A DYING INDUSTRY 323 



skeletons and models — and primitive whaling; the Peabody 

 Museum in Cambridge has an excellent collection of implements, 

 costumes, life-sized figures, and a most pleasing miniature hab- 

 itat group of the Nootka Indians of the Northwest coast — 

 with a dead whale drawn up on the beach — even, to make 

 verisimilitude more vivid, a portrait of Maquina himself, under 

 whom John Jewett and his companion lived and whaled. And 

 beyond question the American Museum of Natural History in 

 New York is far ahead of any other museum in the country 

 in its collection of models and skeletons of whales. But I know 

 of no place outside of New Bedford where you can find anything 

 to compare to this beautiful and complete half-sized whaler. 



Now, certainly, we know something of the environment, and 

 with it something of the life, of our imaginary young whaleman. 

 To fill in whatever gaps are left — for caulking, in other words — 

 we may see in the same room, a real whaleboat, full-sized and 

 completely outfitted as she would be when ''lowered for whales." 

 And upstairs, in a balcony that runs around three sides of the 

 long, high room, are the various shops that outfitted the vessels 

 themselves. First the office of the owners' agent, then the sail 

 loft, the rigging loft, the boat-builder's shop, the shipsmith's 

 and the cooperage, each just as any whaler might have found 

 it fifty years ago, lacking only — like the Lagoda — the men that 

 would certainly have been there and hard at work. 



Certainly they are no longer at work in New Bedford. But 

 there is much whaling done still. In the latter part of the last 

 century most of our whaling passed into the hands of Portuguese 

 and Cape Verde islanders, both officers and crews, though the 

 vessels were owned in New Bedford still. At the same time 

 Pacific whaling was established, at first with big vessels and 

 Arctic cruises, under New Bedford ownership; then the Pacific 

 shore whaling under the Pacific Steam Whaling Company and 

 other fu-ms on the Pacific coast. This later whaling, of course, 

 was with guns and bombs, but even so it did not last long. 



And in 1921 the Consolidated Whaling Company of Vic- 

 toria, B. C, announced that they would send no vessels to 

 sea that year because of the low price of oil. Gloomy predic- 



