The Rise of Pacific Whaling. 61 
Bay, San Simeon, San Louis Obispo, Goleta, Portuguese 
Bend, San Diego, and Point Abanda. The organization 
of each party was patterned after that of a whaling vessel, 
with officers and crew being paid their regular “lay.”’ 
Many of the whalers were Portuguese and Italians.* 
But like all other shore whaling operations its success was 
only temporary and the dying out of the industry was 
soon foreshadowed by the increasing scarcity of whales 
near the coast. In 1874, Scammon says, “having been 
so long and constantly pursued (the whales), are exceed- 
ingly wild and difficult of approach, and were it not for 
the utility of Greener’s gun (harpoon gun) the coast 
fishery would be abandoned, it being now next to impos- 
sible to “strike’’ with the hand harpoon.’ Before 1888 
the entire shore fishery had been given up, San Simeon, 
in 1887, being the last station abandoned.® 
Though San Francisco first began as a whaling port in 
1850, it was not until two decades later that the industry 
was regularly carried on. There are various references to 
whaling vessels sailing from that port during the years 
from 1850 to 1869,° but there does not appear to have been 
any permanent fleet employed until 1869 and the years 
following.” By 1869 the decline of whaling interests 
was well under way—in fact had gone so far that the 
Nantucket industry was finally abandoned in that year,” 
though according to Goode’s table” there was a whaling 
fleet at’ Nantucket until 1873. Stonington, Mystic, 
Greenport, Cold Spring, Warren, Wareham, Fall River, 
Seppican, Falmouth, Holmes Hole, Providence, Newport, 
Lynn, Quincy, Mattapoisett, Yarmouth and Somerset, 
* Scammon, p. 250. 
7Scammon, p. 248. 
8 Fish Comm. Rep., 1888, p. 44. 
* Starbuck, pp. 490, 608, 630. 
10 «“Whalemen’s Shipping List.’ 
1! Macy, p. 301. 
12 Goode, p. 171. 
