Late Noon in the West 261 



the north while freighters took back their cargoes. Steamships cost 

 more than three times the initial outlay for a sailer, needed almost 

 twice as many crew, and were extremely expensive to operate be- 

 cause coal was so scarce and costly to buy and transport. Fuel for the 

 four-thousand-mile trip to San Francisco could be saved by keeping 

 the whalers in icebound northern anchorages for the winter. By 1893 

 a substantial number of the steam whalers wintered in the mouth of 

 the Mackenzie in the Arctic Ocean. At that time there were only 

 thirty-three whalers registered in San Francisco and twenty-two of 

 them were steamers. 



The development of steam in whaling was primarily a Scots inno- 

 vation and it will be explained in proper detail when we survey the 

 activities of that people in the next chapter. Although it failed to save 

 the American whaling industry, it did help to maintain a not incon- 

 siderable business until the end of the nineteenth century. During the 

 decade from 1895 to 1905 there were still fifty-one registered Ameri- 

 can whalers out of San Francisco, aggregating only 10,184 tons 

 burthen, but producing steadily a return of just one million dollars 

 net per annum. In this final period the whalers reverted to coastal, 

 offshore operations little more advanced than those of the early colo- 

 nists. Payment of crews was still on the lay system with the captain 

 receiving one eleventh and crewmen one one-hundred and fiftieth. If 

 the ship returned empty, the crew got one dollar apiece. 



By 1906 there were just four American ports left in the industry: 

 New Bedford with twenty-four ships, San Francisco with fourteen, 

 Provincetown with three, and a lone brig out of Norwich. The slight 

 revival in the East was due to a most extraordinary development that 

 has never been chronicled and is, outside of a few specialized official 

 studies, simply not known at all. 



A large proportion of the best harpooners, steersmen, and all- 

 round whalemen had for long been Portuguese-speaking Africans 

 from the Bissagos Islands off what is now called Portuguese Guinea 

 in West Africa. Whaler crews were always the most incredibly 

 polyglot outfits with every West European racial and national type 

 mixed with native-born Americans; Orientals of many kinds, includ- 

 ing Japanese, Chinese, Filipinos, sundry Malayans, a few Hindus, and 

 Singhalese; Kanakas from the West Pacific Islands; Australian Black- 

 fellows; Amerindians; Eskimos; and even some South American 



