—–Gillespie (AM2232)

Capt. Gillespie is a total mystery. No information about him appears in AOWV other than his last name. His name does not appear in any crew list in New London Crew Lists, and no crew list is shown for the one voyage he made. New London Crew Lists records only two men with the last name Gillespie, and the ships on which they sailed departed after the end of his one voyage or returned before that voyage.

The only information about his sailing career appearing in AOWV records him sailing as master of ADIRONDACK (AS0821), home port New London. ADIRONDACK, described only as a ship, is not listed in the Connecticut Ship Database, depriving the researcher of information about the ship often found in that source. Decker records ADIRONDACK sailing in 1852, destination not shown, and returning on July 28, 1853. The master is identified only by the master’s last name.

AOWV cites a single source for its information about ADIRONDACK and Capt. Gillespie and that is Decker. Starbuck does not record any vessel with the name ADIRONDACK. Colby does not show a New London whaling master named Gillespie. Decker is the referenced source of information about ADIRONDACK quoted in Adams Whaling Vessels and books by Lund et al. All sources lead back to Decker.

Sources used: see sidebar and sources cited in text.

George Shaw

American Institute for Maritime Studies

Mystic Seaport Museum

November 2025

-----Gillespie, in American Offshore Whaling Voyages on WhalingHistory.org
Return to New London Whaling Masters

Sources for New London Whaling Masters

For genealogical information: Ancestry.com, Family Search, Genealogybank.org, Find A Grave, and newspapers.com. I later discovered and made good use of newspaper.com and genealogybank.com for sources in old newspapers.

For whaling-related topics: The principal online sites are available at research.mysticseaport.org. It has numerous valuable drop-down menus including American Offshore Whaling Voyages (AOWV), Connecticut Ship Database and New London Crew Lists as well as others. AOWV is organized around identifier numbers for masters (AM….), ships (AS….), and voyages (AV….), all easily searchable. It can also be reached directly at whalinghistory.org and whalemens shipping list. Three secondary sources that I used in almost every case were Alexander Starbuck’s History of the American Whale Fishery (Starbuck), Barnard Colby’s For Oil and Buggy Whips (Colby), and Robert Decker’s Whaling Industry of New London (Decker). Dennis Wood Abstracts, indexed and searchable in AOWV, contains useful abstracts of logbooks. The abstract number is often cited for a voyage. Other sources are cited in the text in particular cases. Almost without exception, the books and other secondary sources referred to in the text or sources are in the library of Mystic Seaport Museum.

I had the good fortune to correspond and meet with Judith Lund, the person behind the massive American Offshore Whaling Voyages database, who provided useful guidance along the way and was a resource when I found possible errors or inconsistencies in the sources. I refer to AOWV’s Whaling Resource Identifiers for masters (AM…), vessels (AS…), and voyages (AV…) in the text. Number references in AOWV are to those identifiers. The dates of voyages are approximate as the records vary.