Abstract
The whaling industry was a large-scale business that generated a variety of written documents. Its agents were highly mobile, operating in distant ports and unmapped regions and interacting with different natural spaces and cultural traditions. This paper examines the types of records and observations produced by this activity in the South Seas during the first part of the nineteenth century and the ways in which this information circulated, was organised and used among scientific and naval sectors. Focusing on pelagic exploitation and sailing, the aim is to demonstrate that information on exploitable resources and the discovery of islands and good anchorages circulated through wide networks made up of meeting and communication nodes such as ships, wharfs and commercial newspapers. From the analysis of different historical sources, some questions are reviewed in order to think about how the maritime culture of the whaling world helped to shape a global knowledge of the oceans.
Keywords:
Whaling; Written Records; Ship’s Logbooks