HISTORY AND DETAILS OP WHALING. 271 



high prices of provisions and other incidentals, — the enterprise 

 could hardly be sustained a single year ; and certainly but a 

 few years. Immense losses would pervade all departments of 

 this wide- spread system of commercial operation. 



A few years since, the price of sperm oil by the quantity was 

 only fifty to seventy -five cents per gallon ; but now it brings one 

 dollar and forty cents per gallon by the cargo. 



Right whale oil was formerly sold as low as twenty-five cents 

 per gallon by the cargo ; but now it brings in the market seven- 

 ty and eighty cents per gallon by the quantity. 



"Whalebone, which formerly was sold as low as six cents per 

 pound, — and almost a drug at that, — in consequence of the in- 

 creased demand for it, and the various and extraordinary uses 

 to which it is applied, now readily commands eighty cents per 

 pound. 



Thus a cargo of three thousand barrels of sperm oil, at the pres- 

 ent market value of the article, will amount to more than one 

 hundred and thirty thousand dollars. A cargo of three thou- 

 sand barrels of right whale oil, including the bone, will com- 

 mand in the market, as their value now is, more than ninety 

 thousand dollars ; a ship of four hundred tons burden, fitted 

 for a whaling voyage, may be estimated to be worth from thir- 

 ty to sixty thousand dollars ; a bark of three hundred tons, 

 valued from twenty-five to forty-five thousand dollars ; a brig 

 of two hundred tons, valued from fifteen to twenty-five thou- 

 sand dollars ; a schooner, valued from eight to twelve thousand 

 dollars. 



A vessel owned by a number of persons, or a company, is 

 usually divided into halves, quarters, eighths, sixteenths, thir- 

 ty-seconds, sixty -fourths, &c. 



The "lay" for which an individual agrees to go on a whal- 

 ing voyage, is the proportion of oil, or its equivalent in mon- 

 ey, according to the current value of oil, which comes to his 

 share at the termination of the voyage. A short voyage and 

 a full ship will be a profitable enterprise. Since each and all 



