New Bedford Whaling NHP

          Located in New Bedford, MA, the park takes you back to a time when New Bedford was one of the most important whaling ports in the whole world. In his novel "Moby Dick", H. Melville described the beautiful city as "the dearest place to live in," and I have to agree. He goes on to say that "...nowhere in all America will you find more patrician-like houses, parks and gardens more opulent, than in New Bedford…all these brave houses and flowery gardens came from the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans. One and all, they were harpooned and dragged up hither from the bottom of the sea."

          The Visitor Center on Williams Street is the best place to start your time travel adventure.Here you will find very friendly park ranges and volunteers that can help you sign up for one of the free tours or with any question you have about the park. There are also several artifacts in display. They have several brochures and one of them talks about the Underground Railroad and New Bedford's role in the liberation of slaves, which I didn't know about. You can also inquire about the Passport to the National Parks Program and you can get your passport stamped.

          On the tours, which are free and change according to the tour guide on that day, you will visit and hear about the history of some of the most historic places in downtown as well as some a little further away. Places like the Seamen's Bethel, featured in Moby Dick, the opulent houses of the whaling's elite,  and the businesses that supported the whaling industry.

          They also talk about the underground railroad and the most prominent characters of the movement in New Bedford. People like Frederick Douglass, a distinguished man of the nineteenth century, whose escape route took him to New Bedford and was helped by Nathan and Poly Johnson, and William Rotch Jr., "one of the earliest and staunchest abolitionists in the city, and a charter member of the Providence Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery (1789) and the first president of the New Bedford Anti-Slavery Society (1834)".

         
           There are several residences and gardens that work in cooperation with the park but are private institutions. These charge an admissions fee so do your research before you venture out. There is also Fort Taber Park, important site in military history of the region, especially during the Civil War. The New Bedford Whaling Museum has the world's largest collection of global whaling and maritime history. The Buttonwood Zoo boasts more than 150 animals native to the region.

      On the weekends, if you are lucky, you may cross roads with one the ladies, that discover "time travel" and visit the downtown area regularly every weekend. I had a very interesting conversation with the one pictured here.

          You can also visit the waterfront and observed an active commercial fishing port. It always makes me remember a neighbor  I had when I first moved to the area in 2000. He was a fisherman, and after every trip he would bring me a gallon zip-lock bag full of the fresh delicious scallops.

          Even though New Bedford was part of the Underground Railroad and many blacks lived free of slavery, society was still divided by class. A perfect example of this is the Double Bank building, which for 61 years housed the Merchants Bank for the prosperous whaling elite on the right and the Mechanics Bank  for shopkeepers and skilled tradespeople on the left.

        Completely off topic, if you are in the downtown area and like Mexican food, you have to visit No Problemo. The have the best burritos hands down, big and freshly made to order.


Trivia Facts

1. The first whaling vessel launched from New Bedford in 1767, the "Dartmouth," was one of the ships later involved in the Boston Tea Party.
2. Today, New Bedford is home to the number one fishing port in the United States in terms of the dollar value of its catch.
3. Abraham Lincoln spoke in New Bedford on September 14, 1848, in Liberty Hall on William Street. At the time, he was a little-known congressman from Illinois plugging the election of Zachary Taylor.
4. In 1857, at the height of whaling, there were a total of 329 whaling vessels in New Bedford's fleet, which employed roughly 10,000 men.
5. By the 1840s, black sailors constituted about one-sixth of the labor force; and by 1900, West Indians, Azoreans, and Cape Verdeans had become a majority.
6. Between 1840 and 1860 some 300-700 escaped slaves were living in New Bedford. Frederick Douglass was among those who found freedom in New Bedford. He arrived in 1838 after escaping from Baltimore carrying another sailor's protection papers.

Sources:  New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park website.