276 THE AMERICAN WHALEMAN 



her cargoes had yielded $200,000 to the owners. When she 

 returned to port in 1847 the underwriters refused to insure 

 the weather-scarred "blubber-hunter" for another cruise, and 

 she was sold as an old hulk. In the end, however, she was pur- 

 chased by a certain Captain W. T. Walker and again fitted out 

 for sea. Upon leaving port, still entirely uninsured, both ves- 

 sel and equipment represented a total investment of only 

 $8,000 — and showed it only too plainly! From the first, 

 nevertheless, the venture prospered amazingly. Two surpris- 

 ingly short cruises in the North Pacific yielded bountiful re- 

 turns j the cargo of a wrecked whaler, discovered in extremis y 

 was purchased at a heavy discount 3 several shipments of oil 

 were sent home as freight, and the ship rapidly refilled after 

 each emptying of the casks 3 and finally, in 1852, Captain 

 Walker arrived at San Francisco with his vessel again filled to 

 overflowing. Here he disposed of both the Envoy and her 

 last cargo 3 and a final accounting showed that the four years' 

 cruise in a condemned hulk had yielded a grand total of $138,- 

 450 — an astounding sum when compared with the original 

 investment of $8,000! ^ 



Such superlatively good fortune, however, was not confined 

 to the Envoy. The Corinthian came into port in 1862, after 

 a four years' cruise, with a cargo valued at the extraordinary 

 figure of $275,0003 the Alaska returned in 18 80 with 3,255 

 barrels of sperm oilj the Lofer, operating during the late 

 twenties and early thirties, completed three Pacific voyages, 

 yielding 6581 barrels of sperm oil, within the short space of 

 sixty-two months 3 and the Adeline Gibhs secured, during a 

 single cruise, 133 pounds of ambergris — a remarkable amount 

 of this precious substance which sold, in 1878, for $23,231.25. 

 Still other voyages, too, were exceptionally profitable 3 and 

 among them were to be found the following: ^^ 



^ The facts concerning the Envoy are common knowledge in the literature of 

 whaling. The best and most accessible accounts are in Starbuck, A., "History," 

 p. 147, and in Brown, J. T., loc. cit. 



I'^The records of the Corinthian, Alaska, and Adeline Gibbs are given by 

 Brown, J. T., writing in "Fisheries and Fishery Industries," VII, p. 293. The 

 material pertaining to the remaining voyages listed was taken from Alexander 

 Starbuck's painstaking "History of the American Whale Fishery," pp. 145-148. 

 Mr. Starbuck, writing at a time when men who had sailed on many of these 

 voyages were still alive, and when countless documents were to be had for the 



