The Rise of Pacific Whaling. 63 
when the ice broke up in the spring. And by 1893 one- 
fourth the vessels whaling in the North Pacific and 
Arctic Oceans wintered off the mouth of the Mackenzie 
River.* A steamer visited the absent vessels to carry 
supplies and to receive any oil or bone taken. As a 
result the interests of San Francisco in the whale fishery 
could not be accurately measured by the size of the fleet 
owned there. The greater part of the northern fleet was 
accustomed to resort to that port as headquarters both 
for refitting and for transshipment of their cargoes to the 
Atlantic seaboard. 
The facilities for shipment afforded by the trans- 
continental railroads also had a marked influence on the 
industry. Formerly all transshipment of cargoes to the 
home ports had been across the Isthmus of Panama or 
by vessel around Cape Horn. The railroads from San 
Francisco changed all this and from a minor whaling 
port, San Francisco rapidly came to be the foremost 
whaling rendezvous in the country. ‘True it is that New 
Bedford still possessed a larger fleet, but a great many 
of its vessels carried on the business from San Francisco 
as their headquarters. 
Still another favorable circumstance was the establish- 
ment of extensive refineries near San Francisco. For 
some years after the beginning of whaling from San 
Francisco all the manufacturing of whale and sperm oils 
had continued to be done exclusively in the neighborhood 
of the Atlantic ports—largely at New Bedford. In 1883, 
however, refineries were built near San Francisco,” 
thereby enabling the western owners to find a market 
for their manufactured products without paying the 
heavy costs of shipping them east to the refineries of New 
Bedford. In addition to the refining plants, there were 
also large works for the manufacture of sperm candles, 
© Fish Comm. Rep., 1894, p. 153. 
” Fish Comm. Rep., 1883, p. 327. 
