New Bedford, MA, you say? Where’s that? Well if you’ve read half as much about the New England whaling industry as I have, you’d know. While Ishmael may leave Manhattan Island in “Loomings,” Moby-Dick‘s narrator is heading for Massachusetts—and while he hopes to go to Nantucket, he ends up stuck in New Bedford for a weekend, and ultimately ends up sailing from there. But there’s no reason to be as depressed as Ishmael is to have missed the packet to Nantucket, because New Bedford is an awesome literary place in its own right.
The New Bedford Whaling Museum
Not only does the New Bedford Whaling Museum feature enough art and artifacts to teach the uninitiated what a try-works is or how whaling changed both before and after Melville’s time, but it also has some especially interesting tidbits of New England history you might not be familiar with. If you’re wondering why the New Bedford area has so many Portuguese-style food options, you may find your answer in an exhibit on how the Azorean, Cape Verdean, and Brazilian communities developed very early in this location due to whaling.
You can also visit the last remaining wooden whaling ship, the Charles W. Morgan.
