Whaling Offered Equal Opportunity

By Rhoda Amon | Staff Writer

IT WAS A LONG, dangerous voyage, lasting as much as three years. And not everyone returned. But at its height in the mid-1800s, whaling dominated the East End economy, affecting the lives of farmers, merchants and craftsmen as well as the intrepid sailors.

The decline of whaling in the late 1800s had an equally lasting impact on the area. And all this is dramatically displayed in a new exhibition, "So Ends This Long Voyage... Whaling in Suffolk County," at the Suffolk County Historical Society in Riverhead.

The exhibition underscores the opportunities whaling provided the crews. Curator Marsha Hamilton explains: "Since whaling was such a nasty job with low pay and long absences from home, the white sailors would leave for easier jobs on merchant ships. The long-term whalers became the African-Americans and Native Americans. Some worked their way up to boat steerer or harpooner, positions of authority they could not otherwise get."

One of the featured sailors is Aaron Cuffee, a Montaukett Indian from East Hampton. He began his seafaring life at 17 on the William Tell, which put out of Sag Harbor in 1852. He returned three years later as a second mate and continued whaling until 1878, when his ship was nearly crushed by ice in the Arctic Ocean. Cuffee had enough of whaling but not of the sea. He became one of the few American Indian captains in the U.S. merchant fleet.