PROFITS AND THE COUNTING-ROOM 279 



vestor, /4 share @ $2864.735 four investors, Vs share @ 

 $1432.37 eachj and four other investors, Vie share @ $716.18 

 each.^^ 



Such a system of fractional ownership possessed the double 

 advantage of allowing persons of moderate means to invest in 

 the industry, and of making it possible for the wealthy mer- 

 chants to scatter their holdings over a large number of whalers. 

 The individual possession of an entire whaling vessel and its 

 outfit was quite beyond the reach of the ordinary investor. As 

 early as 1844 the average value of all vessels in the sperm 

 fishery, including their outfits, was about $38,000 each. 

 Whalers and outfits in the right whale fishery cost, on the 

 average, about $28,000 eachj and even the 73 smaller craft 

 in the Atlantic sperm fishery represented an average expendi- 

 ture of about $14,000 each.^* Modest savings were quite 

 helpless in the face of such demands j but they might very well 

 suffice to purchase a share entitling the holder to %2, Me, or Vs 

 of the proceeds of a given voyage. 



But even the whaling capitalists, who were well able to 

 finance entire voyages, deliberately scattered their holdings 

 over a number of vessels. Men of wealth commonly bought 

 shares in many different whalers and outfits. Thus Jonathan 

 Bourne, a well-known merchant of New Bedford, amassed a 

 fortune which would have enabled him to purchase an entire 

 fleet of seventeen ships and barks. Significantly and charac- 

 teristically, however, he chose to invest his wealth in fractional 

 shares of forty-six different whalers rather than to own and 

 operate seventeen vessels outright. ^^ 



The greatest safeguard against the inevitable hazards of 

 whaling, however, lay in the system of marine insurance which 

 was readily available to owners throughout the period after 

 1820. The main features of this early scheme of insurance, 



" These figures were taken from an original manuscript Day-Book of Charles 

 R. Tucker, now 'n the New Bedford Public Library. Mr. Tucker was the 

 agent and part owner of the Minerva, and one of the prominent whaling mer- 

 chants of Nevv Bedford. 



1* These figures were compiled by Joseph Grinnell, and published in 1844 in 

 a booklet called "Speech on the Tariff, with Statistical Tables of the Whale 

 Fishery." See Appendix B for a more detailed account of both the figures and 

 the reference. 



?-s Old Dartmouth Historical Sketches, No. 44, p. zi. 



