The Virginia enterprise. [volume] (Virginia, St. Louis County, Minn.) 1893-19??, 1898-07-08
GREAT DECLINE IN WHALING,
Almost Complete Failure of the Eng
1jsh Catch This Year.

Almost Complete Failure of the Eng
lish Catch This Year.
With the Eeturn of the Davis straits
vessel it is possible to estimate the re-
suits achieved by the Scotch whalcrs
curing last season. The catch on this
ground is worth f14,O4O, of which s12,-
600 represents the so-called "whalebone,"
and the balance oil. On the Greenland
ground the season was an almost conf
Plete failure, one vessel (the Balaena)
having caught only one fish, which gave
tt%e!v e. n;1 Of bone and sixty
to fill up. in default of whales, the shirs
turned their attention to Franz Josef
land, where walrus are plentiful, and
the Balaena captured a round GOO,. whose
skins will bring 10000. So far as this
one whaler is concerned, last seasons
operations do not involve loss of money,
but we doubt if the Diana's eighty wal
rus and seven bears, the Active's sew
enty Walrus and ferty seals, and the
bring in sufficient money to compensate
for their several outfits. To any one ac-
q9ainted with the past history of the
whaling industry, these results are sad
dening. AS compared with last year,
the Davis straits return shows an in
crease. but both grounds have yielded
less than in 1894, when from Davis
straits the ships brought home SIS tons
of oil and twelve and one-half tons of
bone, and from Greenland 1917 tons of
bottle-nosed whale and seal oil, and one
and one-half 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, unfortunately, by that time the mum.
Der Of fish in the sea-"right' whales in
had begun to thin, and the use of steam
in the capture of the cetaceans has only
served to decimate them the more rapid
". In the ten years prior to 1858 when
steam was employed for the first time)
the average annual number of whales tax
en- by Peterhead, Dundee, Aberdeen and
other Scotch ships was ITO, which yielded
1850 tons of oil and 72!4 tons of bone,
seen what falling off there has been be-
tween 1857 and 1897. But 60 further
back, and the contrast becomes far more
pronounced. During the four years,
1814-17, the number of voyages made from
Scotland was 1914, and the total catch was
1852 whales, which yielded 1861 tons of
oil and S91 tons of bone. English ships
in the same four years made 1872 voyages,
and the total catch of whales was 334S
The average of the Davis straits fishers
was about two-thirds of this, and the
gross value of the freights of the two
fleets Gncluding the government bounty of
70 shillings per tom. with oil at f32 and
whalebone at EGO per ton, exceeded f7O0,-
wv Tor the one year. Whalebone today
is worth f1SOO per ton, and oil EGO Per
tun. The price of oil has diminished, ow
ing to the progress of gas and other illu-
minants and to the substitution of min
cral oil in manufactures. But the value
of bone has advanced for over seventy
years past, and as no really effective sub
fair to go up still higher in proportion as
whales become more rare.
Sperm whaling is in even worse case
than "right'' whaling. A few small
schooners go out from colonial ports after
that variety, and the American feet
spends some part of the year in the Pa
cific looking for it. But neither can boast
of much success. We in this country
were long behind the men of New Bed
ford and Nantucket i'll searching for the
''spermacetty.'' and We went out of it
terprise of an Englishman that the ma
tions were indebted for the sperm whale
fishery having been opened out to it's
greatest extent. An attempt made to es-
tablish this branch from London i'll 1875
was failure. Ten years later the Eng
lish shipmasters 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
from $500 to f700, it may be said that
the English whalers, until they quilted
the game, were as successful as the
Americans. They all hunted the same
grounds-the region of the line. the gulf
of Guinea, the coast of Brazil and the
Falkland islands. Before Samuel Ender-
by no whaler seems to have thought of
passing out of the Atlantic either by way
Of Cape Horn to the west or the Cape
tumn of 1883 Enderby's vessel, the Ame-
liza, under Capt. Shields, rounded the
Horn, and after nine months absence re-
turned to London with 139 tuns of sperm
oil. Immediately there was a rush for
the Pacific of both Englisaagand Ameri-
can vessels, and by the endSvf 1901 the
import into Great Britain had quadru-
pied. After decimating the ocean on the
Peruvian and Gillian coasts. these ships
spread northward and westward. They
met with much success off New Zealand.
north as the Moluccas. Had they pene-
trated little further they might have an
ticipated Enderby's second enterprise. In
1910 that man fitted. out the Siren, a
vessel of 500 tons (the whalers of those
days seldom exceeded 800 tons), and sent
her to look for whales off Japan. This
second triumph was greater than the first.
The Siren came home with 346 tuns of
sperm oil-the record" cargo-and, as be-
fore, whalers were dispatched post haste
for the new ground, in order to obtain
a share of the spells. New South Wales
took hand, and for the first time in 1921
shipped some of the product to London.
London Globe. 80 ~ ssi5 ~ ~ s2es2 :
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