226 WHALING 



Confederate Navy; and, being gentlemen of enterprise and 

 experience, laid plans to strike with all possible force at North- 

 ern commerce. So far as whaling is concerned, this resulted, 

 during the four years of war, in their destroying forty-six 

 whaling vessels with 5,192 barrels of sperm oil and 5,060 barrels 

 of whale oil on board. Of these vessels, twenty-five hailed 

 from New Bedford, six from Provincetown, three each from 

 New London and San Francisco, two each from Fairhaven and 

 Honolulu, and one each from Edgartown, Mattapoisett, 

 Sippican, Warren, and Westport. It was roughly estimated 

 that the value of the vessels was $1,150,000 and the value of the 

 oil, $500,000. 



To the whalemen the raids of the Sumter, the Alabama, and 

 the Shenandoah came as a series of lawless, ruthless depreda- 

 tions, and the journals of the day were filled with news of the 

 "rebel pirates" — a term bitterly resented by the officers of 

 the Confederate Navy. And ruthless they were, as many a 

 captain whose savings went down with his ship has testified. 

 But for all that, they are wild and stirring tales, pungent with 

 the smell of powder and darkened by the drifting smoke of 

 burned vessels. 



In 1861 the, tug-boat W, H, Webb, formerly of New York, 

 which the Confederates had armed as a privateer and re- 

 named the Calhoun, took the John Adams and the Mermaid, 

 schooners, and the brig Parana, all of Provincetown, a little less 

 than a hundred miles south of Balize, burned them, and left 

 their crews in New Orleans upon their own resources. With 

 the Mermaid, two hundred and fifteen barrels of sperm oil were 

 lost; the other two vessels were "clean." 



But the year 1861 provided an introduction to times more 

 stirring and, for the whaling fleets, more disastrous; and its 

 most significant day was Sunday, June 30th. On that day 

 a fisherman brought to the Confederate man-of-war Sumter, 

 a vessel rebuilt for the purpose under the direction of Com- 

 mander Raphael Semmes, and lying at the Head of the Passes 

 of the Mississippi in wait for an opportunity to escape through 

 the blockading fleet, news that the Federal man-of-war Brooklyn 



