The Cruise of the Cachalot | Page 3

completely engrossed this
branch of the whale fishery, contentedly leaving to Great Britain and
the continental nations the monopoly of the northern or Arctic fisheries,
while they cruised the stormy, if milder, seas around their own shores.
For the resultant products, their best customer was the mother country,
and a lucrative commerce steadily grew up between the two countries.
But when the march of events brought the unfortunate and wholly
unnecessary War of Independence, this flourishing trade was the first to
suffer, and many of the daring fishermen became our fiercest foes on
board their own men-of-war.
The total stoppage of the importation of sperm oil and spermaceti was
naturally severely felt in England, for time had not permitted the
invention of substitutes. In consequence of this, ten ships were
equipped and sent out to the sperm whale fishery from England in 1776,
most of them owned by one London firm, the Messrs. Enderby. The
next year, in order to encourage the infant enterprise, a Government
bounty, graduated from L500 to L1000 per ship, was granted. Under
this fostering care the number of ships engaged in the sperm whale
fishery progressively increased until 1791, when it attained its
maximum.
This method of whaling being quite new to our whalemen, it was
necessary, at great cost, to hire American officers and harpooners to
instruct them in the ways of dealing with these highly active and
dangerous cetacea. Naturally, it was by-and- by found possible to
dispense with the services of these auxiliaries; but it must be confessed
that the business never seems to have found such favour, or to have
been prosecuted with such smartness, among our whalemen as it has by
the Americans.

Something of an exotic the trade always was among us, although it did
attain considerable proportions at one time. At first the fishing was
confined to the Atlantic Ocean; nor for many years was it necessary to
go farther afield, as abundance of whales could easily be found.
As, however, the number of ships engaged increased, it was inevitable
that the known grounds should become exhausted, and in 1788 Messrs.
Enderby's ship, the EMILIA, first ventured round Cape Horn, as the
pioneer of a greater trade than ever. The way once pointed out, other
ships were not slow to follow, until, in 1819, the British whale-ship
SYREN opened up the till then unexplored tract of ocean in the western
part of the North Pacific, afterwards familiarly known as the "Coast of
Japan." From these teeming waters alone, for many years an average
annual catch of 40,000 barrels of oil was taken, which, at the average
price of L8 per barrel, will give some idea of the value of the trade
generally.
The Australian colonists, early in their career, found the sperm whale
fishery easy of access from all their coasts, and especially lucrative. At
one time they bade fair to establish a whale fishery that should rival the
splendid trade of the Americans; but, like the mother country, they
permitted the fishery to decline, so that even bounties could not keep it
alive.
Meanwhile, the Americans added to their fleet continually, prospering
amazingly. But suddenly the advent of the civil war let loose among
those peaceable cruisers the devastating ALABAMA, whose course
was marked in some parts of the world by the fires of blazing
whale-ships. A great part, of the Geneva award was on this account,
although it must be acknowledged that many pseudo-owners were
enriched who never owned aught but brazen impudence and influential
friends to push their fictitious claims. The real sufferers, seamen
especially, in most cases never received any redress whatever.
From this crushing blow the American sperm whale fishery has never
fully recovered. When the writer was in the trade, some twenty-two
years ago, it was credited with a fleet of between three and four
hundred sail; now it may be doubted whether the numbers reach an

eighth of that amount. A rigid conservatism of method hinders any
revival of the industry, which is practically conducted to-day as it was
fifty, or even a hundred years ago; and it is probable that another
decade will witness the final extinction of what was once one of the
most important maritime industries in the world.
*
THE CRUISE OF THE "CACHALOT"
*
CHAPTER I
OUTWARD BOUND
At the age of eighteen, after a sea-experience of six years from the time
when I dodged about London streets, a ragged Arab, with wits
sharpened by the constant fight for food, I found myself roaming the
streets of New Bedford, Massachusetts. How I came to be there, of all
places in the world, does not concern this story at all, so I am not going
to trouble my readers with it; enough to say that I WAS there, and