American Offshore Whaling : Voyages

The American Offshore Whaling Voyage (AOWV) database includes information about all known American offshore (or “pelagic”) whaling voyages from the 1700s to the 1920s, it does not include the modern factory ship voyages of the mid-20th century. Information is most complete for the 19th century. The voyages included in the database sailed from, or were under the registry of, what is now the United States. A voyage was defined to be complete when the vessel returned to its port of departure or registry.

Complete information about the content and structure of the database is available in the Database Description and the Column Definitions & Code Tables. We plan on updating the database annually. You are encouraged to submit additions and corrections through the submission form.

Click on any row to display voyage details, including links to crew lists and tracking charts when available. Small subsets of the data may be printed or downloaded directly from the table below. Read The Data Viewer Interface for instructions. For research purposes, the complete database may be downloaded for processing on your local computer.

Limit to one row per voyage