NANTUCKET, an island 28m. S. of Cape Cod off the south east coast of Massachusetts, was for more than a century a prin cipal seat of the whaling industry. In 1830 the town of Nantucket ranked of ter Boston and Salem as the third commercial city of the State; in 1842 it was the home port of 86 ships and barks, 2 brigs and 2 schooners, with a total capacity of 36,00o tons. Leadership in the industry had passed to New Bedford about 1820, however, and soon after 1840 the decline of whaling began in earnest. Retaining its old atmosphere and a distinctive physical character inherited from years of Quaker dominance and whaling prosperity, Nantucket has become a famous summer resort. Its population, once about was 3,678 in 1930. For the most part the island is sandy and level. It has few trees and few hills, the highest of which is 191 ft. above the sea. Although the length of the island proper is only about 15m. and its average width 23-m., there are 88m. of shore. The climate is profoundly modi fied by this insular position. Slightly separated from Nantucket are the smaller islands of Tuckernuck and Muskeget.
Nantucket was discovered by Bartholomew Gosnold and pur chased, with Martha's Vineyard, by Thomas Mayhew of Water town in 1641. Thomas Macy led the first band of settlers in
1659, founding a village at what is now Madaket. The present site of Nantucket town was occupied in 1672, named Sherburne in 1673 and rechristened Nantucket in 1695. Christopher Hussey took the first sperm whale in 1712, and development of the vessel fishery, succeeding the old shore fishery of whales, was rapid. The American Revolution, the War of 1812 and the American Civil War were the only interruptions to the prosperity based upon whaling until its final decline. Modern Nantucket is described as an "almost perfect record of what our Yankee forefathers con sidered a seemly town." The island has extensive fisheries.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.—See Obed Macy, History of Nantucket (1835) ; N. S. Shaler, "Geology of Nantucket," Bulletin No. 53, U.S. Geological Survey (1889) ; Bulletins Nantucket Historical Society (1894, et seq.); R. A. D. Lithgow, Nantucket, A History (1914) ; W. F. Macy, Story of Old Nantucket (1915) ; W. F. Macy and R. B. Hussey, Nantucket Scrap Basket (1916) ; A. Starbuck, History of Nantucket (1924) (H. B. H.)