Photo: Jeanna Shepard

As Black History Month winds to a close it seems worthwhile to recall Captain William A. Martin, the best remembered black whaling ship captain from Martha’s Vineyard. He is often referred to as the only black whaling captain from the island. Nevertheless, historian Skip Finley suggests that at least five black whaling captains had ties to Martha’s Vineyard. Of the roughly 2,500 masters of American whaling ships under sail, at least 63 were men of color.

William Martin was born in Edgartown in 1830, just one generation away from slavery. Educated in a local school which taught young boys how to read, write and navigate, Martin made his way into the whaling trade because of his skill as a writer. Rather than ship as a seaman, Martin signed on the Edgartown ship Europa as the first mate and ship’s log-keeper in 1853. In 1857, after his voyage on the Europa, he married a Native American woman named Sarah Brown.

He sailed as Joint Master and keeper of the logbook with Thomas E. Fordham of the Eunice H. Adams on a voyage to the North Atlantic from 1867 to 1870. He captained the Emma Jane, an eighty-six ton schooner on her voyage to the Atlantic Whaling grounds in 1883 and later captained the Golden City out of New Bedford in 1878, and the Eunice H. Adams out of Edgartown in 1887. His career was long and successful, spanning more than thirty years. 

In 1907, Captain Martin and his wife Sarah celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary. He died later that year after a long illness. Captain Martin is buried in a Chappaquiddick graveyard where his gravestone, though an expensive one, is facing the opposite way from the rest of the stones in the graveyard.