DISINTEGRATION AND DECAY 305 



1880 (though this was only half of the fleet which she had 

 owned thirty years before). But in the same year New Lon- 

 don retained only five whaling craft j and the fleets of Sag 

 Harbor and of Fairhaven had been blotted out completely. 

 Provincetown alone, still clinging to small, short-voyage sloops 

 and schooners, was able to show an apparent increase by ad- 

 vancing from sixteen vessels in 1850 to nineteen in 1873. 

 But even this slight gain was deceptive 5 for the larger fleet of 

 1873 displaced a total tonnage which was 310 tons less than 

 that of 1850. By 1880 only nine ports — New Bedford, 

 Provincetown, Edgartown, Boston, New London, San Fran- 

 cisco, Westport, Marion, and Dartmouth — were still sending 

 out whaling vessels. New Bedford alone, with 123 craft, 

 boasted of three-fourths of the total j Provincetown was an 

 insignificant second with twenty small "plum-pud'ners"j and 

 the seven remaining communities had but midget fleets of one 

 to seven vessels each. The juxtaposition of the figures for 

 three widely separated years presents a striking picture of the 

 decline of the leading ports: ^ 



The one port which suffered the most complete and ruinous 

 reversal of fortune, however, was Nantucket. At one time 

 the largest and proudest whaling port in the New World, 

 Nantucket fell upon evil days even before many of her smaller 

 rivals. Throughout the fifties and sixties a decreasing number 

 of captains and merchants struggled on valiantly in the face of 

 a growing maze of handicaps} but in 1870 the battle ceased. 

 On June 14 of that year, when the brig Eunice H. Adams let 



'The figures for 1850 and 1873 were taken from Scamraon, C. M., "Marine 

 Mammals," pp. 241 f.; while those for 1880 were taken from Clark, A. H., in 

 "Fisheries and Fishery Industries of the U. S.," Section V, Vol. II, p. 3. 



