The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1902-10-05

oil the Western Ocean-the North At
Azores.
High bowed, with sturdy stump
rnasts, spelling power in every round
cd line, whaling ships are sailing in
and out of Buzzard's Bay once more.
BANKERS and street railway directors,
merchants and retired gentlemen of
leisure, come driving down in smart
rigs behind fast horses to the wharves
IN get the smell of whale oil in their
nostrils once more-the smell that
brings back to them the days when
they piled out of New Bedford as
Young boat steerers and harpooners
and ordinary crew.
craft with the tryworks amidship,
with the great bent wooden davits,
black and uncouth, bolted all along the
greasy sides, and they stare out to-
ward the harbor's mouth and-wish.
They know that the old days of great
adventuring are ended. They know
that petroleum and gas have made it
unlikely that big fortunes will ever be
made again out of whale, be they plen-
near the coast. But they see the few
remaining whalers come in again
full" counting their catches once
more by the thousands of barrels. They
see the old wharf at Union street
covered again with whale oil casks
They see the Portugee crews roll along
the street again to draw big money
as their share of good voyages.
New Bedford is a city of cotton mills
rAaI
with all its ancient mysetry. The har-
boris mouth still shines, a gate to the
joy of the open ocean. And the rich,
staid old gentleman almost
Think they shall take to the sea
again
To SINCE the beard of the King of
Spain,'
their King of Spain being a barnacled
old "sparm," a hundred barrel fish.
They dream of hearing the cry of
Thar she blows" once more; of see
ing "whitewaters" on the slow, gray
heave of the eternal deep.
New Bedford's Quandnry.
New Bedford is in a quandary. OF
all her noble whaling feet of a quar-
ter of a century ago, only a few vesA
sells are in commission now, and of
those few the most ore schooners, not
adapted to the long cruises of two or
more years that mean good voy-
age." Ships cannot be adapted to whal-
ing. They must be built for it, The
craft that must hold a huge fifty or six
ty ton fish alongside in a tumbling sea,
hanging on to the mighty bulk by main
strength of tackle and timber, must be
tuit far more massively than the or
binary merchant ship. So now, with
sperm whales playing off shore. with
and three days sail from port, the an :
cient whaling town is unable to take
full advantage of it's new opportunity.
What ships there are bring in gold
again-not so much as before the war,
when the whale oil was worth dizzy
prices, but enough to make a. good voy-
age mean big profit. Even the schoon-
ers, able to remain out only few
months and able to carry only a limited
quantity of oil, have been coming home
with from $1,000 to $4,000 worth of oil
and whalebone. The schooner Pedro
NarelO-a revenue cutter during the
Civil Warts in after five months with
$4,000 worth of oil.
The bigger vessels have been doing
correSpondingly better. The whaling
bark Sunbeam, out only two months,
has reported from Fayal that she has
already obtained $50 barrels of sperm
record when she arrived in port with
oil and bone that sold for $4,000. The
bark Morning Star reports from Fayal
with $50 barrels taken in the last six
months. She has been cruising since
Oct. 10, 1901, and has taken 1900 bar
rels since leaving port.
Oldest WhaIer in the World.
A glorious old-time voyage has been
that of the fine old Canton, the oldest
whaling vessel in the world. She is
lying at the Union street wharf now,
having discharged the last five hun
dred barrels of a net voyage" that
produced 1900 barrels of sperm oil in
sixteen months-an exceptionally short
cruise with a result big enough to
make even the old whalers of New
Bedford town admire.
The Canton sailed the whale grounds
OF all the seven seas long before the
garish days of kerosene. She carried
the American flag around the world
long before many American steam
ships were on the seas. She struck
whale in waters almost unknown to
the rest of the maritime world. And
stout in every timber, able as the day
when she was launched, with ribs so
we'll preserved that they chip fresh
and bright under the shipwright' S
adze, she promises to carry her white
anu Dlue mouse nag, with the DldcK
letter wv on the white and the red
ball on the blue field, the famous old
pennant of the Wings of New Bedford,
around the world for many years TO
come
They treat her lovingly. Scarcely
We're the last barrels of oil out of her
before the ship carpenters were in her
ripping up planks and sheathing to
investigate her hidden timbers, replace
ing worn stuff with new, overhauling
her from stem to stern. Since she
was launched, she has been renewed
again and again from keelson to
truck. But never an inch of her old
model has been altered. She swims
to-day, as she swan more than half a
century ago, typical whaler of til ,
far-off days when men built ships like
churches.
Her first whaling voyage was in 1S4i.
Sne was known as Canton End then,
Tor New Bedford men owned a fun
Tgged ship also named Canton. That
ship was lost in 1852 off the japan coast
and only a few of her crew managed
70 reach shore, after weeks of suffering
IN open boats.
The bark Canton is only 226 tons bur-
zen, but she looks as big as a mer-
chantman, for she towers out OF tie
water with bulky sides and her Fat
Dowsprit is almost as big as mast.
Tier immense black timber dayits are