6 THE AMERICAN WHALEMAN 



increased to 644 vessels, and its value had risen to $19,430,- 

 000, — a rate of growth which averaged $675,000 per year. 

 Together with the catchings at sea, the value of the whole was 

 placed at $27,784,000. These 644 whalers, of 200,484 tons' 

 burden, were manned by 17,500 officers and men, who con- 

 sumed annually $3,845,500 worth of commodities. The an- 

 nual yields of oil and whalebone were sold, in the crude state, 

 for about $ 7,000,000 j and when manufactured, for $8,000,- 

 000 to $9,000,000.^ In order to supply whaling products 

 in such quantities it was necessary to kill some 10,000 whales 

 each year. About eight to ten per cent of this total number 

 were lost, even after having been captured and killed, as the 

 result of rough weather, sinkings, and other exigencies of the 

 chase. The remaining carcasses, having been stripped of their 

 blubber and bone, were cast adrift to form huge and bloody 

 feasts for sharks and for birds of prey.^ 



But nineteenth-century whaling was not only significant 

 in the economic life of New England and of the United States: 

 it occupied a predominant position in the field of world whal- 

 ing as well. By 1850 the supremacy of American whaling 

 had been established beyond question. In 1847 i^ was es- 

 timated that the whaling fleet of the entire world consisted 

 of about 900 vesselsj and of these no less than 722 belonged 

 to the United States.* Since the remainder sailed under a 

 variety of flags, no single nation could be regarded as more 

 than a nominal rival. Thus the American whaleman attained 

 an undisputed mastery of the world's whaling industry at the 

 time of its greatest development, and held it until the close 

 of the century. 



This world-wide reach of New England whaling inevitably 

 gave it certain international and cosmopolitan aspects. The 



* Grinnell, Joseph, "Speech on the Tariff, with Statistical Tables of the 

 Whale Fishery," a i6-page pamphlet published in 1844. See Appendix B for 

 further details regarding this material. 



5 Estimate made by Wilkes, Charles, in his "Narrative of the U. S. Exploring 

 Expedition," V, Ch. XII. 



® The size of the world's whaling fleet was given in a speech made by 

 William H. Seward in the U. S. Senate on July 29, 1852, and reported in the 

 Congressional Globe for the 32nd Congress, 1st Session, XXIV, Part III, pp. 

 1973-1976. The second figure is taken from the annual statistics for 1847, 

 published by the Whalemen's Shipping List in January, 1848. 



