312 WHALING 



savages in all parts of the world, rest on shelves or hang from 

 the ceiling of his little office, and in his back shop he continues 

 to make the bombs that the few remaining whalers carry. 



Down on Front Street, in a smithy that still bears his broth- 

 er's sign, ''A. J. Peters, Shipsmith and Whalecraft Mnfr." 

 Charles E. Peters makes irons and spades and lances to this 

 day — a very few. But who can say how many irons were sold 

 in a year of those thriving days when New Bedford's fleet 

 numbered almost half a thousand and competition between the 

 many smiths was keen? 



Three years ago I saw in that shop, where a man was forging 

 a toggle iron while I waited, the newly filled order for whalecraft 

 and fittings to supply the barque Wanderer, Captain Edwards, 

 the one remaining old-time New Bedford whaler then sperm 

 whaling. She was outfitting for eighteen months, and she had 

 taken on board rowlocks and toggle irons and lances and 

 spades and gaffs and pikes and boat-hooks. Boarding-knives 

 and mincing-knives and long shank spades and blubber forks 

 lent to that scribbled order an added suggestion of greasy decks 

 and the black smoke of burning scraps. It was impossible to 

 keep from thinking of the day when perhaps half a hundred 

 vessels were outfitting at once. An itemized list of the goods 

 furnished to sixty-five vessels of the New Bedford fleet for the 

 season of 1858 records an outlay of nearly two million dollars. 



For all that, our old whaling towns, if occasion should ever 

 arise, would still be able to captain and man a whaling fleet. 

 A few years, now, will doubtless make a sad difference, but many 

 old Yankee master whalemen are still living and many more are 

 vividly remembered. 



It was not so very long ago that Captain James A. Tilton of 

 New Bedford, who had sailed nearly every sea on earth, who had 

 commanded ships in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Arctic oceans, 

 who had rounded Point Barrow in the north and Kerguelen in 

 the south, and had at last retired to spend on shore the late 

 years of an adventurous life, went back to the sea in command of 

 the whaling schooner A. M. Nicholson and cruised for sperm 

 whales on the Hatteras and western grounds. 



