250 FOLLOW THE WHALE 



the hard-bitten skippers and owners were up to, where the ships 

 went, why, for what, and with what success. These essential facts 

 can be summed up very simply, but, first, we must obtain some clear 

 understanding of the actual volume of the business and of its real 

 time span. 



To take the latter first, the build-up began, as we have said, in 

 1 8 1 8, and it then continued progressively to a high point in the year 

 1846 when the fleet consisted of no fewer than 736 vessels — 680 

 ships and barques, 34 brigs, and 22 schooners, aggregating 233,262 

 tons burthen. From then on, the numbers declined by ten-year inter- 

 vals as follows: to 635, 263, 169, 124, 77, and then to 46 in 1906. The 

 first real drop occurred in 1857 when a serious financial slump hit the 

 country as a whole. Four years later the Civil War broke out and 

 the number of whalers took a plunge from 514 vessels of a total of 

 158,745 tons to 263 vessels of only 68,553 ^^^s- ^7 ^^^ ^^^ ^^ ^^^ 

 Civil War the "golden age" was over, though American whaling per- 

 sisted until 19 1 6. Thus, the whole period concerned lasted just fifty 

 years, and the "golden age" for thirty. 



Coming then to the financial aspects of this period, we find our- 

 selves confronted with a mass of most regrettably conflicting sta- 

 tistics. Nothing can be more misleading than statistics, even in the 

 hands of experts, and there are almost no things that can be more 

 boring; nevertheless, the simple law of averages still pertains, and the 

 outcome of averaging the sundry available statistics makes interesting 

 reading. During the period 1835 ^^ ^^^^ ^^^ annual imports of whale 

 products averaged 117,950 barrels of sperm oil, 25,913 of common 

 whale oil, and 2,323,512 pounds of baleen, valued in all at about 

 eight millions of dollars of that period, which, of course, had a much 

 greater purchasing power than the dollar of today. Sperm oil was 

 worth 80^ to $1.62 a gallon, ordinary oil 34^ to 79^, and baleen 

 34^ to 58^ a pound. In the peak year of 1846 there were more than 

 seventy thousand men employed in the fleet alone and the vessels 

 were valued at over twenty-two million dollars, while the total 

 value of whale products imported reached the colossal figure of 

 seventy million dollars. 



Some individual vessels made incredible profits. The Lagoda in 

 twelve years earned $652,000 and in one year paid a dividend of 

 363^ per cent. She cost less than $5000 to build! Some of the whal- 



