New Bedford:The City that Lit the World

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New Bedford, Massachusetts, was once the wealthiest city per capita in North America (Credit: Credit: Posnov/Getty Images)

USA Massachusetts History

The city that lit the world
http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20180719-the-city-that-lit-the-world

New Bedford, Massachusetts, is a place few have heard of. But the mark it has left on the world is profound.

By Mike MacEacheran

20 July 2018

On the south-eastern underbelly of the Massachusetts shoreline, overshadowed by the hook-shaped peninsula of beautiful Cape Cod and the harbour islands of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, New Bedford is the kind of place most visitors drive right through.

All but forgotten on the Acushnet River, the downtown is a relic of its 19th-Century heyday, preserved as a monument to history and a peculiar reminder of the city’s rise and fall. The quaysides and cobbles still buzz with local life, but scratch below the surface and darker, more uncomfortable truths lurk on every corner.

Because New Bedford isn’t just any town. On a visit, you’ll learn it was once the wealthiest city per capita in North America. But you’ll also hear it was where men were 100 times more likely to die than anywhere else and that the streets were once overrun with blubber and blood. The catalyst? Whaling.

“We call New Bedford ‘the city that lit the world’ for a reason,” Schnetzer told me, pointing to what was once the most profitable street in the US. “The Quakers – the religious dissidents who first settled the area – found that if they rendered the fat from a whale carcass washed on shore, then lit it, they had smokeless, scentless, beautiful lamp oil.”

As gruesome as it sounds, whale oil was a plentiful resource, and within years the operation had multiplied tenfold. To increase yields, liquid spermaceti wax was harvested from the skulls of sperm whales that swam in the channels of Nantucket Sound, then later processed into fuel.