Seamen's Bethel
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Seamen's Bethel
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Front elevation, 2006
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| Location | New Bedford, Massachusetts |
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| Coordinates | 41°38′08″N 70°55′26″W / 41.63556°N 70.92389°WCoordinates: 41°38′08″N 70°55′26″W / 41.63556°N 70.92389°W |
| Area | New Bedford Historic District |
| Built | 1832 |
| NRHP Reference # | 66000773 |
| Added to NRHP | 1966 |
The Seamen's Bethel (or Seaman's Bethel) is a chapel in New Bedford, Massachusetts, United States, located at 15 Johnny Cake Hill.
Built by the New Bedford Port Society, it was completed on May 2, 1832. It is a contributing property to the New Bedford Historic District, a National Historic Landmark.
The Seamen's Bethel was specifically constructed for the many sailors who called New Bedford their home port (mostly whalers), who considered it a matter of tradition that one visited the chapel before setting sail.
The bethel was immortalized in Herman Melville's novel Moby-Dick as the "Whaleman's Chapel", in a scene where a nautically themed sermon is given from a bow-shaped pulpit.
The pulpit was a Melville invention, but a replica of the one described in the book was added to the chapel in 1961. Other changes were made when the structure was repaired after a fire in 1866. The names of New Bedford whalers killed, and later all area fishermen, are noted on the walls of the bethel. Also noted is the pew that Melville sat in when he visited in 1840.
In 1851, Herman Melville published his famous tale of the white whale. In it he wrote:
From this point on, the Seamen's Bethel came to be widely seen as a symbol of the whalers, and later as a symbol of their history.
In 1956, John Huston shot a scene from the movie adaptation of Moby-Dick (with Gregory Peck and Orson Welles), in front of the real Seamen's Bethel, but interior shots in the movie were not shot on-location. This revitalized tourism to the area.
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