Midday North and South 225 



promotional methods that would do credit to New York's Madison 

 Avenue today. The published material is still extant in the old ar- 

 chives, and makes astonishing reading. Most of it is devoted to highly 

 colorful descriptions of the wealth of certain lands distant from Eu- 

 rope, which, the documents imply, awaited only enterprising Eng- 

 lishmen with sufficient capital to exploit. The British public thought 

 the whole thing a splendid idea and rushed to buy shares. 



Among the original promoters, however, were some very shrewd 

 merchants and shipowners who managed quietly to divert enough of 

 the money, raised by public subscription, to the building of no fewer 

 than twenty-four ships specifically for whaling. These came off the 

 stocks with unusual speed and were promptly commissioned in and 

 about 1725. Since there had been no British whalers for almost a 

 century, skilled crews had to be imported from abroad — in this 

 case from Holstein — and be paid exorbitant wages. Twelve ships 

 sailed the first year, twenty-four the second, and twenty-five the 

 third, though this number was quickly reduced by losses to twenty- 

 one. 



This fleet never once averaged even one whale killed per ship per 

 season over eight years, and this accumulated an enormous debit 

 balance for the company, despite the fact that the directors had in the 

 meantime negotiated the passage of an Act of Parliament exempting 

 all its vessels from all duties on all products taken on the high seas 

 and imported in its bottoms. In all, these whalers lost 177,780 pounds 

 sterling during the first eight years, which in those days represented 

 a perfectly colossal sum. The most ridiculous aspect of the whole 

 affair, as seen in retrospect, is that this much-vaunted South Sea Com- 

 pany's fleet went exclusively to the Greenland, or northern, seas, in 

 the Arctic. 



It was manifest even to the directors of the company that they 

 could not present the stockholders with such a picture of failure year 

 after year. Foreign whalers calculated that six bad years could be re- 

 couped in one good year, but after a seventh unprofitable season they 

 advocated getting out of the business and cutting their losses. These 

 gentlemen were, however, already in too deeply. Since the company's 

 other enterprises had fared no better, the directors got to work on 

 the government again and persuaded it to grant a bounty to the 

 whale fisheries. And they got an Act passed that year too. Neverthe- 



