306 AKNUAIi REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITTJTION, 1942 



About 1790, British and American vessels engaged in sperm whaling 

 along the coast of Chile, as well as others that had embarked in the 

 maritime fur trade along the northwest coast of North America, 

 observed large fur seal rookeries on some of the South American 

 coastal and offshore islands. The American brigantine Hancock sailed 

 from Boston, November 1790, for Staten Island. Many fur seals were 

 killed by the crew on Staten Island before the brigantine rounded 

 Cape Horn en route to Masafuera Island. Subsequently, this vessel 

 stopped at the Hawaiian Islands and afterward sailed for the north- 

 west coast of North America. After arrival there on July 14, 1791, 

 the Hancoch was engaged in trading with the natives for sea otter 

 skins until she sailed for China in the autumn of 1791 (Howay, 1930, 

 p. 122). 



Masafuera, a small island lying 100 miles west of Juan Fernandez, 

 was one of the most important of these fur seal rookeries. On this 

 island, a shore crew landed by the ship Eliza of New York in 1792 

 killed 37,000 fur seals, the skins of which were carried to Canton, 

 China, and sold in March 1793 (Delano, 1817, pp. 196-197; Clark, 1887, 

 p. 407). 



A shore crew landed from the American ship Jejferson of Boston 

 obtamed 13,000 fur seal pelts on St. Ambrose Island during August 

 and September, 1792 (Howay, 1930, p. 130) . During 1793, the British 

 sloop Rattler put into the Galapagos Islands for salt which was to be 

 used in salting fur seal skins at St. Felix and St. Ambrose Islands, 

 located off the coast of Chile some 500 miles north of Juan Fernandez 

 (Jenkins, 1921, p. 214). 



From then on to 1807, the business of killing fur seals along the 

 Chilean coast was prosecuted with unremitting vigor and at times 

 shore crews from as many as 12 to 15 vessels had camps at Masafuera 

 Island. Gangs of men put ashore in 1798 on Masafuera by three 

 American vessels (ship Barclay of New Bedford, brig Betsey of Ston- 

 ington, Conn., and ship Neptune of New York) killed some 60,000 fur 

 seals. By 1801, the sealing fleet on the coast of Chile numbered 

 upward of 30 vessels (Fanning, 1924, p. 223). A few of these ships 

 carried 60,000, and one at least 100,000, fur seal skins to the market at 

 Canton, China (Clark, 1887, p. 402), where they were exchanged for 

 merchandise to be sold in the United States. 



The rookeries on these islands had been so thoroughly ransacked in 

 a period of 15 years that sealers could no longer expect to make a 

 profit by going there, and by 1824 fur seals were practically extermi- 

 nated on both Juan Fernandez and Masafuera (Morrell, 1832, p. 130). 

 Estimates of the number of fur seals killed on Masafuera and Juan 

 Fernandez Islands during this period range from a million (Fanning, 

 1924, p. 80) to more than 3 million (Delano, 1817, p. 306). Although 

 the virtual destruction of this portion of the southern fur seal herd 



