American Whalefleet - 1839

Here are some statistics that may be of interest, taken from the enlightening compendium The Yankee Whaler, by New Bedford native Clifford W. Ashley (author of The Ashley Book of Knots). This book seems to have been dropped by the publisher, Dover, but used copies can be found on Amazon. If you're interested in the history, practice, and nitty-gritty details of whaling, whaleships, and whalemen, it's a great resource.
Ashley took the following table from Charles Melville(!) Scammon. "It shows the size and distribution of the American fleet in the year 1839, when more ports were engaged in whaling than at any other time."
Wikipedia has articles to clarify the terms bark, brig, and schooner. (The distinction between "ship" and the others is unknown to me.) I sorted the table by tonnage, the total cargo carrying capacity of a city's fleet.
It's not surprising to see New Bedford, Nantucket, and Fair Haven at the head of the list. Ashley reports that by 1823 New Bedford's fleet equaled Nantucket's, both in numbers and tonnage. Sixteen years later, New Bedford's fleet was more than twice that of Nantucket in both measures.
Poughkeepsie and Hudson, lying 80 and 150 miles up-river from New York harbor, are a surprise. Of course, those are the cities of ownership, not necessarily the home port.
I was also surprised to see such major ports as New York, Portland, Portsmouth, and last-place Boston so far down the list; and to see New Jersey and Delaware there at all.
As of 1839, these states with "ocean access" were members of "the union," but are missing from this list: Pennsylvania, Maryland, South Carolina, Virginia, North Carolina, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. (Some of these states may have dabbled in whaling before or after 1839—Ashley writes that in the years after the War of 1812, i.e. after February 1815, Philadelphia sent out two whaling voyages.) Was that due to lack of capital, lack of a distribution system for product, greater demand for product in New England, or inability to compete against established whaling centers for talented shipwrights, officers, and crew?

City where owned	State	Ships and Barks	Brigs and Schooners	Tonnage
New Bedford	MA	169	8	56118
Nantucket	MA	77	4	27364
Fairhaven	MA	43	1	13274
New London	CT	30	9	11447
Sag Harbor	NY	31		10605
Warren	RI	18	3	6075
Salem	MA	14		4265
Newport	RI	9	2	3152
Stonington	CT	7	5	2912
Hudson	NY	8		2902
Edgartown	MA	8		2659
Rochester	MA	5	10	2615
Falmouth	MA	8		2490
Poughkeepsie	NY	6		2043
Mystic	CT	5	3	1797
Bristol	RI	5	1	1752
Fall River	MA	4	3	1604
Wilmington	DE	5		1578
Westport	CT	5	4	1443
Greenport	NY	4	1	1414
Lynn	MA	4		1269
Holmes' Hole (Vineyard Haven)	MA	3	1	1180
Newburyport	MA	3		1099
Providence	RI	3		1086
Bridgeport	CT	3		913
Plymouth	MA	3		910
Wareham	MA	2	2	904
Dartmouth	MA	3		874
New York	NY	3		710
Coldspring Harbor	NY	2		629
Dorchester	MA	2		581
Portland	ME	1		388
Wiscasset	ME	1		380
Newark	NJ	1		366
Portsmouth	NH	1		348
New Suffolk	NY	1		274
Jamesport	NY	1		236
Provincetown	MA		1	172
Somerset	MA		1	137
Boston	MA		1	125