FISHERMEN'S OWN BOOK. 



251 



Steam Whalers. — Steam vessels for whaling have proved highly profita- 

 ble. The first one ever sent out from the Pacific coast was the Mary &» 

 Helen, which cleared in 188 1 enough to pay her entire cost and $40,000 be- 

 sides. The second venture, that of the Belvidere, came back from a voyage 

 of only six months with $100,000 worth of oil above the investment. The 

 great success of these steamers is likely to revive the business of whaling. 



P. E. I. Fisheries. — The Prince Edward Island mackerel catch for 1881 

 was 36,083 bbls., about one-half the catch of 1880, 228,593 pound cans of 

 lobsters were put up, double the quantity of the previous year. The codfish 

 catch was 16,934 qtls., against 28,045 in 1880; hake, 10,023 qtls.; halibut, 

 4,575 lbs.; haddock, 72,600 lbs.; herring, 28,545 bbls.; alewives, 1,917 bbls.; 

 oysters, 20,815 bbls. 



Dangers of the Sea. — The dif- 

 ference between handling a ship 

 so that she escapes a danger, and 

 in a way to plunge her headlong 

 :^fc upon it, was doubly illustrated on 

 a passage by the Algeria, which 

 runs between New York and Liv- 

 erpool, England. On her sixth day out, in February, 1881, the Algeria 

 found herself in a heavy fog on the Banks of Newfoundland. The ship was 

 feeling her way cautiously along, all eyes and ears, so to say, when from 

 over the port bow there sounded a fog bell. It seemed some distance off ; 

 but Capt. Gill, swift as light, ordered a reversal of the engines. The screw 

 flew round, the great ship paused, slowly backed, and none too soon. In a 

 trice there loomed up through the fog a huge three-masted schooner rushing 

 forward under full sail. Had the course of the Algeria been kept, had she 

 failed to retreat at the moment she did, a collision would have been inevi- 

 table. The schooner flew on her way straight across the foaming wake of 

 the steamship, and a terrible calamity that might have cost hundreds of lives 

 was happily averted. Very nearly the same thing happened again on the 

 same evening, the dangerous craft that approached the Algeria in this in- 

 stance being another large steamer. This time the stranger was not seen 

 through the dense mist, but the voices of persons on the decks were heard 

 with startling distinctness, and the case was apparently as narrow as in the 

 case of the schooner. Eternal vigilance is as clearly the price of safety at 

 sea as it is of liberty everywhere. Undoubtedly many of the fishing vessels 

 which disappear so mysteriously, with no heavy gale to account for their 

 loss, are run down by steamers or other large vessels, while at anchor on 

 the Banks. 



