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COMMERCIAL FISHERIES OF THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS. 487 
Hammond, of Nantucket, Mass., was first officer of the ship and struck 
the first sperm whale ever known to be taken in that ocean. 
The success of the Ame//a stimulated other nations, and the United 
States was among the first to fit out vessels for this fishery. In 1791 
Nantucket people built and sent three new ships, with three old ones, 
into the Pacific Ocean, the first from the United States. These were 
very successtul, each ship obtaining up to 1,500 barrels of oil, mostly 
sperm. ‘The first of the ships to enter the Pacific was one of the new 
vessels, the Beaver, Paul Worth. She was also the first to return. 
In 1802 whaling was prosecuted first off New Zealand, and in 1803 
the whalers were in the China seas about the Molucca Islands. 
The first American whalers to visit the Hawaiian Islands were the 
ships Balena and Equator, of New Bedford. They arrived at Keala- 
kekua Bay, Hawaii, September 17, 1819, off which port they captured 
a large sperm whale which yielded 102 barrels. They sailed thence 
on October 1, for Lahaina to water, and touched off Oahu, to leave 
letters, October 10. At this time Honolulu is described as a scat- 
tered, irregular village of thatched huts, of 3,000 or 4,000 inhabitants. 
By 1820 the calls of whalers at Honolulu were quite frequent. In 
1823 there were four American mercantile houses established there, 
two of Boston, one of New York, and one of Bristol, R. I. The 
Americans were quick to see the superiority of the islands for recruit- 
ing and refitting over other stations in the Pacific, and very soon all 
the American vessels in the Pacific, and quite a few from other coun- 
tries, were touching at the islands regularly. 
The discovery of the sperm whaling-ground off the Japan coast in 
1819 by the Syren, Captain Coffin, where she had great success, drew 
large numbers of the new vessels, particularly American, to the new 
grounds, and these fixed their headquarters at the islands. Capt. 
Joseph Allen, of the ship Jaro, of Nantucket, also discovered these 
grounds independently in 1820. 
Stimulated by the demand on the products of the islands created by 
the great influx of foreign whalers, strenuous efforts were put forth 
to furnish the supplies desired. The island of Maui was noted for its 
potatoes and wheat, and most of the whalers called at Lahaina specially 
for supplies of these articles. In 1828 potatoes were rather scarce 
and sold in Honolulu for $2 per barrel, but were cheaper at Lahaina. 
According to the Daily Advertiser (Boston, Mass.), of December 24, 
1874, the first whaling in the Ochotsk Sea was done by American 
whalers in 1834. The whales were reported by the master of the 
American schooner Unity, of 60 tons, which was bound to the port of 
Ochotsk, in Siberia, and thence to Kamchatka. 
In August, 1820, Captain Meek, in the trading brig (Peddler, of 
New York, visited the Arctic Ocean. He secured by trade some oil 
and bone from the natives. It was partly on his recommendation later 
that whaling was begun there. 
