RARE NANTUCKET MASSACHUSETTS OLD MILL STERLING SILVER SOUVENIR SPOON
Item History & Price
| Reference Number: Avaluer:52779475 | Composition: Sterling Silver |
| Age: Approx. 100 years | Style: souvenir |
| Type: Souvenir Spoons |
Here is a beautifulsterling silver spoon from Nantucket Massachusetts known along with New Bedfordfor whale industry and whaling fishing fleet dating to years around 1900 featuring on the handle image of log house withwriting OLDEST HOUSE BUILT1686 and writing NANTUCKET down the handle. In the goldfinished bowl embossed is and image of windmill, the writing si YE OLD WINDEMILLE 1746. Measures 4 1/4” long (108 mm) and condition of the spoon isexcellent. On the back it is marked STERLI...NG. Shipping on multiple purchasesare gladly combined. Please see other, some rare, collector spoons I'mcurrently listing.More on the subject: In the mid 18th century Nantucketemerged as the world’s most vigorous whaling port, with a substantial fleetdedicated exclusively to pelagic sperm and right whaling on distant grounds, and a highly developed network of merchants and mariners to prosecute the hunt.However, while Nantucketers themselves owned and manned the ships, it was acartel of merchants in Boston, Newport, and Providence who controlled thecatch, refined the oil, manufactured spermaceti candles, and set the prices foroil and bone. The cartel even monopolized the coastwise and foreign exportroutes that brought American products to market. By the 1760s some ofNantucket’s most prominent whaling merchants, the Rotch and Rodman families, grew weary of the cartel monopoly and rebelled against it, moving theiroperations to the little village on the Acushnet. Here they continued to mountwhaling voyages but also started refining whale oil and manufacturingspermaceti candles on their own. They also developed an independentimport-export network up and down the American coast and on both sides of theAtlantic. It was on this rebelliousbasis, on the eve of the American Revolution, that New Bedford was reallyfounded and its future course as a whaling port charted. In 1838 the rail linkto Taunton and Providence was completed and New Bedford’s mainland advantageover Nantucket was assured. New Bedford was formally incorporated as a city in1847, by which time its ships and barks were making voyages of two, three, oreven four years in pursuit of sperm whales, right whales, bowheads, humpbacks, and gray whales in virtually every corner of the world: New Bedford hadsurpassed Nantucket, London, and all other whaling ports both in the size andtonnage of its fleet and the value of its catch.
