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:
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—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)
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“America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.”
—Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929)