shipwreck was found in the Gulf of Mexico. Scott Sorset, a marine archeologist for the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management says, “by the late 1800’s, there were no whales being caught in the gulf of Mexico anymore. Whaling ships traveled around the world, to find whales. Some trips could take months or they could take years. From 1788 to 1888, there were over 114 whaling ships operating in the gulf of Mexico on active whaling missions. Most of them came from the northeast. It was America’s first global industry.
The shipwreck was first discovered back in 2011 by an energy company. This year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s scientists and partners, sent a remote operated vehicle 60 miles south of Louisiana to continue research.
The 60-foot-long and 40-foot-wide ship is believed to be a long lost whaling ship known as the industry, which was the only known whaling ship to have sank in the Gulf of Mexico. It was built in 1815 in Westport Massachusetts.
“There weren’t many artifacts onboard. We found a stove that was set up in a very particular way that suggests it was a tri-works. Tri-works is a system that small vessels would use, to render the whale blubber into oil,” says Scott Sorset.
Hundreds of years before today’s major industry of petroleum, from pre-revolutionary times until after the Civil War, whale oil lit the lamps of American cities, lubricated watches, lubricated clocks, lubricated sewing machines and typewriters.
Massachusetts was the center of whaling and African Americans were a large part of the trade. One of the ways a small population of the enslaved would escape to freedom in the north, was to find their way aboard a ship. Paul Cuffe was at one point, the richest African American man in the country. He was an abolitionist and employed people of color to work onboard his whaling ships. Cuffe’s son, William was navigator. Cuffe’s son in law Pardon William, was an officer of the whaling ship known as the “Industry.”
Lee Blake is the President of the New Bedford Historical Society and says, “what you have is one of his sons and son in laws, who is involved in this ship called the Industry. It is Cuffe’s vision and his work as a whaling captain that sets up this whole dynasty of black whalers.
Lee Blake has a unique vantage point, as a history because she is a descendant of the Cuffe family and says, “New Bedford is well-known as a whaling outpost. Many of the different ethnic groups that came to New Bedford, came from the trade with the whaling industry. African Americans were here and so were Native Americans. The Native Americans were the ones who taught Europeans how to whale and catch what was known as black fish.
James Delgado is a maritime archeologist with Search INC and says, “whaling ships were one of those few places at that time, where it didn’t matter who you were, where you came from, or what color you were, if you could prove your worth on a whaling ship. It was a meritocracy! Here, you see incredible diversity on whalers. You see the formerly enslaved and children of the formerly enslaved. You see indigenous people and some of them have married into these African American families. This is one of the few chances, if you were a man of color in early 19th century America, to be seen and listed as a U.S. citizen.
Despite the freedom, whaling was a very hard life. The Industry was struck by a storm May 26th, 1836. After over 150 years, the shipwreck was found. What had become of it’s crew at the time of it sinking?
Lee Blake paints the story of the end of the ship saying, “the industry has this cataclysmic issue and begins to sink. I know that the southerners would have picked those men up and put them right into slavery; either being re-enslaved or enslaved for the first time. However, another ship from Westport comes by and saves them all. It is a real interesting twist of fate, that those men are saved by a white whaler from their hometown.”