Early industry included logging and farming, but Mattapoisett became best known for its role in the history of whaling. Some 400 ships were built in the town's shipyards from 1740 until the 1870s, including the "Acushnet", the ship that "Moby-Dick" author Herman Melville sailed on and later deserted. The town supplied many of the whalers used on the East Coast in the first half of the nineteenth century. The last one, the "Wanderer", was built in 1878, shortly after the discovery of oil in Pennsylvania, which led to the demise of commercial whaling in the United States.