The North PacifiCj as Seen by the Yankees 



Although this map is intrinsically the same as that upon which we 

 showed this area from the point of view of the Japanese, its content is 

 quite other and the movements it displays are wholly contrary. To the 

 whalers running out of San Francisco, the Pacific was no longer the end 

 of the universe; it was their world and, in the case of Hawaii, even their 

 home base. The sailors paid little attention to the Kuro Siwo, and the 

 steamers could go anywhere at will, provided fuel could be obtained. 

 The whalers' interests were threefold at this period. 



First and foremost, they were interested in the North Pacific bow- 

 head whales, which calved in the Sea of Okhotsk and retreated in summer 

 through the Bering Strait to the string of seas lying between the Arctic 

 Ice-raft and the northern coasts of Asia and America. Second, they 

 awaited the annual migration of the gray whales down the American 

 coast; and third, they still did some sperming, for which they had to go 

 via Japan or Hawaii to the warm waters of the Central Pacific. 



There are ice problems in the North Pacific, but they are confined to 

 the ladderlike formation of seas lying against the southern, or under, side 

 of Asia because the Kuro Siwo holds even the drift-ice back from the 

 open ocean. The winter freeze seals off the arctic seas and makes the 

 Bering Sea impractical, and after a major part of the whole whaling fleet 

 was caught and destroyed one year in this ice, the steamers took to 

 wintering at the mouth of the Mackenzie River in the Beaufort Sea, or 

 went south to engage in the gray-whaling or to refit. 



