Whaling Museum and Mystic Seaport announce expansion of whaling history database

"Since our founding over 100 years ago, our passion has always been documenting and sharing the diverse stories of this vibrant maritime region."

Amanda McMullen

President & CEO of the New Bedford Whaling Museum

NEW BEDFORD — The New Bedford Whaling Museum announced a series of significant expansions to WhalingHistory.org, a joint project between the New Bedford Whaling Museum and Mystic Seaport Museum that collects data on past whaling voyages to form the world's most comprehensive whaling history database.

"Since our founding over 100 years ago, our passion has always been documenting and sharing the diverse stories of this vibrant maritime region," said Amanda McMullen, President & CEO of the New Bedford Whaling Museum. "We are thrilled to make this data available to the public and know that it will be an excellent resource to enthusiasts, researchers, and anyone around the world who traces their heritage to the whaling industry."

Launched in 2018 as a partnership between two of the world's leading maritime history museums, the Whaling History website compiles records from seven different whaling databases in the form of logbooks, journals, ship registers, newspapers, business papers, and custom house records. Users can access information on thousands of whaling voyages, as well as the list of its crew members. All data is open to the public and is downloadable for any researcher to use.

This past Fall, the website underwent a series of expansions that bolster the archive of voyages from the 18th and 19th centuries through the addition of the Dennis Wood Abstracts of Whaling Voyages as well as significant additions, revisions, and updates to existing data from both the American Offshore Whaling and British Southern Whale Fishery databases.

The Dennis Wood Abstracts of Whaling Voyages are comprised of brief, handwritten summaries of incoming and outgoing whaling voyages as recorded by Dennis Wood, a merchant and whaling agent in New Bedford over the course of his 44 years at the Mutual Marine Insurance Company. The New Bedford Free Public Library scanned more than 2,300 pages of Wood's notes from its collection to provide updated information on more than 6,700 voyage records between 1830 and 1874.

Further expansions to the database are constituted by additions as well as updates to existing data from the American Offshore Whaling and British Southern Whale Fishery databases. The American Offshore Whaling database has been updated for 2021, adding more than 370 voyages as well as many corrections and updates to existing voyage entries. The added voyages are primarily from the 18th century and extracted from contemporary newspapers. The British Southern Whale Fishery databases have been thoroughly revised and updated with additional voyages, crew lists, and data corrections.

The Whaling History website is a collaboration between the New Bedford Whaling Museum and Mystic Seaport Museum. To explore the voyage data, submit corrections, or add your own whaling history to the gallery, visit WhalingHistory.org.

"Since our founding over 100 years ago, our passion has always been documenting and sharing the diverse stories of this vibrant maritime region."

Amanda McMullen

President & CEO of the New Bedford Whaling Museum