Evening star., 1898-05-28
THE DECLINE OF WHALING.
Almost Complete Failure of the Eng
lish Catch This Year.

Almost Complete Failure of the Eng
lish Catch This Year.
From the London Globe.
With the return of the Davis Straits YES
sells it is possible to estimate the results;
achieved by the Scotch whalers during last
season. The catch on this ground is worth
f14,0fO. Of which f12,0OO represents the So
called "whalebone'' and the balance oil
On the Greenland ground the season was
all almost complete failure. one vessel (the
Balaena) having caught only Que FISH which
gave twelve hundredweigi.t of bone and
sixty tuns of oil, worth in all $500. In
order to fill up. in default Of whales, the
ships turned their attention to Franz Jo-
seph Land, where walrus are plentiful, and
the Balaena captured a reund six hundred,
whose skins will bring in 5000. So far as
this one whaler is concerned, last seasons
operations do not involve a loss of money,
but We doubt If the Diana's eighty walrus
and seven bears, the Active's seventy wal
rus and forty seals. and the Polar Stars
3ol seals and two bears, will bring in suffi-
clent money to compensate for their several
outfits: To any one acquainted with the
past history Of the whaling industry these
results are saddening. AS compared with
last year. the Davis Straits return shows
an increase; but both grounds have yielded
less than in 1894, when from Davis Straits
the ships brought home :S5 tuns of oil and
l2ts tons of bone. and from Greenland
1O2H tuns Of bottle-nosed whale and seal
OIL and 119 tons of bone, worth in all about
f31 600.
The introduction of steam forty years ago
marked new era in whaling, and enabled
better results to be obtained But unfor
tunately, by that time the number Of fish
In the sea-"right' whales in the north and
sperm whales in the south-had cegun
TO thin, and the use of steam in the cap
ture OF the cetaceans has only served to
decimate them the more rapidly In the
ten years prior to 1853 (when steam was
employed for the first time) the average
annual number of whales taken by Peter
mead, Dundee, Aberdeen and other Scotch
ships was no. which yielded 1880 tuns of
oil and 12h tons OF bone, worth between
them f124.O 1t will be seen what fall
ing on there has been between 1857 and
iS9I But go further back and the con-
trast becomes far more pronounced Dur
Ing the four years 1S14-17 the number of
voyages made from Scotland was 194, and
yielded 1864 tuns of oil and S9I tons of
bone. English ships in the same four years
made S92 voyages, and the total catch of
whales was 3,34S.
The average of the Davis Straits fisbers
was about two-thirds OF this and the gross
value of the freights Of the two fleets 0n-
ciud1ng the government bounty Of 80 shii-
lings per ton). with Oil at f32 and whale
Done at tSO per ton. exceeded ffOO 600 for
the one year. Whalebone today is worth
Fl, 500 per ton, and oil f2O per tun. The
price. OF oil has diminished, owing to the
progress of gas and other illuminants and
to the substitution of mineral oil in manu-
factures. But the value of bone has ad-
vanced for over seventy years past, and, as
no really effective substitute has yet been
found. the price bids fair to 20 up still
higher in proportion as whales become
more rare.
Sperm whaling Is in even worse case than
right whaling. A few small schooners 20
out from colonial ports after that variety.
and the American fleet spend some part Of
the year in the Pacific looking for il. But
neither can boast of much success. We In
this country were long behind the men of
New Bedford and Nantucket in Searching
for the "spermacetty," and we went out Of
1t long before them. But 1t Is to the enter
prise OF an Englishman that the nations
were indebted for the sperm whale fishery
having been opened out to it's greatest ex-
tent. An attempt made to establish this
branch from London In 1775 was a failure.
Ten years later the English shipma sters
discovered the haunts of the sperm whale
and in 1888 as much as 327 tuns of sperm
Oil were brought to this country. From
this time. with oil at f4S per tun. and with
bounties rising from $500 to f700. 1t may be
said that the English whalers until they
quilted the game, were successful as
the Americans. They all hunted the same
grounds-the region of the Mne the Gulf of
Guinea, the coast Of Brasil and the FaIk-