3o8 THE AMERICAN WHALEMAN 



tury loomed, in 1898, Atlantic whaling had been further re- 

 duced to fourteen craft and a catch of 12,520 barrels of sperm 

 oil. 



In truth, the entire American whaling fleet was being ground 

 into bits between the upper and nether millstones of Pacific 

 decline and Atlantic decay. For the decade ending with 1905 

 the whole industry was able to employ, on the average, only 

 fifty-one vessels per year. And in 1906, just sixty years after 

 New World whaling had reached its zenith with a fleet of 

 735 vessels and 233,000 tons, only a beggarly flotilla of forty- 

 two whalers remained afloat. New Bedford, still in the lead, 

 contributed 24 vessels j San Francisco, 14; Provincetown, three 

 (small "plum-pud'ners," as always) j Norwich, Connecticut, 

 onej and all the other erstwhile whaling ports, from Nan- 

 tucket to Mattapoisett — not a single sail ! 



But even this was not the end. Disintegration and decay 

 continued to work their will upon the industry for something 

 more than another decade, until only the bark Wanderer and 

 the ship Charles W. Morgan remained. And when the 

 Wanderer, tired of dragging out her days in the uncongenial 

 atmosphere of the twentieth century, at length piled up on 

 the rocks at Cuttyhunk in 1924, the Morgan was left as 

 the sole (and inactive) survivor of a fleet which once whitened 

 every sea. Venerable but pathetic, never venturing from port, 

 her deserted mast-heads and silent forecastle stand in tragic 

 contrast to the era of world-girdling voyages and oil-soaked 

 decks of which she is the last mute reminder. Perhaps, after 

 all, it would have been better had she, too, yielded to Davy 

 Jones's ardent wooing, as did so many of her sisters, while still 

 in the full flush of youth! 



