146 WHALING 



whales in oceans that ultimately our whaling fleets penetrated 

 was a matter of commxon knowledge in Europe before the 

 first white settlers of Nantucket had left their English homes. 



Our own whalemen, beginning nearest home, worked some- 

 times north and sometimes south, and eventually followed the 

 British whalemen, who showed them the way round the Horn. 

 There was no occasion for their having gone sooner, but if they 

 did not know, before they did go, that whales abounded in the 

 seas whither they laid their course, their ignorance of ordinary 

 sea lore was as remarkable as their enterprise. 



Virtually every whaler that left New Bedford went first to 

 the Western Islands. There they recruited and on the Western 

 ground, which extended nearly two hundred miles in a generally 

 southern direction from the islands, they cruised for whales 

 during the summer and until October. Thence, as the weather 

 grew too rugged for whaling, they would stand for the Brazil 

 Banks. From there they would go round the Horn, cruising 

 off Masefuera and Juan Fernandez, with Ancuana, Tumbez, 

 and Paita for their bases. Later they might spend months 

 about the Galapagos Islands, going ashore now and then for 

 water and the great turtles that supplied such a welcome change 

 in their limited menu. After that, the off-shore grounds. Back 

 and forth they cruised, their movements governed somewhat by 

 reports of the occasional whalers they spoke, somewhat by the 

 whim of the captain and somevv^hat by the weather. Perhaps 

 they would go as far as the Kodiac grounds off the Northwest 

 Coast; perhaps to Panama. The real deciding factor was 

 ''ile"; where they could hope to find it plentiful, and how their 

 hold filled up with it. Naturally, a ''full ship" was every whal- 

 ing captain's ambition. 



Another common cruise was this: after, of course, the 

 Western Islands, the vessel would stand straight across for 

 Guinea, with St. Helena or Fayal as her base. Up and down 

 the coast of Africa she would go ''humpbacking"; for the hump- 

 back has a plentiful yield, even though the oil is not of first 

 quality, and he is easy to get. They would go on to Cape 

 Town, and Tristan da Cunha; then to the Seychelles and to 



