The Melville Coast
A Whale of A Vacation
| Route 66 | Cities | Beaches |
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The Melville Coast A Whale of A Vacation |
| One of the great chapters of American history which schools skip these days is the whaling era. The first industry in America, whaling was a hugely profitable business from 1700 until the discovery of petroleum just before the 20th century. Money generated from whaling built the great coastal cities and lured many sons from family farms to risk their lives in the hope of riches. Whaling created hundreds of technological advances. It was whale oil which lit all the streetlamps, carriage lights and house and office fixtures. Prior to plastics, whalebone was the fine white material they used for buttons, doorknobs, drawer handles, and other decorative items. And the great whaling boats were the largest wooden ships ever made, the crowning glory of the sailing centuries. |  |
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Herman Melville ran away from home to become a whaler, and later wrote about it in essays, travelogues and novels. He became the greatest spokesman for this lifestyle. His epic, Moby Dick, is in the opinion of many the greatest American novel ever written, but it is certainly the greatest whaling book we have. The Melville Coast includes Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts, particularly the boatbuilding town of Mystic, the whaling corporate headquarters of New Bedford, the island of Nantucket where the great whaling ships departed from and returned to, and The Cape, where whales gave birth to their young and nurtured them before heading out on their annual journey around the world. A two week trip to the Melville Coast immerses visitors in this world of sailing ships, history, technology, literature and the magic of the sea. |
But The Melville Coast is hardly boring. We are talking here about one of the great tourist destinations of the world. Nantucket and Cape Cod offer some of the finest beaches anywhere. Outstanding surfing, sailing, kayaking, windsurfing, bicycling, fishing, and hiking are available. The best whalewatching expeditions on the planet depart from Provincetown three times a day. The greatest concentration of seafood restaurants are found in the towns of the Melville Coast, and often you're eating that fresh catch you watched them unloading from the boats just an hour before. This is an incredibly popular trip, and to avoid the crowds we recommend coming in early June. The weather will be cooler, but you'll find lower rates, more lodging vacancies and lack of waits in restaurants. July and August here are expensive, hot, humid and jammed. |
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