Nantucket

The Wampanoag lived on Nantucket for thousands of years before English settlement began in earnest in 1659, when Thomas Mayhew sold most of his interest in the island to a group of investors led by Tristram Coffin. Whaling began from small boats rowed largely by Wampanoag crews, and over the century that followed the Wampanoag community declined sharply. By 1774 Nantucket accounted for about sixty percent of the New England whaling fleet, and the Quaker faith that most islanders came to share gave the town its plain, disciplined character.

Nantucket was for decades the whaling capital of the world. Its ships reached the Pacific, its candle factories made spermaceti candles for cities on both sides of the Atlantic, and its merchants built the Federal and Greek Revival mansions that line Main Street. The whaleship Essex, sunk by a sperm whale in 1820, inspired Moby-Dick. The island also produced the astronomer Maria Mitchell and heard Frederick Douglass speak at an anti-slavery convention on the island in 1841.

The fall was as fast as the rise. A sandbar across the harbour mouth kept out the larger ships that New Bedford could handle, the Great Fire of 1846 destroyed much of the business district and the wharves, the Gold Rush drew away young men, and railways favoured mainland ports. The last whaler sailed in 1869 and the population fell by two-thirds. Poverty preserved the town: nobody could afford to rebuild, and when summer visitors were arriving by the 1870s they found an intact early American townscape. Preservation rules from 1955, National Historic Landmark status in 1966 and the district's extension to the whole island in 1975 kept it so, as the island became one of the most expensive resorts in the country.

Nantucket's identity is bound up with the sea and with its own history. The Nantucket Historical Association runs the Whaling Museum and other historic properties, the lightship-basket — a tightly woven rattan basket once made by lighthouse-ship crews — is the island's craft, and since 1955 the Historic District Commission has overseen the preservation that gives the town its look. The Quaker past survives in the plainness of the older houses and in a local tendency to understatement.

Sailing is the sport: the harbour fills with yachts in summer, the Figawi race from Hyannis opens the season. Surfcasting for striped bass and bluefish, scalloping in the harbour and shellfishing from the flats are year-round pursuits for islanders. The arts have a long summer presence — the Nantucket Film Festival, galleries on the wharves, and a tradition of painters drawn by the light and the moors.

Social life divides along lines everyone understands: the year-rounders of about 14,000 who keep the island running, the summer families who have owned houses for generations, and the day-trippers off the ferries. Nantucket is famously preppy in dress and expensive in habit, but also informal; people walk and cycle, greet one another on the lanes and dress down rather than up. The island was an early centre of abolitionism and of women's independence, and both are part of how it tells its story.

About 14,000 people live on Nantucket all year, a figure that rises to around 80,000 in summer. The town and county are the same body, and the island governs itself by open town meeting. Many houses, especially in the historic town, are second homes that stand empty for much of the year.

The economy is tourism, second homes and the trades that serve them — building, landscaping, property management, restaurants and retail — with a small fishing fleet, the hospital and the schools. Housing is the dominant issue: the median house price is among the highest of any county in the country, and teachers, nurses and tradespeople struggle to live on the island they work on. Seasonal workers staff the summer, and the year-round population includes sizeable Salvadoran and Jamaican communities.

The year has two speeds. In summer the ferries run constantly, the streets fill by mid-morning and restaurants turn tables until late. From November to April the island goes quiet, most restaurants close, islanders scallop, hunt deer and fix houses, and the weekly round centres on the schools, the churches and the Stop and Shop. Erosion of the eastern bluff and the cost of protecting the island from rising seas are constant subjects of debate.

Nantucket bay scallops are the island's great delicacy: small, sweet shellfish gathered in Nantucket Harbor in winter and served seared or raw with very little else. Summer brings lobster rolls, clam chowder in the thick New England style, steamers (soft-shell clams), oysters from the harbour, and striped bass and bluefish caught from the beaches. Clambakes and the produce of the island's farm stands fill out the summer table.

Eating out is concentrated in town, in old-fashioned chowder houses, sandwich and takeaway windows popular with beachgoers, and summer-only dining rooms whose prices match the island's reputation. The wharves have raw bars and tables over the boat basin, and 'Sconset has a small market and a few places to eat around its square.

Cisco Brewers, on a farm near the south shore, makes the island's beer and spirits, with wine from its sister winery, Nantucket Vineyard. Nantucket Nectars, the juice company begun in 1989 by two young men running a supply boat in the harbour, carried the island's name onto mainland shelves. The food year turns on the winter scallop harvest and on the Christmas Stroll, a December weekend that brings the town back to life.