1830s whaling ship wreck gives insight into America's racial history. The shipwreck, officially known as No. 15563, was identified as the Industry, the only known whaling ship to sink in the Gulf of Mexico.
On Wednesday, scientists said they were certain the wreck was built in 1815 and capsized in a storm on May 26, 1836. Its rediscovery and the newly discovered fate of the crew, which most likely included black Americans, white Americans and Native Americans, opens a window into the maritime and racial life of the pre-war United States.
The remains of the ship were first documented in 2011, when a geological data company scanned an oil lease and found the wreck at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. Following standard procedures, the company reported its find to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which registered the wreck as 15563 and left it alone.
The seabed of the world is covered in shipwrecks and oil contractors are constantly bumping into them. But James P. Delgado, senior vice president of Search Inc., a firm that manages cultural resources such as archaeological sites and artifacts, became interested because the oil contractor's description mentions a triwork, a type of furnace unique to whaling. vessels.
When the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration needed to test new equipment in the Gulf of Mexico, it turned to Search Inc. asking if there are wrecks it is interested in.
From his office last month, Dr. Delgado, an expert in maritime archeology, directed the crew of the NOAA Okeanos Explorer, which flew a remote-controlled vehicle around the wreckage at a depth of 6,000 feet about 70 miles from the mouth of the Mississippi River. . The vehicle repeatedly moved back and forth in precise patterns, collecting images and data from which Dr. Delgado and other researchers created an extremely detailed 3D model known as an orthomosaic.
They studied the size of the ship (64 feet by 20 feet); hull shape (characteristic of the early 1800s); materials (lack of a distinct green color indicating the presence of oxidized copper); and three-cookers (insulated with a lot of bricks, indicating that the ovens were operated at the scorching temperatures needed to produce oil from whale oil).
All of this, along with the location, was consistent with what the researchers knew about the Industry.
Whaling flourished as the industry set sail, and in northern coastal cities such as Westport, Massachusetts, it brought together black Americans, white Americans, and Native Americans to a degree that was rare in other sectors. One of the prominent shipbuilders was Paul Cuff, son of a freed slave and Wampanoag, and one of Cuff's own sons, William, served on the crew of Industry.
The Cuff family "employed almost all blacks and Indians for their ships, and they made sure that all of these people were paid the same according to their ship rank," said Lee Blake, president of the New Bedford Historical Society and a descendant of Cuff. "It's a completely different way of looking at work at a time when you had southern ports, which of course enslaved Native Americans and African Americans."
The racial makeup of the Industry crew would have limited its options when it ran into trouble because black members would be imprisoned and potentially sold into slavery if they docked at the southern port. Most whalers avoided the Gulf of Mexico altogether; According to research by Judith Lund, a historian at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, only 214 whaling voyages are known to have taken place in the Persian Gulf from the 1780s to the 1870s.
Until now, historians did not know what happened to Industry's crew.
When Robin Winters, librarian of the Westport Free Public Library, began excavations in September at the request of Dr. Delgado, all she knew was that the ship had sunk somewhere in the Persian Gulf in 1836. The passenger manifest sank along with it. The Starbuck whaling family's documents identified the captain as "Soule".
For several months, Miss Winters remained dry. She then contacted Jim Borzilleri, a Nantucket explorer who found a passing mention in an 1830s newspaper clipping of Captain Soul associated with a Nantucket-based ship called the Elizabeth.
Soule was a common surname in New England at the time, Ms. Winters said, but the mention caught her attention. "I thought, 'Hmm, maybe it's too good to be true that maybe brig Elizabeth picked up the crew and captain?' - she said.
She asked Mr Borzill You can look for any mention of Industry and Elizabeth together.
He called back 10 minutes later.
He read to Mrs. Winters from a tiny "nautical news" note hidden at the back of the Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror dated June 22, 1836: Elizabeth arrived home on June 17, carrying 375 barrels of whale oil, along with "Passengers Captain Soule and the crew of the brig "Westport industry" flipped May 26. Balize with 310 barrels of oil on board.
In other words, the Industria crew survived by sheer luck when they were picked up by another ship from the north.
According to Dr. Delgado, the most interesting discoveries in maritime archeology are not always the ships whose names are in textbooks, but "those ships that speak of everyday experience."
“And at the same time, we are reminded that history is not big names,” he added.
"When we find a ship, in many ways it's like a book is suddenly opened," Dr. Delgado said. "And not every page can be there, but when they are, it's like 'Wow'."