XVII 



THE ARCTIC DISASTERS 



ON NOVEMBER 7, 1871, there appeared in the New 

 Bedford Shipping List, in type that for the period was 

 sensationally large, the headhnes: "Terrible Disaster to the 

 Arctic Fleet — Thirty-Three Vessels Lost — Safety of the Crews — 

 Twelve Hundred Men Brought to Honolulu in Six Whalers — 

 Loss at Least $1,000,000." Thus the old whalemen's paper 

 announced to America's greatest whaling city the greatest 

 single disaster that has ever befallen an American whaling 

 fleet. 



Its magnitude is not to be judged merely by the loss in money, 

 even though a sum of more than a million dollars bulked larger 

 then than now. It was a staggering blow to an important 

 industry; it was a lost battle in man's war against the North; 

 it was the heart-breaking, ironical climax of more than seventy- 

 five years of exploring and adventuring. 



At the end of the 18th Century, when various adventurous 

 Nantucket and New Bedford whalemen had confirmed the 

 reports of those salty old pioneers who, in 1791, had carried 

 whaling round the Horn, that sperm whales abounded on the 

 coast of Chile, the whalers resorted in growing numbers to the 

 Pacific. They sailed north to the Equator. They discovered 

 large numbers of sperm whales on the ''off-shore ground." 

 They cruised along the coast of Japan and up and down the 

 Indian Ocean. They visited the remote islands of the South 

 Seas and the coast of Kamchatka; they worked up through the 

 Okhotsk Sea and the Bering Sea; and finally, in 1848, a lone 

 vessel, the 275-ton bark Superior, Captain Roys, from the old 

 Long Island whaling port of Sag Harbour, passed through Bering 

 Strait, cruised for one season in the Arctic, and returned with a 

 full ship. 



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