152 WHALING 



It is hard for any one who has not Hved in a small seaport 

 town to realize what such a venture meant to the people of 

 Wiscasset, or to the people of any one of a dozen similar villages 

 up and down the New England coast, which sent out whaling 

 vessels at about that same time. When the Wiscasset returned 

 with twenty-eight hundred barrels of sperm oil and eighty 

 barrels of white whale oil, after forty months away, the town 

 came out to do her honour. The arrival of a whaler was an 

 event in New Bedford, which numbered its fleet by hundreds; 

 it was the mark of an epoch in the villages that had sent but 

 one ship or two to the whaling grounds. A New Bedford or 

 Nantucket firm, with many ships at sea, could count on the 

 successful voyages of the majority to offset the losses incurred 

 by the luckless minority; but Wiscasset had all her whales in one 

 ship; a poor voyage would have meant disaster; the cargo of oil 

 she brought home heralded a new period of prosperity. The 

 Wiscasset earned during her first voyage enough money to pay 

 for herself and to settle all bills against her. 



On January 27, 1839, with Captain Seth B. Horton in 

 command, she sailed again, and three years and a half later she 

 returned with 900 barrels of sperm oil, 1,200 barrels of whale oil, 

 1,700 pounds of whalebone, 150 pounds of coffee as a minor 

 venture in trade, and $6,517 in cash. Since she had paid for 

 herself during her first voyage, the profits of the second voyage 

 were net. Although it was then close upon the time of greatest 

 prosperity in the whaling business, the Wiscasset Whale Fishing 

 Company appears to have been satisfied with the profits of the 

 first two voyages, for instead of expanding its business, it then 

 sold the Wiscasset to a Sag Harbour firm. 



Sailing out of Sag Harbour in December, 1841, she made a 

 voyage of two years to the Pacific and brought back a cargo 

 worth $48,000. As a whaler she made only one voyage after 

 that: she sailed on September 27, 1844, and, returning on 

 February 19, 1847, brought back a cargo worth $51,000. 

 Then, while the golden age of whaling was at its height, Sag 

 Harbour sold her into the merchant marine, and a year later, 

 sailing for New York from the Broomielaw of Glasgow, she 



