History
In the late 19th and 20th centuries, over 2,000 whaling voyages set out from New Bedford, bound for the bowhead whaling grounds off Alaska's Arctic coast. The voyage of over 20,000 miles took the whalers to the Azore islands off the coast of Africa, around Cape Horn and the southernmost tip of South America, to the Hawaiian Islands, and finally to the Bering Sea and Arctic Ocean. Many Alaska Natives, particularly Inupiat Eskimo people, participated in commercial whaling. In addition to crewing on the ships they hunted for food for the whalers, provided warm fur clothing, and sheltered many crews that were shipwrecked on the Alaska coast.
Read more about this topic: Inupiat Heritage Center
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of reform is always identical; it is the comparison of the idea with the fact. Our modes of living are not agreeable to our imagination. We suspect they are unworthy. We arraign our daily employments.”
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“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
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