Quakers and Whaling
Quakers dominated the whaling industry in Nantucket and New Bedford, Massachusetts, for 150 years.
In 1690 a Quaker from Cape Cod, Ichabod Padduck, went to Nantucket Island to instruct the islanders in the methods of whaling. Thus began some 150 years of industrial scale whaling by Quakers on Nantucket Island and the adjacent Massachusetts town of New Bedford. Vast fortunes were made as whale ships ranged the whaling grounds from the South Atlantic to Greenland, and from the coast of Chile to the South Seas. Their target was the sperm whale whose oil and spermaceti fetched high prices in the growing industrial centres of America and Europe.
http://www.quakersintheworld.org/quakers-in-action/198/Quakers-and-Whaling-
