The richest city in the world, literally shedding new light on an industrialising America. Mythic leviathans fought to the death in all the world's oceans. The greatest of the early American novels. The strange case of Herman Melville, born wealthy, raised poor, lifted to fame and died forgotten. The even stranger voyage of the Pequod. And, of course, the Great White Whale.

It was all here, 150 years ago.

In these politically correct times, even the city fathers might be understandably reluctant to finance nostalgia in the New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park, where big business once squeezed so much money from so many defenceless sea mammals. "Big oil" isn't even an admired term any longer, regardless of whether it means petro-dollars or the slick of a cetacean.

But there are a lot of people who live here today who won't have the past forgotten. Somehow the New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park came into being in 1996, covering 34 acres and 13 city blocks that were not just the centre of the whaling industry in their time, but headquarters of the wealthiest industry on the planet, and one of the most cosmopolitan too.

This is the first of a two-part post. We begin with a tour of New Bedford, and Melville's shore-borne world. In Part 2, coming soon, off into the sea lanes plied by the Pequod of fiction and, in truth, a thousand wind-carried whalers just like her.

LINKS: There's a comprehensive New Bedford Area Visitors Guide here. Besides the New Bedford Whaling Museum site mentioned on the tour, the museum has a lively and information whaling history here.
The Melville Society of America, established in 1947, is one of the world's largest international single-author societies. It publishes two scholarly journals, Leviathan and Extracts.

STILL MAKING NEWS: Yesterday, June 17, 2006, a coalition of conservation-minded nations blocked Japan's attempt to form a pro-whaling majority on the International Whaling Commission and reverse the moratorium on commercial hunting that went into effect two decades ago.
Japan, Norway and Iceland lost a third straight vote at the 70-member commission's annual meeting in St Kitt's, thwarting their predicted takeover of the organisation that manages whaling.
The Japanese delegation, adamant that whales are thriving in the seas, is to host a meeting on the 19th regarding its plan to "normalise" the 60-year-old commission and push it back toward its roots as a whaling-management group.