Who owns nantucket

No other place on Nantucket offered a better opportunity for young people to meet members of the opposite sex. Nantucketer Charles Murphey described in a poem how young men such as himself used the long intervals of silence typical of a Quaker meeting:.

No matter how much this nominally Quaker community might attempt to conceal it, there was a savagery about the island, a blood lust and pride that bound every mother, father and child in a clannish commitment to the hunt. The imprinting of a young Nantucketer commenced at the earliest age. The first words a baby learned included the language of the chase— townor , for instance, a Wampanoag word signifying that the whale has been sighted for a second time.

Bedtime stories told of killing whales and eluding cannibals in the Pacific. One mother approvingly recounted that her 9-year-old son affixed a fork to a ball of darning cotton and then went on to harpoon the family cat.

The mother entered the room just as the terrified pet attempted to escape, and unsure of what she had found herself in the middle of, she picked up the cotton ball. Pay out! There she sounds through the window! There was rumored to exist a secret society of young women on the island whose members vowed to wed only men who had already killed a whale. To help these young women identify them as hunters, boatsteerers wore chockpins small oak pins used to secure the harpoon line in the bow groove of a whaleboat on their lapels.

Boatsteerers, outstanding athletes with prospects of lucrative captaincies, were considered the most eligible Nantucket bachelors. Despite the bravado of this little ditty, death was a fact of life all too familiar among Nantucketers. In there were fatherless children on Nantucket, while nearly a quarter of the women over the age of 23 the average age of marriage had lost their husbands to the sea.

Perhaps no community before or since has been so divided by its commitment to work. For a whaleman and his family, it was a punishing regimen: two to three years away, three to four months at home. It was women for the most part who maintained the complex web of personal and commercial relationships that kept the community functioning.

The 19th-century feminist Lucretia Coffin Mott, who was born and raised on Nantucket, remembered how a husband returned from a voyage commonly followed in the wake of his wife, accompanying her to get-togethers with other wives. Mott, who eventually moved to Philadelphia, commented on how odd such a practice would have seemed to anyone from the mainland, where the sexes operated in entirely distinct social spheres.

Some of the Nantucket wives adapted readily to the rhythm of the whale fishery. In the early 19th century a typical whaleship had a crew of 21 men, 18 of whom were divided into three whaleboat crews of six men each. The foot whaleboat was lightly built of cedar planks and powered by five long oars, with an officer standing at the steering oar on the stern. The harpoon did not kill the whale. It was the equivalent of a fishhook.

After letting the whale exhaust itself, the men began to haul themselves, inch by inch, to within stabbing distance of the whale. Then, just as abruptly as the attack had begun with the initial harpoon thrust, the hunt ended. The whale fell motionless and silent, a giant black corpse floating fin up in a slick of its own blood and vomit. Now it was time to butcher the whale. Then began the slow and bloody process of peeling five-foot-wide strips of blubber from the whale; the sections were then hacked into smaller pieces and fed into the two immense iron trypots mounted on the deck.

Wood was used to start the fires beneath the pots, but once the boiling process had commenced, crisp pieces of blubber floating on the surface were skimmed off and tossed into the fire for fuel. During a typical voyage, a Nantucket whaleship might kill and process 40 to 50 whales.

The repetitious nature of the work—a whaler was, after all, a factory ship—desensitized the men to the awesome wonder of the whale. But one step inside, you'll observe that each "cottage" is actually a different room within the mega-home, connected by enclosed breezeways.

In other words, there's a structure just for the great room, dining room, kitchen, master bedroom and so on. It's also a smart home: "Each room has an iPad that controls everything: the TVs, the heating, the cooling, the music, the lighting," says Barnett. Newburyport, Massachusetts is a classic New England seaport city where both residents and visitors enjoy historic neighborhoods and cobblestone streets, contemporary restaurants, a wide range of shopping experiences, and modern galleries.

Over a decade and more than 1, families ago, The Pinehills was born. New homes range from innovative townhomes, to classic single-family residences, to elegant custom designs. Skip to main content. Aug Another magnificent day on the porch….. Nantucket Club winter memberships are back. Call club manager, Deb Ducas, to learn more.

Call , ext. Full sail through summer. The Nantucket Club is here for you 7 days a week, all winter long! Signup now and start working out on Sept. Tap the link in our bio for details. Jul Tap the link in our bio to learn more about a week, month, or season-long membership at The Nantucket Club.

Breeze on in for a lunch on the town. Call ahead to reserve your seat! Link in bio for details.