Hetty_ The Genius and Madness of America's First Female Tycoon - Charles Slack [5]
Hetty was never devoutly religious, but traditions of Quaker living filtered down to her and collected in concentrated form. It would be an oversimplification to suggest that she was solely a product of Quakerism taken to extremes. And yet those aspects of her personality that so confounded and fascinated the public during her years of great celebrity—her toughness and piousness, her accumulation of money and her seeming inability to enjoy spending it, her arch disapproval of those who did spend their money, her ability to claim poverty and humility while hording a fortune of epic proportions—all of these things can be traced back to that small world, at once drab and colorful, of the New Bedford Quakers.
Hetty’s father, Edward Robinson, was born in Philadelphia in 1800 to a prominent old Quaker family with long roots in Rhode Island. His ancestors, as Hetty always loved to tell people, included a former deputy governor and landholder, William Robinson. Edward Robinson started his career manufacturing cotton and wool in Rhode Island with his brother, William. But he soon became involved with the more profitable oil trade and around 1833 moved to New Bedford to be closer to the center of things. By nature an ambitious, aggressive man, Robinson determined to get ahead however he could. He naturally gravitated toward the most powerful whaling firm, Isaac Howland Jr. and Company.
For several generations, Howlands had turned to the sea for their living. It was Isaac Howland Jr., born in 1755, who laid the groundwork for the whaling fortune that would accrue to Hetty and give her the starting point for her own financial empire. Isaac started modestly in business, but exhibited a thriftiness and an eye for opportunity. He noticed that sailors returning from the West Indies often wore silk stockings purchased on the islands. Isaac bought the soiled stockings off the sailors’ legs, gave them a good, careful wash, and sold them at a profit to wealthy gentlemen of the town.
A tiny man, said to weigh less than 100 pounds, but with uncommon energy and drive, Isaac started Isaac Howland Jr. and Company in the late eighteenth century as a merchant shipping business. He also ran a store selling goods imported from Europe and the West Indies, as well as local produce. But as the whaling trade shifted center from Nantucket to New Bedford, Isaac recognized the potential and began investing in whaling ships about 1815. Isaac Howland Jr. and Company would grow into one of New Bedford’s most active and successful whaling companies, with more than thirty ships.
In addition to the usual hazards associated with extended sea voyages during the early nineteenth century (storms, navigational error, malnutrition, potentially violent natives), hunters chasing sperm whales faced still another danger. The sperm was the only whale known to aggressively defend itself, including attacking whaleboats or even the mother ship by turning its massive head into a battering ram. Such cases, while relatively rare, were the stuff of legend. The ordeal in 1820 of the Nantucket whale ship Essex, rammed by an enraged whale, her surviving crew reduced in starvation to eating dead comrades, was lodged in the consciousness of every sailor. In a business fraught with dangers, both physical and financial, Isaac Howland Jr. and Company went to extraordinary lengths to protect its ships. They were outfitted with only the best rigging and supplies, often produced in their own New Bedford stores. And while the company lost its share of ships and men, most stories told about Isaac Howland Jr. and Company were of successful voyages and fantastic takes on the high seas.
Isaac’s land-based pursuits also met with great success. He