SAG HARBOR, N.Y.

Call us Ishmael.

Of course they would have arrived on the Hampton Jitney, not the Pequod, and it’s not likely that any of the characters in “Moby-Dick” would have known what to make of the exhibit at the Sag Harbor Whaling and Historical Museum.

But in this dour summer defined by the racing digital readouts at the gas pump, there’s a meditation worthy of Melville in the question raised by the modest exhibition being displayed here, in a frayed Greek Revival building constructed around 1845 by a local whaling magnate: Is the oil business the new whaling business? And, if so, is that a good sign or a troubling one?

Bear with us. Whaling, after all, was one of the world’s first great multinational businesses, a global enterprise of audacious reach and import. From the 1700s through the mid-1800s, oil extracted from the blubber of whales and boiled in giant pots gave light to America and much of the Western world. The United States whaling fleet peaked in 1846 with 735 ships out of 900 in the world. Whaling was the fifth-largest industry in the United States; in 1853 alone, 8,000 whales were slaughtered for whale oil shipped to light lamps around the world, plus sundry other parts used in hoop skirts, perfume, lubricants and candles.

Like oil, particularly in its early days, whaling spawned dazzling fortunes, depending on the brute labor of tens of thousands of men doing dirty, sweaty, dangerous work. Like oil, it began with the prizes closest to home and then found itself exploring every corner of the globe. And like oil, whaling at its peak seemed impregnable, its product so far superior to its trifling rivals, like smelly lard oil or volatile camphene, that whaling interests mocked their competitors.