Sailors, Whalers, Fantastic Sea Voyages: An Activity Guide to North American Sailing Life

Something more than 15, gallons per month are produced. Five firms are now engaged in the manufacture of adamantine candles, equal to the best imported, and an aggregate of 2, tons of shipping is employed out of this port, at the present time, in the whale fishery, to say nothing of the amount of whales taken by boats from the harbors of Monterey, Humboldt, and other ports along the coast.

A gentlemen, well known in this city, has recently gone East, for the express purpose of inducing the whaleship owners of New Bedford, Nantucket and Fairhaven to refit and supply their vessels at this port. The inducements are great, and though some obstacles exist at present, we imagine means can be devised whereby these may be removed. Four whalers had arrived from windward ports on Hawaii. The following named vessels are reported as having arrived from the California coast: A summary of the Northern whaling business this season shows the catch to be 45, barrels of oil and , pounds of bone.

The fleet consisted of 47 vessels, one of which was lost. Forty of these cruised in the Arctic Ocean and six in the Ochotsk Sea.

The average per vessel is barrels of oil and 12, pounds of bone. This includes sperm, walrus walrus, coast and Arctic oil. The quantity of walrus ivory is 11, pounds. The value of this article has fallen from 60 cents per pound — the price in former years— to 18 and 20 cents. This year's catch amounts to about the same as last season. The whales appeared in the greatest number at the latter part of the season, when the weather was intensely cold, the thermometer being 10 degrees below aero, rendering the work both very laborious and dangerous, owing to the ships getting iced up and the men's hands and feet becoming frozen in the boats.

All the whaling this season has been on the eastern shore, as far north as Point Barrow. No whales were found on tho west coast, though the ocean was free of ice. The season altogether is considered a favorable one. Next season the fleet will be increased by the addition of fire ships from our whaling ports, sent out expressly, and may be enlarged still further by the addition of ships from the line cruisers, attracted North by the seasons success.

It is conjectured that the Arctic ground will afford profitable fishing for at least ten years more. The loss of thirty-three vessels of the Arctic whaling fleet in the September ice-floes will be a severe blow to our neighbors at Honolulu: These whalers generally go on two and three years' voyages, wintering at Honolulu after the close of the active season, and making the city lively and prosperous by their presence. This year 1, of them are cast upon the islands as destitute as shipwrecked mariners. In fact they are such. Their vessels, oil, earnings and all were left in the frozen sea, and they are now without a dollar in money or credit.

Their case is one which calls for both private and national assistance.

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These 1, whalers are our countrymen; brave, hardy, bold and daring seamen, who yearly drag millions of wealth from the dangers of the northern ocean, and whose class have done more than any other to make the American navy what it is: But for our fisheries we should have, like France and Spain, a navy merely; ornamental. Our whalers make our very best seamen, and on their industry, in a great measure, depends the prosperity of some of the finest towns in the United States. They should not be left alone to deal out the charities needed by this terrible misfortune. The Government should at least send national vessels to the islands to convey these 1, wrecked mariners to their homes free of charge, and see to it that they do not suffer for bread and clothing.

They are also among the fattest subjects of private charity, and it is to be hoped San Francisco and Boston may not be miserly in aiding them, and that right speedily. The telegraph offers the means of sending assistance in a few weeks, and the two cities should lose no time in doing so. She was known as a lucky ship because she always returned a profit regardless of rough seas, storms, or cannibals.

Whaling expeditions often lasted three years or longer before returning home. She was in San Francisco on multiple occasions and was in the news throughout her career. A hundred ships or more might be anchored along the San Francisco waterfront, where they stocked up on provisions for their long Pacific and Arctic voyages. In addition to this well-financed pelagic whaling, a small-scale commerce in coastal whales gray, humpback, orca , hunted from rowboats that went out for the day, developed in several coastal communities, including Carmel, Monterey, Moss Landing, Davenport, Half Moon Bay, and Bolinas.

New Bedford, October 22d. An experienced ship owner gives the following list and estimates of values of vessels lost, not Including the oil and bone that may have been taken: Both agents and insurance companies decline at present to give a statement of the Insurance, but it is well known that all the vessels were well insured. The California Gray Whale. The Sharp-headed Finner Whale. The Bowhead, or Great Polar Whale.

The Right Whale of the Northwestern Coast. The Striped or Common Porpoise. The Right Whale Porpoise. American Whaling Commerce California Shore-whaling. Life and Characteristics of American Whalemen. Description of a Skeleton of the Right Whale. Glossary of Words and Phrases used by Whalemen. List of Stores and Outfits. Naturalists, Scientists, Teachers, Students, and Navigators will find the work not only exceedingly desirable, but in a degree indispensable.

It is the only publication of the kind, and should be in all School, Public, Club, and Private Libraries. The profits of some whaling vessels are still very large, despite the fact that many more are engaged in it now than formerly. Some Scotch vessels have paid from 45 to 65 per cent, for the past twenty years.

The black whale fishery shows signs of exhaustion as now prosecuted, but the waters between Spitsbergen and Franz Josef Land are declared to be the great black whale fishing grounds of the future, because inexhaustible. The bottle-nose whale fishery is still very successful. Many vessels are fishing for them in Davis Straits and on the coasts of Greenland and Labrador. Only Scotchmen and Norwegians are following this bottle-nose fishery, because Americans have not yet found it out.

With the advent of mechanized whaling in the early s, whalers were able to exploit faster species blue, fin, sei , and the industry revived for a few decades. The oil was used most often in oil lamps and to make soap. Baleen or whalebone had many uses including corset stays, men s collars, buggy whips, and cutlery handles. Scrimshaw, the carvings done by sailors in the off watches, were done on whale teeth and the larger bones. The engravings were usually of ships, but could be of any subject.

Fantastic Sea Voyages

The private sealers are beginning to show some signs of life after the torpor of the early winter. The diplomatic negotiations now going on between Great Britain and the United States, and other phases of the Behring Sea dispute seem to have no effect on the preparations being made, both here and at Victoria, for an active season in Bearing Sea. At Victoria almost all the sealing fleet are now preparing lor the early work along the coast, which will keep them busy from now until April or May, when they discharge their coast catches and sail for Behring Sea.

She is commanded by Captain Smith, and will go first to Clayoquot, where she expects to procure Indian hunters. Her equipment comprises eight first class canoes, and she will commence her hunting off the California coast. Nixon, voices the general sentiment of the private sealers in declaring that he does not credit the statements concerning the massing of so many American cruisers in Behring sea.

Should the Government really send the American cruisers to watch the sealing grounds, it is Mr. Nixon's intention to sail his vessel under the British flag, as there would be no show for American sealers. In several of the ship-chandlers' establishments at Victoria are to be seen diminutive cannon, of both brass and iron, none of them larger than a 4 pounder.

One of these will be carried by almost every one of the sealing fleet this year, but not for any aggressive purpose, it is said. They are to be used in firing bombs, in the event of the boats becoming separated from the schooners by fog or darkness, and are said to make a terrific report. As a weapon they would be of no use whatever against the guns of the cruisers. The San Francisco whaling fleet is beginning to take wings, and soon all of them will be out on the chase after their wary old enemy.

Meyer , which are now at the foot of Fremont street, after undergoing a thorough overhauling at the Union Iron Works. They will probably be ready for sea at the end of the month. The whalers will not go direct to the Arctic sea, but will cruise south until the breaking up of the ice north, about the middle of May.

Fogos Island.

Whalebone may not be in great demand this season, on account of the heavy catch last year. She had a very uneventful trip and only spoke one other vessel of the fleet. The work of getting the Morgan ready for another cruise will begin at once. The whaling bark Charles W. Morgan came in last night from the Okhotsk Sea with barrels of oil and pounds of bone for J. The take of the whaler was reported lost. They indicate a gradual decay in an industry which was once very important indeed. At the time of the War of Independence, whalers sailed out of American ports, chiefly from ports in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Long island; in the number had increased to vessels; in it had declined to about vessels; and now the census report shows only craft engaged in the chase of the whale.

Of this number 57 sailed out of New Bedford and 27 out of San Francisco. About half the Yankee whalers fitted out in this port and sold their retell here. In the last century, and the first half of this, the chief whaling grounds were the seas which wash the coast of Greenland on the north, where the right whale abounded, and the South Pacific and Indian oceans, where the sperm whale was found.

Now, there are few whales left in Hudson Bay or on the coast of Spitzbergen, and the era of whale fishing among Polynesian islands, which was the dream of young sailors half a century ago, has come to an end. Of the whole whaling fleet in , only 36 vessels pursued the whale in Atlantic waters from Baffin Bay to the Falkland Islands, and only eight followed their calling in the South Pacific; while 42 fished the icy waters of the Arctic and Behring Sea, and nine the sea of Okhotsk and the waters of Siberia.

By indiscriminate slaughter, the whale of our ancestors has nearly been exterminated, leaving behind him a small number of his family, such as is seen off the coast of this State, which possess little commercial value. In former days the most valuable whale was the sperm whale, which yielded whale oil and sperm for illuminating purposes, and occasionally a lump of ambergris. But the discovery of coal oil has destroyed the value of fish oils and their residuum for illuminating uses, and ambergris is rarely found. Thus the right whale and the bowhead of the Arctic and Behring Sea have come to be more valuable by reason of the whale-bone they yield than the sperm whale.

The number of sperm whales taken in by American whalers was 67 per cent of the total catch, as against 29 per cent of right whales and bowheads; but the latter realized 70 per cent of the total yield of the fishery, as against 30 per cent realized by the sperm whales. The whaling industry was the first in which cooperation was established. Every man who ships on a whaler except the cook is a partner in the enterprise from the captain to the ship's boy.

When the cargo is sold each is entitled to his "lay," as it is called. The lay of a captain sailing out of this port is usually l5 per cent, that of a mate 20 per cent, that of an able seaman a share equal to per cent, that of a ship's boy, per cent. Most ships pay wages as well as a lay, so that on the whalers who confront icebergs and ice floes, as well as the ordinary dangers of the sea, the wages of the crew are generally pretty good.

It is not as easy to spend money off Cape Barrow as it used to be among those lovely isles, where the skies forever smile and the blacks forever weep. It was a whale which first demonstrated the northwest passage. A whale wounded off Behring Straits was found in Hudson Bay with the iron of the harpoon in him; whereby the existence of a continuous body of water along the north coast of North America was proved. It is on the cards that other whales, emulous of their long lost brother's fame, will presently assist in the exploration of the Antarctic continent by demonstrating that the range of the Southern whale, like that of the right whale of the Arctic, is circumpolar.

Our present maps depict a continent to which they give the name of Antarctica surrounding the South Pole, but our knowledge of that continent is derived from distant observations of ice-clad plateaus, mountains and volcanoes, seen from the decks of passing ships. The points observed may be islands scattered round the meridian of 70 , and inside of them there may be an open sea such as surrounds the North Pole.

If the exploring expedition which is now being fitted out to coast the border of the supposed continent should find a spot where it could break through that border and get into a navigable sea nearer the pole the Southern whale might prove an efficient ally in the work. Up to July 4 the catch of the whaling vessels out of this port is reported to have been as follows: She has been In the Okhotsk Sea and is the first of the fleet to put in an appearance.

R Wing of New Bedford, whose representative arrived here a few days ago. Morgan , which arrived on Tuesday, docked yesterday at the Howard street bulkhead and commenced discharging her cargo of sperm oil. The bark was refused a landing at the Caroline islands. She will hunt whales during the winter months in the South Seas, will later follow the leviathans to Japanese waters and will finish up, late next summer, in the Okhotsk Sea.

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She is the first of the fleet to get away. Eskimos used Whale and Walrus ivory and bone for many of their tools and utensils, such as harpoon fore shafts, fishing net weights, needles, awls, sled runners, ice probes and even bone armor. While it has been said the Eskimos passed this art form on to the New England sailors and whalers, sailors and whalers led the way to the modern Scrimshaw we see today. On whaling ships, Scrimshaw engravings were done with a pocket knife a needle from the ships sail maker.

Then periodically during the engraving process the sailor would rub a pigment into the cuts and scratches; since ink wasn't readily available, soot from the chimney of the ship's cooking stove was used, or gun powder mixed with whale oil was rubbed into the cuts and scratches.

Common subjects were portraits of the ship they were sailing on and maybe the ship's captain; there were also portraits of wives or sweethearts back home, all kinds of sea creatures, mermaids and such. Justice Goff's Irish Rescue Party. Difficult to locate copies, but worthwhile if possible: Goff was an Irish-born lawyer and judge, and also a committed Irish nationalist. In he played a prominent part in arranging for the rescue of six Fenian rebels imprisoned in a British penal colony in Western Australia.

On the 3rd of February, Devoy wrote to New Haven businessman James Reynolds saying that a whaling ship could be bought, and could cover its expenses by whaling during the rescue voyage. Devoy arrived in New Bedford on March 9th with a young committee member named Goff, ready to make a bid on a ship. Hathaway introduced him to John T. Richardson, a shipowner who recommended the Catalpa. The Catalpa was tons, 90 feet long and 25 feet broad.

The Voyage of the Catalpa: Richardson persuaded his son-in-law to captain the ship. When the ship left America in April, , almost none of the crew knew of its mission.

Whaleships, Sailors and Sea Captains. San Francisco

The Catalpa was in fact used as a whaling vessel, and on 30th May assisted a brig in trouble. However, Devoy wanted to send journalist John J. The rescue from Australia was a success, and when the news reached Dublin, a procession of thousands of people marched, burning effigies of Disraeli and the Duke of Cambridge. Product details Age Range: Chicago Review Press; 1 edition June 1, Language: Don't have a Kindle?

Our favorite toys for everyone on your list Top Kid Picks. Try the Kindle edition and experience these great reading features: Share your thoughts with other customers. Write a customer review. Showing of 2 reviews. Top Reviews Most recent Top Reviews. There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later. This book was not about sailing, or explorers of any kind. It is about the history of ships and whaling.

I thought it would be about explorers so that is why I got it for my girls. We are studying explorers right now in our homeschool. I returned the book. If you are looking for a book on ships and whaling, this is great. If you are looking for a book on sea voyages and explorers, this is not it. One person found this helpful.

Great resource for learning about whaling and sailing life.

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