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A comment on Blue whale skeleton at New Bedford museum still oozing oil.

Re:Blue whale skeleton at New Bedford museum still oozing oil by ffujdefvjg on Saturday October 19, 2024 @12:56PM (#41888931)
NBWM is absolutely fantastic. They have Clifford Ashley's (wrote Ashley Book of Knots) rope and knot collection, and some of his paintings too (he lived on the other side of the harbour). They also have the world's largest scrimshaw collection, and the Lagoda, the world's largest model wooden ship (1:2 scale IIRC), which you can walk around on and check out the ropework. Seamen's Bethel from Moby Dick is literally a block away. Easily the coolest museum I've been to.

Interesting bit of trivia, New Bedford used to be the richest city in the planet because of the whaling industry.

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Re:Blue whale skeleton at New Bedford museum still oozing oil by chx on Saturday October 19, 2024 @06:23PM (#41891247)
The typical claim made is "it was the wealthiest city per capita in North America in the first half of the 19th century" but on p23 https://npshistory.com/publications/nebe/clr.pdf claims it was the second in the state. New Orleans is claimed to be the nation's wealthiest in 1830s-1840s.
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Re:Blue whale skeleton at New Bedford museum still oozing oil by bwanab on Sunday October 20, 2024 @12:43PM (#41896619)
The old housing stock certainly supports the notion that it was very wealthy at one point. NB reminds me of Troy, NY - another small but very wealthy city that fell on hard times when its main industries left. The presence of RPI seems to be helping Troy experience a bit of a renaissance. Hopefully, the new MBTA commuter rail connection will be a shot in the arm for New Bedford.
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Re:Blue whale skeleton at New Bedford museum still oozing oil by potato3732842 on Monday October 21, 2024 @08:02AM (#41903209)
While places like Lawrence, Springfield and New Bedford peaked when their local industries were booming money printers none of the outer Massachusetts cities really fell on the chronic "hard times" they're generally subject to now until the 1970s/1980s when shifting economic and regulatory circumstances finally killed the last of the industrial/manufacturing economic activity that had been sustaining them.

Lowell is a great analogy to Troy since it has UMass Lowell to pump it full of money and it's arguably the least crappy of the "not Boston" cities in MA.

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