Second Sealing Season 



at South Shetlands 1820-18 21 



While the initial discovery of the South Shetlands, and the independent voyages 

 of the first three vessels there, pose important questions which may never be 

 answered, the incidents surrounding the vessels taking part in the second sealing 

 season — 1820-1821 — are materially more clear and understandable. This is 

 due to the fact that three of the logbooks of American sealers which sailed 

 during this second season in the South Shetlands have been literally rescued 

 from the same fate which has claimed so many similar records — loss through 

 neglect or by fire. 



The three logs are those of the ship Huron of New Haven, Captain John 

 Davis, found in 1952 by Alexander O. Victor, Curator of Maps at Yale, 

 and now at the Sterling Library, Yale University; of the schooner Huntress, 

 of Nantucket, Captain Christopher Burdick, in the possession of the writer; 

 and that of the sloop Hero, Captain Nathaniel B. Palmer, of Stonington, the 

 original or copy of which is now located in the Library of Congress. 



Because these three logs serve as narratives of the leading actors on the 

 gloomy stage of the South Shetlands, they will be studied herein as the ship- 

 masters played their respective roles — sometimes commanding individual 

 cruises, sometimes as co-players together, or in other interrelated parts. 



Following the custom of the sealers, some of the vessels (which were to 

 make up the second season, 1820—1821, of sealing in the South Shetlands) 

 were dispatched first to the Cape Verde Islands for the salt used to cure and 

 pack the sealskins, thence to the Falkland Islands to complete their fitting out. 

 The ships and brigs usually had the frames and planking of smaller craft care- 

 fully packed on board which were reassembled in the Falklands and then ac- 

 companied the larger vessel to the sealing location selected. These tenders 

 were called "shallops" and were usually schooner-rigged. The Stonington, New 

 York and Boston sealing fleets, however, included schooners which sailed with 

 them. Nantucket, New Haven, Salem and New Bedford craft usually carried 

 the knocked-down shallops on board. But oddly enough, on this occasion, with 

 the news of the South Shetlands arriving at a time when swift action was de- 

 manded to catch the season, the first Nantucket vessels dispatched were 

 schooners. The only New Haven craft (which sailed before the news of the 

 new rookeries reached that port) probably had its shallop constructed at the 

 Falklands with no idea of the subsequent change in the voyage. 



[14] 



