New Bedford is a city in Bristol County, Massachusetts, United States. As of the 2020 United States Census, the city had a population of 101,079, making it the state's sixth-largest city and the largest of the South Coast region. New Bedford is nicknamed "The Whaling City" because it was one of the world's most important whaling ports in the nineteenth century, along with Nantucket, Massachusetts; and New London, Connecticut. The city remains known for its fishing fleet and accompanying seafood industry, for its high concentration of Portuguese Americans, and as the primary setting of Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick.