Houston Maritime Museum Audio Tour Material Visit the Houston Maritime Museum at 2204 Dorrington, Houston, TX 77030 Tuesday-Saturday 9:00-4:30 to bring this material to life! For more informaiton on planning your visit to the Houston Maritime Museum, visit us on the web at www.HoustonMaritimeMuseum.org. Though whaling has existed around the world for centuries, the American whaling industry reached its height in the mid-nineteenth century. New Bedford, Massachusetts was the leading port for whalers and was known as "The City that Lit the World," because it exported so many candles and oil-based products. The most prized products were made from spermaceti, a more pure oil found in the head of sperm whales and prized for its clean, bright, and long-lasting flame. The sperm whale was responsible for the advancement of the whaling industry and was also the inspiration for the main protagonist in the classic American novel Moby Dick, by Herman Melville. Based on the real-life sto! ry of the whaleship Essex, which was sunk by an attack from a sperm whale, Moby Dick depicts the obsessive whale-hunt of a wounded captain and his whaling crew. Though whaling provided a large part of New England's economy in past centuries, it is now on the decline as whale populations are threatened and conservationists worldwide have worked to enforce a 1987 moratorium on commercial whaling.