NEW BEDFORD, a city and port of entry, and one of the
county-seats of Bristol county, Massachusetts, U.S.A., 56 m. S. of Boston, at the mouth of the Acushnet river, and at the head of New Bedford Harbor, an arm of Buzzard's Bay. Pop. (1890) 40,733; (1900) 62,442, of whom 25,529 were foreign-born, including 8559 French Canadians, 5389 English, 4802 Portuguese and 3020 Irish; (1910 census) 96,652. New Bedford is the terminus of two divisions of the New York, New Haven & Hartford railroad, and is connected with Taunton (the other county-seat), Fall River, Brockton and other cities by interurban electric railways. Passenger steamboat lines connect with Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket and Buzzard's Bay points; a freight line and, in summer, daily passenger service to New York are maintained; the Insular Navigation Co. (Empreza Insulana de Navegação) runs passenger and freight steamers from New Bedford to Lisbon, and to the Azores; and there is a regular sailing packet service between New Bedford and the Cape Verde Islands. Two bridges connect New Bedford with the township of Fairhaven, on the E. side of the harbour; one, a steel bridge, is almost 1 m. in length and cost $1,500,000. New Bedford is attractively situated, and, commercially, occupies a particularly favourable position. It covers about 20 sq. m., and extends along the W. side of the river and harbour for several miles. Unusual dockage facilities are thus provided. The harbour was improved by the Federal government, between 1840 and 1906, the channel from Buzzard's Bay through the harbour being 18 ft. deep and 200 ft. wide; under a project of 1907 it was contemplated to increase the depth of the channel to 25 ft. and the width to 300 ft. There is a broad driveway along the shore of the harbour to Clark's Point at the entrance, where during the Civil War the United States government erected a stone fort, Fort Rodman, in which a garrison of artillery is still maintained; New Bedford was one of the 26 places reported by the U.S. Chief of Engineers in 1909 as having “permanent seacoast defences.” Among the principal buildings and institutions are the post office and custom house, the city hall, the county court house, the registry of deeds building, the masonic building, the merchants' national bank, the institution for savings, St Joseph's and St Luke's hospitals, the Swain free school, St Mary's (Roman Catholic) school, the Friends' academy, a state textile school, a state armory and St Mary's home. The public library, established as a private society library in 1802, taken over by the city in 1853, and housed in the refitted old city hall building, was one of the first free public libraries in the United States; it contains about 100,000 volumes, and has notable collections relating to the whaling industry and to the Quakers. The Sailors' Bethel, built in 1831, and containing memorial tablets reminiscent of the whaling days, is of interest. The Old Dartmouth Historical Society was organized in 1903. A fine park system, aggregating 255 acres, includes the Common, and Brooklawn, Buttonwood, Hazelwood, Grove and Triangle Parks. The city owns and operates a fine water-supply system.
When whale-oil was a widely used illuminant, New Bedford
was long the principal port of the world's whaling industry; and in point of tonnage owned it is perhaps still so, as many New Bedford vessels now sail from San Francisco. As early as the middle of the 18th century, vessels sailed on whaling voyages from the mouth of the Acushnet river, but it was not until 1765, when Joseph Rotch, a Nantucket merchant, bought a tract of land on the W. side of the river and constructed wharves and warehouses, that the industry became established here. At