64 A History of the American Whale Fishery. 
so that the western industry in almost every way was 
made independent of the eastern ports. 
Under these favorable conditions the San Francisco 
fleet grew rapidly after 1880, increasing from three vessels 
in that year to thirty-three vessels in 1893, about two- 
thirds of which number were steamers. That the San 
Francisco fleet should grow while all other fleets were de- 
creasing from year to year may seem unnatural, since all 
alike had to meet practically the same economic con- 
ditions. From all indications the explanation seems to 
be clearly enough in the fact that the rise of the San 
Francisco fishery was a transferring of interests. Instead 
of being owned in New Bedford and New London, and 
making their headquarters at San Francisco—the eastern 
interests were transferred to vessels registered directly 
from the Pacific port. 
The fishery from the western coast has therefore 
almost entirely superseded that from the Atlantic ports. 
Since 1895 Boston, New Bedford, Provincetown and San 
Francisco have been the only ports from which whaling 
vessels were regularly registered, and ‘in 1903 the business 
at Boston was abandoned. New Bedford and San 
Francisco alone are now important. Provincetown has 
only three schooners, all employed in sperm whaling in 
the Atlantic, along with two schooners and seven barks 
from New Bedford, and one brig from Norwich, Conn. 
At present practically all the large vessels in the whal- 
ing fleet operate from San Francisco. The North Pacific- 
Arctic fleet numbered twenty vessels in 1905 out of a 
total fleet of forty-two vessels. The principal whaling 
ground is now along the ice fields of the Arctic Ocean, 
where the ships cruise from the time the ice breaks up in 
the spring until winter sets in again in October. The 
season for Arctic whaling is therefore short, and the 
pursuit of the whales is at times extremely dangerous. 
18 “Whalemen’s Shipping List, 1906.” 
