12016-04-04T07:58:14-07:00Emily Esten2caf87d65ec60328b3ce389c410df00dcb4481f779141Pgs. 232-233 in 1878 New Bedford City Directoryplain2016-04-04T07:58:14-07:00Emily Esten2caf87d65ec60328b3ce389c410df00dcb4481f7
This page is referenced by:
12016-04-03T07:54:44-07:00Boardinghouses for Whalemen8gallery2016-04-04T08:04:19-07:00 In a smaller, specialized port like New Bedford, mariners used boardinghouses to facilitate crucial networking. Sailors used boardinghouses as the central clearinghouse for finding their next voyage. Keeps helped prospective crew members find suitable vessels on which to ship out, while vessel agents would visit lodgings to recruit crew members.
As a result, New Bedford had plenty of boardinghouses. In 1831, the New Bedford Port Society reported twenty-one boardinghouses; by 1845 there thirty-seven boardinghouses served between twenty and two hundred sailors each.1 The cost to stay in a boardinghouse varied greatly, depending on proximity to the waterfront, alehouses, conditions, demand, and innkeeper. Turnover in a boardinghouse, again unpredictable since sailors depended on employment, rarely expected to stay longer than a few weeks. At that point, sailors moved onto a new job or to the street.
