MY VI E W
What Goes Around ...
by Bob

Barsanti

Columnist

EMAIL YOUR VIEW: INFO@NANTUCKETINDEPENDENT.COM Old Nantucket came to a blistering end

on the night of July 13, 1846. The Great Fire is the fulcrum upon which Nantucket’s history turns from a story of remarkable triumphs and resiliency to a tragedy of lost fortunes and lost children. It remains the great mile marker in Nantucket’s development.

After it, things were never the same.

Or so it is said.

The truth of the matter is much more complicated than that.

The basic facts are clear. The spring of 1846 was a dry and hot one. Further, the price for whale oil was at a low. The wharves and warehouses were full of pressed oil waiting for the market to turn. On the night of July 13, a small fire began in Geary’s Dry Goods at the base of Main Street, where the current Masonic Lodge stands.

Two fire companies arrived in time, but they quarreled over how to fight it and who would get credit. Aided by an easterly wind, the fire hopped to the next building up the street, and then leaped across the street. From there, the fire burned up to the Pacific National Bank (and burned the Mitchell’s Rooftop observatory).

More importantly, the fire burned down to the wharves, setting the rope walks and sail lofts ablaze. Then the warehouses blew up and the firestorm was on. The candlehouses exploded, the wharves blazed and the burning oil spread out on the harbor and ignited the ships.

In the light of morning, the effect was clear. Everything between Broad and Main Street was gone. Trinity Church, the Atheneum and several of the newspaper offices were in ashes. Seven-eighths of the island was unemployed, eight hundred were homeless, and over a million dollars in property were gone. Proud Nantucket accepted donations from the rest of the state. As the story goes, the island never recovered.

While the fire was cataclysmic, it didn’t alter what was already in the cards. The whaling industry was changing and Nantucket wasn’t changing with it. New Bedford brought in thousands of pounds of whalebone taken from Bowhead whales while Nantucket continued to hunt the diminishing stocks of sperm whales. Nantucket sent out only 17 ships that year while New Bedford issued almost 50.

The editorial in the paper for the previous week lamented all of the carts filled with goods that were leaving the island. Whaling was no longer Nantucket’s. Whaleships were leaving ports up and down the New England coast and they returned to a port that had trains and didn’t have a nasty sandbar.

All islands die by fire. Fire is the one natural disaster that islands can’t ward off; Every blaze, no matter how big, is a one alarm fire. In light of previous fires, particularly in 1836, the island had formed volunteer fire brigades and had fire watches set.

Since two companies responded almost immediately to this fire, our forefathers seemed to have been prepared. Yet, the buildings were still wooden, the roofs sealed with tar, and the streets narrow. Whale oil was stockpiled out in the open.

The casks huddled together like schoolchildren. No common sense precautions had been taken to avert the tragedy and nothing could change its course when it happened.

In short, our forefathers had the same short-sightedness that we have. They reacted to a changing world by clinging to their old ways until a fire purged them. Let’s hope we don’t need that harsh a lesson.

I