212 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. [8] 



The other ships sailed a little to the northward of the Sandwich Is- 

 Hauds, meeting good success, coming east and filling up oft" Cape Saint 

 Lucas, California. All the ships returned home with great cargoes. 



We doubt if Xautucket ever, before or since, produced the superiors 

 of these five men in intellect or daring. They were all natives of the 

 sisland, and after their retirement from the sea lived to great ages, two 

 of them reaching ninety-two years, and the others from seventy-eight 

 to eighty-five years. Each of them had brilliant careers. It was from 

 «uch men as these that Mr. Seward obtained his information when pre- 

 paring his great speech asking for Government aid in surveying Behr- 

 fng Strait. His speech was delivered in the United States Senate in 

 1852. In it he made glowing allusion to the enterprise and daring of 

 INantucket whalemen. Many of our sea captains after their retirement 

 from active labor settled in and around Auburn, and became neighbors 

 of the great Senator, Capt. Fred. Coftin being of the number. 



Captain Winshij) remarked to the writer in the spring of 1835, that 

 3ie had seen great numbers of sperm whales on the northwest coast, oft' 

 3iodiac, while passing to the Sandwich Islands, and was certain that 

 Tfchey were spermaceti species. Being convinced that there was some- 

 thing to be made out of this, we fitted out the ship Ganges and sent 

 iier, in the summer of 1835, to the locality mentioned, in charge of Bar- 

 zallia T. Folger. In his first report Avhich we received from there, 

 Oaptain Folger stated that he had seen nothing but right whales. As 

 whale oil and bone were of little value at that period, and as he did 

 aot care to lower his boats for them, he had, after taking 300 barrels, 

 dropped down the coast to Pudder Bay, California. The next season, 

 ihowever, he filled his ship with sperm oil off the coast of Japan. The 

 J'rench ship Yille de Lyon, of Havre, was the next upon the northwest 

 •coast. She also was successful, and was followed in 1840 by the Elbe, 

 ■Captain Waterman, of Poughkeepsie, N. Y., which ship returned home 

 with a full cargo of whale and sperm oil. Since that date whale fish- 

 ing on the northwest and sea coast of Japan has been prosecuted with 

 wonderful vigor by every place that had a ship to send to sea. 



Previous to the voyage to Japan in 1820, before mentioned. Cap- 

 tain Coffin, while making a voyage to the eastward of Cape of Good 

 Hope in the same ship. Syren, met with an adventure which came near 

 proving fatal to the whole crew. On a fine day, while near one of the 

 Pilew Islands, all the boats being from the ship in pursuit of whales, 

 .-and but a small number of men remaining on board, she was taken forci- 

 ible possession of by the natives of those islands, who drove the men 

 into the rigging for safety. The ship and all on board w^ere now in a per- 

 slous position. These naked and howling savages had full command of 

 the ship. When the mate came alongside he comprehended the situ- 

 ation at a glance, and immediately gave orders for the men in the top 

 to open the arm-chests and scatter all the tack-nails they could find 

 down upon the deck. This was promptly done, and the nails poured 



