The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1904-01-03
THE GOLDEN DAYS OF
THE BIG RIGHT WHALE
This Seasons Disastrous Arctic Huntinc and
the Great Killings" of the past.

and began the great business of
r deep" ocean whaling.
beIore long, the whalers of New
england had ventured north TO the
, GulL OF ST. Lawrence and to the Grand
Banks in pursuit of the right whales
which were Withdrawing more and
| more from the overturned Massachu-
setts coast. In 1853 almost a hun
dred vessels, few of them more than
seventy-five tone in burden (not so
large as many pleasure yachts of to-
oay) TOOK whale off Newfoundland
ana worked into the ice of the Straits
of Belle Isle.
Before the Revolutionary War be-
gan, the Nantucket whalers had begun
TO occupy all the whaling grounds of
the Atlantic. Capt. Uriah Bunker in
the brig Amazon, the first Nantucket
WhaIer to cross the Equator, arrived
at home from his voyage on the very
day or the battle of Lexington.
1t was a Nantucket man. Capt. Fol-
ger, who first charted the Gulf Stream.
Benjamin Franklin caused this chart
to be engraved for the use of naviga-
tors, and it is substantially correct to-
day.
First Stars and Stripes in England.
1t was a New Bedford whaIer. the
Bedford, which was the first ship that
ever flew the ''rebellious thirteen
stripes" of America in any English
port. She was dispatched from Mas
sachusetts the moment peace was de-
clared, and she arrived in the Thames
with her cargo Of oil before all the
Acts of Parliment against the
rebels had been rescinded.
In 1888 the log book of the Nam
tucket ship Penelope recorded her ar
rival in the Arctic seas in Is north
latitude, with zone hundred American
whale ships in sight" And this point,
so far north that it still is a Polar
adventure for expeditions to reach it,
was reached in those early days by
little craft which did not even have
coppered bottoms.
Long before that, solitary American
whalers had penetrated into the
frozen seas. Indeed, in 1853 Bos-
ton schooner had tried to find the
northwest passage and had spent
seven or eight months in the ice
1t was the sperm whaler that first
induced American whalers to round
the Horn and enter the Pacific In
1871 seven ships sailed around the
Horn from Nantucket and New Bed
ford.
Then began the era Of enterprise
during which the whale ships carried
the American flag into every spot on
the globe, one Nantucket man enter
ing even the Red Sea.
The first right whales were tak~n
on the northwest coast in 1885, again
by Nantucket ship, and in 1S43, the
first bowhead whales ever taken in
the North Pacific Ocean were killed
by two New Bedford ships off KANT
schatka.
In 1S4S the Sag Harbor bark Supe-
rior, under Capt. Royce, passed
through Boring Straits, and within
three years $50 American ships were
filing with oil and whalebone there.
Bone was only just beginning then
to amount to something in value. In
1928, the finest kind was worth only
8 shilling a pound in Philadelphia.
In 1920 to 1924 it was worth only
from to 10 cents a pound. In 1887
whalebone was selling for IS cents a
pound. The price of sperm oil then
was 80 cents and of whale oil So cents
a gallon.
Made Hawaii-AmerfcanS Sixty Years
Ago.
In those days the meeting ground
of the whalers was off the islands of
Oahu and Maui in the Hawaiian group,
and that land was then in practice, as
<AAAleA lNciA4 as u 40 llOW III reality. 1ne
mail station was a deserted coral reef
far to the west, known as Bakers ISL
and. where a cask on a pole was used
for the deposit of letters by every pass
ing ship.
Even before the capture of right and
bowhead whales had brought the
American ships to the Arctic Ocean
and the Boring Sea in force, small
whalers from New England had ven
tured into unknown seas.
Before 1S43 two Russian warships on
a voyage of exploration sighted
group of islands in the Antarctic
Ocean and had begun to send men
ashore to take possession in the name
of the Car when the fog lifted and
they were amazed to see a little seal
ing sloop from Long Island riding
quietly in the harbor. The Russians
were disappointed and disgusted but
honest enough to name the islands
"Palmer's Land" after the captain OF
the little sailboat The British ship
Caribou had a similar experience at al
most the same time, for she thought
she had discovered the land now known
as Hurd's Island, but on approaching,
she found the schooner Oxford. of
Fairhaven, Mass, there, engaged in
whaling.
Many of the ships that opened this
Pacific and Arctic fishery are afioat to-
day and catching whales as bravely as
if they were brand new. There is the
famous old bark Morning Star, which,
when last reported, had sailed out of
Fayal in the Acres with 125 barrels of
sperm oil which she had obtained since
last July when she left New Bedford
on her cruise.
The Famous Morning Star.
The Morning Star entered the Pa
cific fishery in 1853 and made rich
hauls of oil and bone even through
the Civil War, evading privateers sue
cessfully and landing her cargo at a