E X T E N S I O N FROM WHALING S DECLINE TO WHALES AS LEGAL PERSONS Whaling in the United States reached its peak in the mid-1800s. New technologies, including harpoon cannons and steamships, made whalers more ef cient. The American whaling eet, based on the East Coast, made use of hundreds of ships in the South Atlantic, Paci c and Indian Oceans. Whaling was a multi-million-dollar industry, and some experts estimate that more whales were hunted in the early 1900s than in the previous four centuries combined. However, American whaling started to decline when the California gold rush1 took place in the 1840s. The American Civil War (18611865) struck the whaling industry in such a way that it could not recover; whaling s decline was quite evident throughout the second half of the 1800s and early years of the 1900s. In 1859, petroleum or rock oil was discovered in Pennsylvania. The world no longer needed whale oil for its lamps and whale bone for use in women s corsets. The introduction of vegetable oil, steel bone corsets, gas lamps and nally electric lights in 1879 all contributed to this decline. Eventually, kerosene, petroleum, and other fossil fuels became much more popular and reliable than whale oil. The whaling industry dropped dramatically2. 1. rush: (here) a sudden movement of people to a certain area, usually because of some economic advantage. 2. dramatically: suddenly and/or considerably. The birth of America s oil industry in Pennsylvania (1859). 94