Nantucket

Nantucket is an approximately 125 square kilometer island of the state of Massachusetts in the United States. Their name comes from an Indian language and means " the far away country ." It is located south of Cape Cod and east of Martha's Vineyard off the East Coast of the United States. At the same time it forms including the areas of water and two smaller islands, the 273 square kilometer comprehensive city Nantucket. The city is area coinciding with the Nantucket County in Massachusetts, and is also the administrative center ( County Seat). The same town and island are mainly known by the then outgoing in the 18th century whaling.

History

Before the "discovery" in 1602 by the English Captain Bartholomew Gosnold Nantucket was populated by about 3,000 Indians of the tribe of the Wampanoag. 1641, Thomas Mayhew possession of the island and left there grazing sheep to the year 1659. 1692 Nantucket was an administrative part of the New England state of Massachusetts. In 1700, there were about 300 whites and 800 Indians there.

Whaling

After washed up carcasses of whales had been previously processed already Tran, began in 1690 with small boats near the coast to hunt whales. As spermaceti and whose value was detected in the head of sperm whales, whale hunting was extended to the offshore area from 1715. The largely specialized sperm whales catch typical way Nantucketer whalers in the late 18th century resulted in the North Atlantic around Cape Horn into the Pacific until the Japanese coast and lasted two to four years.

The island's economy turned from then on increasingly trading with Tran and spermaceti, and the construction and maintenance of the whaling ships. The town of Nantucket took it an enormous economic boom and was from the early 18th century to about 1830, the " Whaling Capital" of the world.

Petroleum discoveries in 1830 affected the sales of whale oil as a lubricant and lamp fuel. This ushered in the decline of the Nantucket economy. This was accelerated by increasingly long fishing trips in empty hunted seas. The " Nantucket shoals" in front of the harbor also hampered the growing whaling ships, dodging the therefore to neighboring New Bedford and Salem ( Massachusetts) with its direct rail connections.

A devastating major fire in 1846, Gold Rush and the Civil War had more, the economy debilitating consequences. Between 1840 and 1870, the population went from about 10,000 to 1,000 inhabitants back.

Culture

In the first half of the 18th century, the Quakers dominated the economic, social and cultural life on the island. Ralph Waldo Emerson spoke to the " nation Nantucket ". Was immortalized in detail Nantucket 1852 in Herman Melville's Moby Dick - here the fictional character Ishmael begins its fateful voyage of the Pequod. Even Edgar Allan Poe's 1838 published novel Arthur Gordon Pym 's report from Nantucket, who also addressed the whaling, Nantucket resulted in the title. Also in the novel Cheaper by the Dozen by Frank B. Gilbreth and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey Nantucket plays an important role. There the family Gilbreth regularly spent summer holidays in their own house. The rock band Mountain in 1971 published one of her greatest successes, the LP Nantucket Sleighride in which whaling is also addressed.

Economy

Nantucket is now a seaside resort and resort with over ten thousand permanent residents; in summer the number of residents, almost five-fold by the then present owners of holiday homes. This contributes to the fact that Nantucket is the county with the highest per capita income in Massachusetts. The income between 2006 and 2010 per capita was 53,410 U.S. $ ( Massachusetts: U.S. $ 33 966 ), the household income on average 83 347 U.S. $ ( U.S. $ 64 509 ) and the family income 89 728 U.S. $ ( U.S. $ 81 165 ). The small population coupled with tourism is likely to be one of the reasons.

Trivia

"There once was a man from Nantucket " is a common Anfangsvers from Limerick.

When whaling is called a Nantucket sleigh ride, when the harpooned whale herschleppt a whaling boat behind.

In the Simpsons episode The harpooned heart Marge Simpson writes a novel that plays on Nantucket.

In the film Inglourious Basterds by Quentin Tarantino agreed the SS Colonel Hans Landa, played by Christoph Waltz, a commander of the U.S. Secret Service in return for his complicity in the overthrow of the Third Reich, among others, the provision of land on Nantucket Iceland.

Nantucket has the highest probability of occurrence of fog in North America.

People

Born on Nantucket are:

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