By Peter F. Stevens

On October 31, 1833, the snap of wind against canvas sails echoed along CommercialPoint.The Charles Carroll, a trim 386-ton New England whaler glided out of her home port, bound for the PacificOcean.

That port, however, was neither New Bedford nor Nantucket. Behind the Charles Carroll, the wharves and waterfront businesses of Commercial Point, Dorchester, faded from the crew's view.

Dorchester, while never a whaling hub on the scale of those other two Massachusetts sites, sent a whaling fleet on voyages across the globe throughout the 1830s, a consortium of local businessmen turning a profit in the dangerous and grisly venture.

In 1832,a pair of Dorchester entrepreneurs - Elisha Preston and Charles O. Whitmore, whose house stood on Commercial Point - formed a syndicate with several well-heeled Boston businessmen to establish whale and cod fisheries on the Dorchester shore. Whitmore was appointed "ship's-husband," his task to purchase and outfit ships as whalers.

The syndicate bought the harbor's main wharf and four ships for its whaling fleet, the Herald, the Courier, and the barque Lewis taking their place along Commercial Point's docks with the unofficial flagship, the Charles Carroll.

Along with the dock, Preston, Whitman, and their partners gobbled up much of the acreage around the wharf and built cooper-shops where the giant barrels to hold sperm whale oil were manufactured, and a chandler's store selling ships' fittings and provisions, as well as sailors' clothing.

The pride of the syndicate, the Charles Carroll, set out for the Pacific whale-hunting grounds in October 1832, the wharf packed with the crew's families and friends, along with a horde of spectators. Whenever a whaler left its port for voyages of two to four years, no one knew if she would return from battle against gales and waves and against enraged, terrified whales who could destroy a "chase boat" with one sweep of the tail.

Four years later, the Charles Carroll materialized off Commercial Point, and as word of the sighting spread through Dorchester, hundreds of locals descended upon the dock. To the elation of the syndicate, the whaler unloaded two thousand barrels of sperm oil and a fortune in whalebone, whose commercial uses ranged from jewelry to stays and fasteners for dresses.

Dorchester resident William C. Codman recalled the arrival of the Charles Carroll at Commercial Point: "I well remember….the wharf was lined with carriages coming from great distances, containing relatives or friends of the Jack Tars. When every sail had been furled, they were allowed to go ashore.

Anxious parents, brothers, and sisters awaited them. The Jacks climbed over the sides to rush into their relatives' embraces. The scene will never be effaced from my memory.

'Tom, dear Tom,' said one, 'this is your little sister whom you have never seen.' It was a little girl of three. The bronzed and sunburnt sailor took her up in his arms and gave her a [kiss] which echoed back from Dorchester Heights."

In his recollections, Codman painted other poignant scenes on the Commercial Point dock when a whaler returned: "An elderly couple couple hugged and squeezed their son until there was not enough breath to blow out a dog vane.

The fiancée of another sailor was not so demonstrative at first, but when they had got to a secluded [apparently not too secluded for Codman's scrutiny] part of the wharf, full vent was given, and it is unnecessary to state how many kisses were exchanged…. But it was sad to see many of the sailors who had no relatives or sweethearts to welcome their return."

For many of them, a trip to Boston "grogshops" and brothels awaited.

Unlike the Charles Carroll, the Courier and the Lewis turned little to no profit on their voyages for the syndicate. The Herald, however, fared much better. On one of her expeditions to the "killing grounds," two Dorchester youths from well-known families - Robert P. Tolman and C. Sumner, both looking for a taste of romance and adventure -shipped out aboard the whaler. They returned intact to Commercial Point, "never to venture again on the pursuit of whales."

As all "whalemen" quickly learned, voyages to the hunting spots teemed with alternating boredom, gales,and danger. The Commercial Point syndicate's little whaling fleet ventured out until 1840. Then, the partners dissolved the venture.

"It was not because the business was unremunerative," William Codman remarked, "but because Mr. Whitmore's interest in his [other] firm required his attention in the city [Boston] proper."

Without the whaling ships, the main dock at Commercial Point slipped into years ofdecline. A local merchant lamented, "The rats ran about the wharf with tears in their eyes." Several decades after the "glory days" of Commercial Pointwhaling, historian William Dana Orcutt noted: "At present there are a few schooners landing occasionally a cargo ofcoal at the wharf, but those stately ships are no more forever."

(Journalist Peter F. Stevens is the author ofThe Rogue's March: John Riley and theSt. Patrick's Battalion, 1846-48, Brassey's, and Notorious and Notable NewEnglanders, Down East Books.)