November 5, 2021

Colloquium Topic: Whaling Captains of Color: America's First Meritocracy

New Bedford, Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard and Eastern Long Island formed the Middle East of its day when whaling burgeoned, leaving magnificent homes as testimony to the money made from the industry.

Whale wealth endures in the form of land trusts, roads, hotels, docks, businesses, homes, churches and parks. Thousands of whales died during the 200-plus-year enterprise, with more than 2,700 ships built for chasing, killing and processing them. Whaling was the first American industry to exhibit any diversity, and the proportion of men of color who participated was amazingly high. A man got to be captain not because he was white or well connected, but because he knew how to kill a whale. Along the way he could learn navigation and how to read and write. Whaling presented a tantalizing alternative to mainland life. Working with archival records at whaling museums, in libraries, from private archives and studying hundreds of books and thesis, Finley writes about the lives of over 50 Whaling Captains of Color to share the story of America's First Meritocracy.

---

Colloquium Speaker: Skip Finley

Weekly Oak Bluffs Town columnist for the Vineyard Gazette from June 2012 to June 2017, Skip Finley built his career in radio, becoming a well-known executive and station owner. Having failed several attempts to retire, he keeps returning to communications, currently as Director of Sales and Marketing for the Vineyard Gazette Media Group on Martha's Vineyard, where he summered since 1955 and has lived since 1999, deciding to become a writer.

Skip has written articles for the Vineyard Gazette, Martha’s Vineyard Magazine, Island Weddings Magazine, the Provincetown Banner, the Martha’s Vineyard Museum publications, The Intelligencer and MVM Quarterly, Sea History Magazine and Cape Cod & The Islands Magazine among others.