XX FOREWORD. 



the outbreak of hostilities, a number of New England 

 whalers took flight round Cape Horn and went to fishing 

 in Pacific waters. Now did the emigrant whalemen show 

 themselves renegades indeed. For, knowing that their 

 old friends and comrades of Nantucket were whaling in the 

 Pacific, they sailed round the Cape to plunder at their 

 will. It is a satisfaction to recall that the United States 

 frigate "Essex" not only came to the release of the Ameri- 

 can whalers, but that she made prizes of all but one British 

 ship. 



The War of 1812 proved to the world that the American 

 navy could make it hot for anybody who meddled with 

 American merchantmen. Then came the golden era for 

 the whalemen. Larger vessels were found to be more 

 profitable, and longer voyages became the rule. The Pa- 

 cific swarmed with whalemen, who worked down the west- 

 ern coast of South America, visited cannibal islands, 

 crossed to the feeding grounds off the coast of Japan, 

 cruised round New Zealand, Tasmania, and New Guinea. 

 They were the geographers of Oceanica. One Nantucket 

 ship, the Columbus, worked her way along the north 

 coast of Africa, into the Eed Sea, across the Indian Ocean 

 and so among the islands back to his mates in the Pacific, 

 a route which thereafter became quite popular. 



In 1835 the first bowhead whale was taken off the coast 

 of Alaska. Bowheads yield amazing quantities of oil, and 

 from this time on much attention was given to northern 

 waters where these ugly monsters are to be found. 



In 1847 the little bark Superior, from Sag Harbor, nosed 

 her way through Bering's Strait and turned up again 19 

 months later at Sag Harbor with 80 barrels of sperm, 2400 

 of whale oil, and 20,000 pounds of whalebone — a cargo 



