John Parker

Who was John Parker?

John Parker was a whaler and, according to the 1861 census form completed when he was master of the whale ship Lady Seale, was born at Grimsby, Lincolnshire. However it was as a whaling master of Hull that he is especially remembered. He was one of the most successful and intrepid arctic whalers to sail from that port in the nineteenth century. The products of the whaling trade such as oil and whalebone were essential to the British economy during this period and the rigours of life on board a whale ship in the Greenland fisheries produced a particularly hardy and efficient breed of sailor.