78 WHALING 



from the Apponagansett River in Dartmouth, and one or two 

 owned by the Russells, from the Acushnet River, were going 

 on voyages of from four to six weeks' cruising for whales between 

 Georges Bank and the Capes of Virginia. We know that a try- 

 house and an oil shed stood beside the Achushnet in 1760, and an 

 early historian (Ricketson) says that Joseph Russell pursued 

 the business as early as 1755. Those earliest New Bedford 

 whalemen increased the time of their voyages to three months, 

 and their cruising grounds to the east of Newfoundland. At 

 that time more vessels were sailing from the Apponagansett 

 than from the Acushnet; but the better harbour, which we know 

 as New Bedford, was found in the Acushnet, and that, although 

 few foresaw it then, was to turn the tide of whaling thither. 



Where the manufacturing city of New Bedford now stands, 

 there was then a rough, wild country, sown with rocks and oaks 

 and whortleberry bushes. A rough cart road led from the few 

 farmhouses on the country road to the try-house by the shore. 



When Joseph Russell died in 1804, at the age of eighty-five, 

 he had seen the industry that he had established in the young 

 town grow to a magnitude that probably no one on the Acushnet 

 could have imagined sixty years before; he had seen the town 

 that he had helped to found, grow from its early promise of be- 

 coming a farming community to a great port. But his own 

 fortunes had not fared so well. 



He had put abler vessels into whaling, until they need no 

 longer, as the early sloops had done, scurry into port in time 

 to escape the September gales. To carry on the business of re- 

 fining spermaceti, he had brought to New Bedford (it was first 

 a part of Dartmouth, then Bedford, before it took the name by 

 which we know it to-day) at a salary of $500 a year — which was 

 then regarded as enormous — a man named Chaffee, who worked 

 behind closed doors lest any one steal his secret process. He had 

 sent his trading vessels to southern and West Indian ports, and 

 had kept a store at the foot of Centre Street and imported goods 

 from London by way of Boston. He was a well-to-do man 

 when Bunker Hill was fought, but the war broke him. He lost 

 his vessels, and his Continental currency had so depreciated at 



