70 A History of the American Whale Fishery. » 
Thus in twenty-five years whaling was finally aban- 
doned from thirty ports, including some of the oldest 
whaling towns in New England. Practically all the 
Cape Cod industry was gone except the Provincetown 
fleet. Nantucket, the queen of whaling ports a century 
before, had sent her last whaler. All the New York 
industry was abandoned, even from Sag Harbor, whence 
it had been carried on almost constantly since the begin- _ 
ning of the previous century. And of the Connecticut 
ports, New London alone still had a whaling fleet. In 
short, by 1875 the only important whaling interests still 
remaining were the Provincetown fleet of schooners and 
the fleet owned in what might be styled the New Bedford 
district, comprising the ports of New Bedford, Fairhaven, 
Dartmouth, Marion and Westport. Edgartown had 
one vessel; Boston, three; New London, six; and San 
Francisco, two. The fleet then numbered 163 sail, 
aggregating 37,733 tons—a decrease of over seventy-five 
per cent in numbers and over eighty per cent in tonnage 
in less than thirty years. Of this fleet nearly two-thirds, 
107 vessels, belonged in New Bedford alone. 
But as sweeping as these changes had been, the down- 
ward movement was not complete. Out of the half score 
of ports still carrying on whaling in 1875, only New Bed- 
ford, Provincetown, Boston and San Francisco were to 
continue until the end of the century, the others met the 
same fate as had befallen many before them—the in- 
ability to carry on whaling any longer as a profitable 
business. Fairhaven dropped out in 1879, Westport in 
1881, Dartmouth in 1882, Marion in 1886, New London 
in 1893, Edgartown in 1895, and Boston in 1903. Ston- 
ington, from which whaling was resumed in 1878, after 
a lapse of seventeen years, again dropped from the list 
in 1893. During the whole period none of these ports 
was important, since there was hardly a year when any 
individual fleet exceeded five sail, or the total fleet from 
the minor ports was over a score of vessels. 
