8 THE AMERICAN WHALEMAN 



and Azores Islanders j scions of great whaling houses j farm 

 boys and sophisticated city youths j escaped criminals and men 

 with endless varieties of "pasts" j conscientious and capable 

 youngsters who intended to "get ahead" in the industry j coal- 

 black negroes and half-breeds with the blood of aristocrats 

 and of men of wealth in their veins j soft -voiced, clean-limbed 

 natives of the Sandwich Islands; bold and brutal mutineers 

 with the hearts of pirates, — all these and many others re- 

 sponded to the shouts and imprecations of the mates during a 

 spell of "dirty weather," or patiently carved out masterpieces 

 of scrimshaw work during long hours of monotonous ill luck 

 on the whaling grounds. 



But if the United States imported whalemen, she repaid 

 the debt by exporting a goodly share of the products which they 

 brought home. As early as 1844 the annual whaling ex- 

 ports were valued at $2,000,000, or about one-fourth of the 

 entire catch. ^ In 1850 New Bedford and Boston alone sent 

 abroad 72,338 gallons of sperm oil, 136,465 gallons of whale 

 oil, and 32,475 pounds of whalebone.® The great bulk of 

 the exports found a market in Europe. Holland and the 

 German States were amongst the best customers, though Eng- 

 land and France also made large purchases after the decay 

 of the British whaling fleet. 



In strange contrast to the international distribution of prod- 

 ucts and to the colorful, cosmopolitan crews was the extreme lo- 

 calization of the industry in a few provincial ports. For 

 American whaling was synonymous with New England whal- 

 ing. And not even the whole of maritime New England 

 was included; for the center of the trade was at Nantucket 

 and in Buzzards Bay, with a number of outposts in Narra- 

 gansett Bay and on Long Island Sound to the west and a sol- 

 itary sentry at Provincetown to the east and north. In 1843, 

 for instance, Nantucket and the four largest Buzzards Bay 

 ports of New Bedford, Fairhaven, Westport, and Mattapoisett 

 sent out 2^^j or 57%, of the 642 American whaling ves- 



8 Grinnell, Joseph, "Speech on the Tariflf, With Statistical Tables of the 

 Whale Fishery," — a sixteen-page reprint, (1844) of a speech made in Congress. 

 See Appendix B. 



9 Whalemen's Shipping List, annual statistics for 1850, published in January, 

 1851. 



