304 THE AMERICAN WHALEMAN 



and heavy commodities j some were pounded to pieces on the 

 uncharted reefs and shoals of the South Pacific j a few were 

 sacrificed to the fury of mutineers or the treachery of South 

 Sea natives J others were burned to the water's edgej some met 

 a turbulent, racking fate in the whirl of an Indian Ocean ty- 

 phoon j and some were crushed by ice-floes or field-ice, and 

 perhaps, for a season or two, haunted the frigid waters as rud- 

 derless and dismasted derelicts." 



The long and picturesque career of the ship Maria was 

 reminiscent of many others. This vessel, intended for use 

 as a privateer, was built in 1782. After the Revolution she 

 was bought by William Rotch, well-known among the earlier 

 whaling merchants, and fitted out as a whaler. In this capac- 

 ity she made no less than twenty-seven voyages, occupying a 

 period of seventy years, for her purchaser and his descendants. 

 Soon after the close of the Revolutionary War, while lying in 

 the River Thames, the Maria displayed the new American 

 flag J and by so doing she earned the reputation of having been 

 one of the first vessels to introduce John Bull to the Stars and 

 Stripes. Finally, in 1863, having wrested cargo after cargo of 

 oil from cachalot and bowhead, right whale and humpback, 

 she was sold into Chilean hands. There the veteran whaler 

 was put into use as a common carrier j but only three years 

 later she proudly elected to sink rather than to continue in 

 such ignominious drudgery. Carrying dirty, miscellaneous 

 cargoes in the muddy waters of a foreign coasting trade was no 

 fit occupation for a vessel which had spent her life in hunting 

 the mightiest of big game throughout all the deepest seas. 

 And the Maria knew it! 



Together with the destruction of the old whalers went a de- 

 cided change in the fortunes of the ports from which they had 

 sailed. One after another the smaller whaling ports of New 

 England and of Long Island were forced out of the fishery. 

 Even the leaders found it impossible to keep up their earlier 

 pace. New Bedford, it is true, still possessed 123 vessels in 



2 See Scammon, C. M., "Marine Mammals of the Northwestern Coast of 

 North America," pp. 244 ff., for an interesting discussion of the careers and 

 fates of many of the old American whalers. 



