The Virginia enterprise. [volume] (Virginia, St. Louis County, Minn.) 1893-19??, 1898-07-08
GREAT DECLINE IN WHALING.
Almost Com plete Failure of the Eng
1:.h a.

suits achieved by the Scotch whalcrs
during last season. The catch on this
ground is worth f14,O4O, of which E12.
200 represents the so-calIed "whalebone,"
and the balance oil. On the Greenland
ground the season was an almost cor,-
Piete failure, one vessel (the Balaena)
tWelve.hundred-w weight of bone and sixty
tons of oil, worth in all f23OO In order
to bill 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
G bl,t n 90 not involve loss Of money,
rus and seven bears, the Actives sew
enty Walrus and ferty seals, and the
folar Stars 95l seals and two bears will
erlng in sufficient money to compensate
for their. several outfits. To any one ac-
q4ainted with the past history of the
whaling industry, these results are sad
dening. AS compared with last year,
me Davis straits return shows ap in
less than in 1884, when from Davis
straits the ships brought home 1856 tons
of oil and twelve and one-half tons of
bone, and from Greenland 12h tons of
bottle-nosed whale and seal oil. and ono
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.
Der of fish in the sea-"right": whales in
the North and sperm whales in the South
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 timie)
the average annual number of whales tax
en- by Peterhead, Dundee. Aberdeen and
other other Scotch ships was 10, which yielded
1850 tons of oil and 7211a tons of bone,
worth between them f124, 900. 1t will be
seen what falling off there has been be-
tween 1857 and 1897. But 90 further
back, and the contrast becomes far more
pronounced. During the four years,
lSl4-11, the number of voyages made from
Scotland was 1914, and the total catch was
1852 whales, which yielded 1861 tons of
in the same four years made 392 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 Including the government bounty of
70 shillings per tom. with oil at f32 and
whalebone at ESQ 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-
cral oil in manufactures. But the value
of bone has advanced for over seventy
years past, and as no really effective sub
stitute has yet been found, the price bids
fair to 90 up still higher in proportion as
whales become more rare. ....
Sperm whaling is in even worse case
than right whaling. A few small
schooners 60 out from colonial ports after
that variety, and the American fleet
spends some part of the year i'll 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 in searching for the
"spermacetty,' and we went out of it
long before them. But it is to the en-
terprise of ain 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 1775
was failure. Ten years later the Eng
fish shipmasterss discovered the haunts
of the sperm whale, and in 1888 as much
this country. From this time. with oil
at f43 per tun, and with bounties rising
from $500 to E7OO, 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 Enaer-
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
of Good Hope to the east. In the au-
tumn of 17SS Enderby's vessel, the Anne
liza, under Capt. Shields, rounded the
Horn, and after nine months absence re-
oil. Immediately there was a rush for
the Pacific of both Englisksand Ameri-
can vessels, and by the endsof 1901 the
import into Great Britain had quudru-
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
In 1903 some of them had got as far
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
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 spoils. New South Wales
took hand, and for the first time in 1921
shipped some of the product to London
London Globe. -. -: .>E 49,: -