256 FOLLOW THE WHALE 



to be transported across the country economically by land, and San 

 Francisco stepped into the lead as the principal importing point for 

 whale products. But there were also other factors that contributed to 

 this change of venue. 



As the sperming in the open Pacific became better organized and 

 supply bases were set up for the victualing and refitting of the high- 

 seas men at points Hke Honolulu in mid-ocean, the whalers began to 

 find more time on their hands for off-season activities. One was of- 

 fered them in the discovery of the vast numbers of valuable bow- 

 heads in the Sea of Okhotsk, and when they penetrated the Arctic 

 via the Bering Sea, they found an even greater bonanza of these 

 whales there. However, they immediately went after them with such 

 determination and such lack of foresight that they had totally ex- 

 tinguished this source of wealth in a quarter of a century. Just how 

 ferocious this onslaught was may be gauged by the accounts of whale 

 after whale killed and abandoned untouched, except for the extrac- 

 tion of its baleen. This was one of the stupidest and most wasteful 

 actions in history and one that is almost inconceivable to us today. 

 The basic trouble was that it cost about eight thousand dollars to 

 build and equip a whaler, but bowhead whale-oil fetched only 30 

 cents a gallon, while its baleen then commanded a price of four dol- 

 lars a pound. One bowhead whale might give a ton of baleen and thus 

 pay for the whole voyage. Why should the whalers bother to go 

 through the laborious and time-consuming business of cutting-in and 

 trying-out the blubber? 



Although the northern Pacific and Arctic whaling grounds were 

 very far distant from San Francisco — nearly three thousand miles to 

 the Bering Strait, a thousand on to the Mackenzie or the Lena, and 

 still another two hundred to the Ice-front, to Banks Island, or to 

 Cape Chelyuskin, to all of which the bowheads eventually re- 

 treated — the passages were still infinitesimal compared to the voy- 

 age back to New England via the Horn. Therefore, more and more 

 whalers were registered on the West Coast and more and more com- 

 panies built factories to process their imports in that area. The baleen- 

 whale hunting in the North Pacific and Arctic was not, however, the 

 only digression indulged by the American fleet in its declining phase 

 after the Civil War. There was another diversion presented by a 



