Shore Whaling and Fishing Station

Tradition records that ’Sconset was the location of an early Indian whaling station as early as 1676. The first image of ’Sconset, from a 1775 plot plan in the Nantucket Registry of Deeds, shows the arrangement of a whaling stage, existing long after Nantucket whaling vessels began to venture out to sea in search of their prey. Although the island’s other whaling stations became obsolete, the ’Sconset site survived as the primary fishing spot, the “stew-pond” of the island. The old whaling - lookout platform was used decades later for other purposes — to discern ships on the horizon, to spot schools of fish, or to observe the seemingly infinite ocean.

Conjectural sketch of early whaling station in Siasconset, by Henry Chandlee Forman, Early Nantucket and its Whale Houses, p. 32.

A digital exhibition by the Nantucket Historical Association