How long is nantucket

Getting to Nantucket is not especially easy at any time, especially during the popular summer season, but it can be done either by sea or by air. There are two commercial ferry services making regular trips back and forth from Hyannis, on Cape Cod. It is also possible, of course, to come to the island on a private boat, although dockage and mooring charges are high.

Nantucket Memorial Airport, which has three runways, serves the island. Many of these flights are the private planes used by wealthy summer visitors. Once on the island there is an island-wide seasonal shuttle bus service that takes both residents and visitors to a variety of destinations throughout the island; there are also car and bicycle rentals. There is no active rail system on the island, though until there was a narrow-gauge railway.

Many visitors rent bicycles since the terrain is gentle and easy biking for virtually anyone. Things to Do While on Nantucket Whether here for the whole summer or just vacationing for a short time there are many different sights to see and activities to enjoy. Nantucket is famous for having some of the most beautiful and pristine beaches in the world, which attract thousands of people every year, but there are many cultural activities as well.

The north shore beaches offer gentle to nearly calm waters, ideal for children. The south shore beaches face out toward the Atlantic Ocean,, resulting heavier surf, great for surfing and body boarding. These beaches are popular with adults and families with older children, but not all are provided with lifeguards. Frequent rip tides make south shore beaches more dangerous than other island beaches, so visitors should be sure to swim where there is a lifeguard.

East shore beaches are narrower with deeper water right at shore. They are best accessed by bike or shuttle bus as there is very limited parking.

For individuals who are looking for something a little more relaxed while on Nantucket there are many different options to choose from. Nantucket has a rich history in the arts and offers many great galleries and shops that sell beautiful pieces.

Many of the galleries offer artwork from local and internationally-known artists. Choosing from Native American antiques or pieces representing the long history of whaling on the island is a great way to spend a relaxing afternoon. There are several great museums to visit throughout the island as well. Museums dedicated to the history of whaling, Nantucket shipwrecks, island arts and more are all available for locals and visitors to enjoy.

People of all ages love visiting these impressive museums to have some fun while learning about the island. In the s local theater resumed in Nantucket town and continues to this day with the Theatre Workshop of Nantucket and other smaller groups, who present professional-quality theatrical productions using trained and amateur actors. The Dreamland movie house and the Starlight movie house show first-run movies all year round as well. There is a classical music concert series which presents world-renowned musicians and singers weekly during the months of July and August, and the Atheneum, Nantucket's public library, presents many and varied speakers all year round.

Local non-profit organizations offer house and garden tours, church fairs and a variety of outdoor activities raising money for local and national charities. There are a variety of great options to choose from when it comes to renting boats for individuals, families or large groups. And all of them, with the exception of the Cliffside Beach Club, are public! So grab a book and a chair and when it gets toasty, take a dip. We also have an impressive collection of shops and restaurants, many just steps away from the historic cobblestones of Main Street.

For a thorough and growing guide to island commerce, check out our Nantucket Business Directory. Compare Listings. Where is Nantucket, and why should I visit? Nantucket Activities Fisher Real Estate. March 28, Written By. Island News Delivered Receive a bit of the island's history and happenings right in your inbox. Instead of voyages that had once averaged about nine months, two- and three-year voyages had become typical.

Long vanished was the era when Nantucketers could observe from shore as the men and boys of the island pursued the whale. Nantucket was now the whaling capital of the world, but there were more than a few islanders who had never glimpsed a whale.

Whales had almost completely disappeared from local waters. And still the Nantucketers prospered. Throughout the 17th century, English Nantucketers resisted all efforts to establish a church on the island, partly because a woman named Mary Coffin Starbuck forbade it.

It was said that nothing of importance was undertaken on Nantucket without her consent. Mary Coffin and Nathaniel Starbuck had been the first English couple married on the island, in , and had established a profitable outpost for trading with the Wampanoag. Whenever an itinerant minister arrived in Nantucket intending to establish a congregation, he was summarily rebuffed by Mary Starbuck.

Then, in , she succumbed to a charismatic Quaker minister, John Richardson. Nantucketers perceived no contradiction between their source of income and their religion.

God himself had granted them dominion over the fishes of the sea. Instead of an exclusive place of worship, the meetinghouse was open to nearly anyone.

While many of the attendees were there for the benefit of their souls, those in their teens and early 20s tended to harbor other motives. No other place on Nantucket offered a better opportunity for young people to meet members of the opposite sex. Nantucketer Charles Murphey described in a poem how young men such as himself used the long intervals of silence typical of a Quaker meeting:.

No matter how much this nominally Quaker community might attempt to conceal it, there was a savagery about the island, a blood lust and pride that bound every mother, father and child in a clannish commitment to the hunt. The imprinting of a young Nantucketer commenced at the earliest age. The first words a baby learned included the language of the chase— townor , for instance, a Wampanoag word signifying that the whale has been sighted for a second time.

Bedtime stories told of killing whales and eluding cannibals in the Pacific. One mother approvingly recounted that her 9-year-old son affixed a fork to a ball of darning cotton and then went on to harpoon the family cat.

The mother entered the room just as the terrified pet attempted to escape, and unsure of what she had found herself in the middle of, she picked up the cotton ball. Pay out! There she sounds through the window! There was rumored to exist a secret society of young women on the island whose members vowed to wed only men who had already killed a whale. To help these young women identify them as hunters, boatsteerers wore chockpins small oak pins used to secure the harpoon line in the bow groove of a whaleboat on their lapels.

Boatsteerers, outstanding athletes with prospects of lucrative captaincies, were considered the most eligible Nantucket bachelors. Despite the bravado of this little ditty, death was a fact of life all too familiar among Nantucketers. In there were fatherless children on Nantucket, while nearly a quarter of the women over the age of 23 the average age of marriage had lost their husbands to the sea.

Perhaps no community before or since has been so divided by its commitment to work. For a whaleman and his family, it was a punishing regimen: two to three years away, three to four months at home. It was women for the most part who maintained the complex web of personal and commercial relationships that kept the community functioning. The 19th-century feminist Lucretia Coffin Mott, who was born and raised on Nantucket, remembered how a husband returned from a voyage commonly followed in the wake of his wife, accompanying her to get-togethers with other wives.

Mott, who eventually moved to Philadelphia, commented on how odd such a practice would have seemed to anyone from the mainland, where the sexes operated in entirely distinct social spheres. Some of the Nantucket wives adapted readily to the rhythm of the whale fishery.

In the early 19th century a typical whaleship had a crew of 21 men, 18 of whom were divided into three whaleboat crews of six men each. The foot whaleboat was lightly built of cedar planks and powered by five long oars, with an officer standing at the steering oar on the stern. The harpoon did not kill the whale. It was the equivalent of a fishhook.

After letting the whale exhaust itself, the men began to haul themselves, inch by inch, to within stabbing distance of the whale. Then, just as abruptly as the attack had begun with the initial harpoon thrust, the hunt ended.

The whale fell motionless and silent, a giant black corpse floating fin up in a slick of its own blood and vomit. Now it was time to butcher the whale. Then began the slow and bloody process of peeling five-foot-wide strips of blubber from the whale; the sections were then hacked into smaller pieces and fed into the two immense iron trypots mounted on the deck.