BIG 5 - 7/8” RARE NANTUCKET MASSACHUSETTS OLD MILL STERLING SILVER SOUVENIR SPOON
Item History & Price
| Reference Number: Avaluer:30886766 | Composition: Sterling Silver |
| Brand: William B. Durgin Co | Age: Approx. 100 years |
| Type: Souvenir Spoons |
Here is a beautifulfull size (5-7/8”) feeling solid sterling silver spoon from NantucketMassachusetts known along with New Bedford for whale industry and whalingfishing fleet dating to years around 1900 featuring on the front of the handledetailed image of windmill structure (also known as YE OLD WINDE MILLE 1746)and NANTUCKET down the handle. Measures 5-7/8” long (148 mm) and condition ofthe spoon is excellent. On the back marked STERLING PAT’D APR.21.91 E.V.HALLETT and D, which... is marking for William B. Durgin Co. Shipping on multiplepurchases are gladly combined. Please see other, some rare, collector spoonsI'm currently listing. Here is some additional information on the subject: In the mid-18th century Nantucket emerged as the world’s most vigorouswhaling port, with a substantial fleet dedicated exclusively to pelagic spermand right whaling on distant grounds, and a highly developed network of merchantsand mariners to prosecute the hunt. However, while Nantucketers themselvesowned and manned the ships, it was a cartel of merchants in Boston, Newport, and Providence who controlled the catch, refined the oil, manufacturedspermaceti candles, and set the prices for oil and bone. The cartel evenmonopolized the coastwise and foreign export routes that brought Americanproducts to market. By the 1760s some of Nantucket’s most prominent whalingmerchants, the Rotch and Rodman families, grew weary of the cartel monopoly andrebelled against it, moving their operations to the little village on theAcushnet. Here they continued to mount whaling voyages but also startedrefining whale oil and manufacturing spermaceti candles on their own. They alsodeveloped an independent import-export network up and down the American coastand on both sides of the Atlantic. Itwas on this rebellious basis, on the eve of the American Revolution, that NewBedford was really founded and its future course as a whaling port charted. In1838 the rail link to Taunton and Providence was completed and New Bedford’smainland advantage over Nantucket was assured. New Bedford was formallyincorporated as a city in 1847, by which time its ships and barks were makingvoyages of two, three, or even four years in pursuit of sperm whales, rightwhales, bowheads, humpbacks, and gray whales in virtually every corner of theworld: New Bedford had surpassed Nantucket, London, and all other whaling portsboth in the size and tonnage of its fleet and the value of its catch.
