OFF SHORE 77 



struck two whales about a hundred and twenty miles east of 

 George's Banks. When they thought the whales were dying, 

 one of the wounded beasts turned on a boat and stove it, killing 

 a man, whose body immediately sank, and seriously injuring 

 two others, then raged about on the sea in vicious fury. The 

 second boat succeeded in rescuing the rest of the stove boat's 

 crew. 



Twenty-five years later a whaler arrived at Boston with a 

 tale that deserves to be told in the original Boston News-Letter 

 version : 



''Capt. Clark on Thursday Morning last discovering a 

 Spermaceti Whale near George's Banks, mann'd his Boat, and 

 gave Chase to her, & she coming up with her jaws against the 

 Bow of the Boat struck it with such Violence that it threw a 

 Son of the Captain; (who was forward ready with his lance) 

 a considerable Height from the Boat, and when he fell the 

 Whale turned with her devouring Jaws opened, and caught him. 

 He was heard to scream, when she closed her Jaws, and part 

 of his Body was seen out of her Mouth, when she turned, and 

 went off." 



The manner of the young man's death, which was rare but 

 not unique, impressed itself with singular force on the minds of 

 our grandfathers, as terrible old woodcuts bear witness. 



As Nantucket, eventually greater as a whaling port than any 

 town on Cape Cod, went to school in the art of whaling to the 

 older settlements on the Cape, so New Bedford, greatest of all 

 our whaling ports, for a time merely struggled to emulate in a 

 small way the whaling operations of Nantucket. The Joseph 

 Russell who is said to be the first man living in New Bedford to 

 engage in the whale fishing was born on October 8, 1719. He 

 was an industrious, prudent, enterprising, upright farmer, 

 owned a large tract of land and several vessels, and built the 

 first sperm-oil factory in New Bedford, all besides his modest 

 whaling fleet of a few forty- or fifty-ton sloops, which is famous 

 as the beginning of the largest whaling fleet America has ever 

 known. 



About the middle of the 18th Century two or three vessels 



