Whaling in Maine
The history of American whaling is most frequently associated with Nantucket, New Bedford and Mystic. However, the state of Maine also played an integral part in the development and success of this important industry. The sons of Maine became whaling captains, whaling crews, inventors, investors and businessmen. Towns along the coast created community-wide whaling and sealing ventures, outfitted their own ships and crewed them with their own people. The state also supplied the growing industry with Maine-built ships, whale boats, oars and other maritime supplies. For more than two hundred years, the state forged a strong and lasting connection with the American whaling industry. Author and historian Charles Lagerbom reveals why Maine should rightly take its place alongside its more well-known New England whaling neighbors.
Charles H. Lagerbom
Charles H. Lagerbom received his history BA degree from Kansas State University and history and archaeology MA degree from University of Maine, with work on a Revolutionary War truckhouse excavated on Penobscot River. He has organized underwater surveys of ship remains in Maine lakes, as well as the 1779 Penobscot Expedition. Charles worked in Antarctica with glacial geology research teams from University of Maine Quaternary Institute, now Climate Change Institute. A published author and avid polar, colonial Maine and maritime historian, Charles has frequently written, lectured and made presentations on cruise ships, sailing vessels and ashore about history, life, politics and science of Antarctica, Cape Horn and South Atlantic, as well as colonial Maine and New England maritime history and archaeology. He is author of The Fifth Man: The Life of H.R. Bowers, published by Caedmon of Whitby (1999). Charles is past membership chair of the American Polar Society and immediate past president of the Antarctican Society, where he serves as current archivist/historian. He makes his home on the coast of Maine.
