Wampanoag whalemen and the Charles W. Morgan

As the historic Charles W. Morgan sets sail this month — for the first time in 93 years — its voyage along the coast commemorates thousands of New Englanders, from all walks of life, who went to sea in search of the most powerful creature they had ever known. Massive in size, larger than any other animal in North America, the whale and all that it provided was a treasured by the Wampanoag people long before white settlers established a whale oil trade here. On Martha’s Vineyard, the dramatic cliffs at Aquinna are colored red, according to Wampanoag tradition, by the blood of whales that the legendary giant Moshup caught by hand — indeed, the mighty Moshup is often portrayed holding a whale in his raised hand. Drift whales that occasionally washed up along the shore were a celebrated find, providing Wampanoag with a bounty of meat and blubber as well as whalebone that was shaped into tools.

Wampanoag men continued to be a major force in the New England whale oil trade after colonists arrived. At least half the men on many early whaling crews — and often more than that — were Wampanoag whalers. Decades later, a Martha’s Vineyard man, Tashtego, would become the islands’ most famous Wampanoag whaler, a central figure in Herman Melville’s classic novel Moby Dick. Tashtego was no fictional character, according to some Wampanoag living on Martha’s Vineyard today, but an actual resident of Aquinnah. “He was a real person,” Captain Buddy Vanderhoop, a lifelong Vineyard native, told me. “He lived up here in Gay Head.”

I learned about the dramatic stories of Wampanoag whalers while writing my new book on American pirate captives, At the Point of a Cutlass. Pirate crews in the early 18th century frequently impressed young men aboard their ships — including men from whaleships. In June 1722, a band of pirates under the command of Edward Low took as captives at least six men from a whaleboat off the coast of Nantucket — two white men and four or five Wampanoag, including a young man named Thomas Mumford from Martha’s Vineyard. The pirates hanged two of the Wampanoag whalemen, but Mumford survived and was forced to sail with Low’s crew for about a year before he was finally freed.

Read more about Wampanoag whaling and Thomas Mumford’s dramatic voyage in my new article in Martha’s Vineyard Magazine here.