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Nantucket Whalers flags (U.S.)

Massachusetts

Introduction
Flags of Nantucket whalers
Pattern Analysis
House flags
Vessel flags

See also:

Introduction

The island of Nantucket, located 50 km south from Cape Cod, is the main component of the Town of Nantucket (10,172 inhabitants in 2010), which also includes the smaller islands of Tuckernuck and Muskeget.

Nantucket as the whaling capital of the world

Nantucket was settled in 1659 by English farmers and shepherds. The island, soon covered with farms and livestock herds, quickly lacked sources of income for an ever-increasing population. At the time, the waters located south of the island were an autumn meeting place for hundreds of whales. While the Wampanoag natives harvested "drift whales" that washed ashore, the English settlers did not care pursuing "right whales" as the English settlers of Cape Cod and Eastern Long Island had already been doing. Around 1690, however, an islander described the scene as "a green pasture where our children's grandchildren will go for bread". Ichabod Paddock, a Cape Cod whaler, was hired to instruct the islanders. They established a debt servitude system that supplied the early whaling boats with Wampanoag manpower. In 1712, Captain Hussey, pushed out northwards by the winds, spotted and harpooned a sperm whale, hitherto unknown to the islanders. Sperm whales soon appeared as more dangerous but more profitable than right whales: the quality of they blubber's oil was superior and they produced highly-prized spermaceti. Nantucket turned into the main port of sperm whale pursuit, surpassing the other ports established on the main land and Long Island.
By 1760, the Nantucketers had exhausted the local whale resource. Technical progress, however, allowed them to build big ships suitable for ocean-going voyages and onboard oil processing. The Nantucket fleet pursued whales up to the Arctic, the western coast of Africa, the eastern coast of South America and the Falkland Islands. Nicknamed the "Nation of Nantucket" by the poet Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), the island was described in 1775 by the Irish statesman Edmond Burke (1729-1797) as the cradle of "a new American breed". In 1702, Mary Coffin Starbuck (1645-1717, aka "The Great Mary of Nantucket") converted to Quakerism, introduced on the island by the minister John Richardson (1667-1753). The whalemen, described by Herman Melville (1819-1891) as "Quakers with a vengeance" set a convenient parallel between their sole source of income and religion; those "pacifist killers" simply enacted God's will. The Quaker's South Meetinghouse, built in 1792, attracted up to 2,000 people in scheduled meetings, being not only a temple but also a convenient meeting place.

Nearly stopped during the Revolution and War of 1812, whaling resumed in Nantucket after peace had been restored. Sperm whales were pursued in the Pacific Ocean, which increased the duration of the voyages from nine months to two or three years. Nantucket, then the whaling capital of the world, fully depended on the whale resource and of continental manpower, following the extinct of the Wampanoag population. Since most adult men stayed on the island only for short periods between whaling campaigns, women had to raise children, to oversee the island's business and to maintain commercial and personal relationships within the island's community. In 1810, nearly one quarter of the Nantucket women over the age of 23 had lost their husbands to the sea - therefore their nickname of "Cape Horn widows" - and there were 472 fatherless children. When Herman Melville visited Nantucket in summer 1852, one year after the publication of "Moby Dick". the island, superseded as the whaling capital of the world by New Bedford and devastated by a fire in 1846, had already entered in economic depression. The last whaling ship departed from Nantucket in 1869.

After Nathaniel Philbrick, "How Nantucket Came to Be the Whaling Capital of the World". Smithsonian Magazine, December 2015
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/nantucket-came-to-be-whaling-capital-of-world-180957198/
Ivan Sache, 31 January 2019

Flags of Nantucket whalers

Source
The signal flags, owners' flags and house flags of Nantucket whalers were compiled by Robert R. Newell, a retired advertising executive and noted amateur marine artist, who illustrated them in the poster "The Private Signals of Nantucket Whaling Merchants". Following his death, his widow donated all the related material to the Old Dartmouth Historical Society. Donald E. Ridley, a retired marine engineer and a volunteer Assistant Curator at the Kendall Whaling Museum in Sharon, MA, and at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, thoroughly browsed Newell's material and attempted to authenticate the flags after genuine sources - Newell failed to cite his sources. Ridley authenticated 140 out of the190 flags reported for Nantucket by Newell, correcting the color scheme for 8 of them.
Ridley's sources were first-hand reports found in log books, journals and diaries from the 1831-1853 period, complemented with Taber Brothers' "Whaling Directory of the United States" (1869) and the poster "Signals of the Nantucket Whaling Fleet 1788-1865" (uncredited), kept at the Nantucket Historical Association.

The complete reference of Ridley's monograph is:
Nantucket Signal Flags, Owners' Flag, and House Flags of Nantucket Whalers Compiled by Donald E. Ridley, P.E.; Foreword by Stuart M. Frank, Ph.D.
Illustrations based on the flag paintings of Robert R. Newell, corrected and edited by Donald E. Ridley and Michael Lapides.
Kendall Monograph No. 16, 2004
Stuart M. Frank, Series Editor
Published by the New Bedford Whaling Museum, Old Dartmouth Historical
Society, New Bedford, MA

The monograph is available online: https://www.whalingmuseum.org/sites/default/files/pdf/KWM%20Monorgaph%20Series%20No%2016_Nantucket%20Signals.pdf

Donald E. Ridley is also the author of a noted study "Determination of authenticity of engraved scrimshaw", pp. 33-54 in "Fakebusters II. Scientific detection of fakery in art and philately", edited by Richard J. Weiss and Duane Chartier, World Scientific Publishing Co., 2004.
Ivan Sache, 31 January 2019

Pattern Analysis

Out of the 140 flags reported by Ridley, 104 are rectangular; among them, 7 are represented with an odd "steamer" extending from the mid part of the fly. Another 20 flags are swallow-tailed, triangular pennants, 12 are simple triangular pennants, while the 4 remaining flags are made of two simple, triangular pennants placed one above each other.
The colors used are white (on 133 flags), blue (on 123 flags), and red (on 72 flags).

Most flags used basic field combinations (plain field, vertical or horizontal stripes, cross, saltire), often charged with letters (initials on 28 flags, ship's full name on 6 flags). Other charges are mostly simple geometric shapes (disc on 19 flags, stars) on 7 flags, diamond on 3 flags, rectangle on 3 flags. Only 4 flags feature figurative elements: a tree (?), four anchors, a harpooner, and a sperm whale (on two related flags).
Ivan Sache, 31 January 2019

House flags

Ridley comments: "There are a number of instances where the same flag was used by more than one entity. Most cases involved a number of related persons, e.g. the Starbucks all used the same flag."
Ivan Sache, 31 January 2019