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Primary Source Sets
The American Whaling Industry
A “skimmer” tool used in the processing of whale oil aboard nineteenth-century ships.

A “skimmer” tool used in the processing of whale oil aboard nineteenth-century ships.

This “skimmer” was used aboard whaleships to remove solid bits as blubber was processed into oil.

Citation Information
“Whaleship Skimmer,” Digital Public Library of America, https://dp.la/item/cc9ab2ef05dd7161cacaa080341d3c87.
Note: These citations are programmatically generated and may be incomplete.
Courtesy of National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center via Smithsonian Institution.

Tips for Students

For this source, consider:

  • the author's point of view
  • the author's purpose
  • historical context
  • audience

Item 2 of 14 in the Primary Source Set The American Whaling Industry

Previous ItemNext Item
Excerpts, including illustrations, from an 1839 text describing how whalers captured and killed the sperm whale.
A “skimmer” tool used in the processing of whale oil aboard nineteenth-century ships.
The introduction to a 1918 text about John Manjiro (Nakahama Manjiro) and William H. Whitfield, including source documents and photographs.
A photo of John Manjiro and a bearded man, possibly Captain Whitfield.
An excerpt from Herman Melville’s 1851 novel about whaling, Moby Dick.
A photograph of the interior of the Seamen’s Bethel Church in New Bedford, Massachusetts.
An 1845 world map showing sea currents and whaling grounds.
A photograph of a model whaling ship and whaleboats.
An 1882 photograph of African American sea captains.
A scrimshaw tooth from 1840, carved aboard a whaling ship.
A photograph of the New Bedford whaleship Plantina.
A map showing Boston’s top-five foreign languages spoken at home in 2015.
A photo of Bishop Charles M. Grace, a Cape Verdean American pastor and community leader who was born in the 1880s and died in 1960.
A whale-oil lamp.

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