NORTH ATLANTIC RIGHT WHALE. 135 



referred to none other; and the last, because of the fact that the Cape Cod people recognized 

 the futility of pursuing Finbacks, and were not in the habit of molesting them. 



1826. — About the middle of May, according to an item in the Sagharbor Corrector (copied in 

 the Inquirer of May 20th) a small party of Right Whales appeared off Wainscott, eastern Long 

 Island. Two were first seen, one of which, estimated to be a 100-barrel whale, was struck but 

 escaped. Shortly, a calf was discovered and killed, which, it was estimated, would produce 

 forty barrels of oil. At the same time a lOO-barrel whale was killed at Westhampton. Here, 

 then, were four Right Whales, three large and one small, off the shores of eastern Long Island. 



1828. — In February (according to the Inquirer of the 22d of that month), a Right Whale 

 44 feet long, and rated at about seventy barrels of oil, was killed in the waters off Providence, 

 R. I., after having been seen for several days "sporting in our river." 



1838. — A Right Whale, about 40 feet long, was found dead off Newburyport, Mass., 

 about September 1st, and towed ashore at Salisbury Point. It was estimated that it would 

 make about forty barrels of oil (Newburyport Herald). This is unusually early in the fall 

 for this species to appear on our coasts. 



1840. — A 40-barrel Right Whale was killed off Amagansett, eastern Long Island, about 

 May 1st (Inquirer, May 8, 1840). 



At about this time also, Linsley (1842, p. 352) writes that a whale of this species was taken 

 at Stonington, Connecticut "a few years since." It was a small one, yielding twenty-seven 

 barrels of oil, but another from the same 'gang' was taken into Montauk, Long Island, that 

 yielded sixty barrels. 



1843. — On May 11th of this year, what is said to have been the largest Right Whale ever 

 taken on this coast was killed in the South Channel, southeast of Chatham, Mass., by a crew 

 of Provincetown men, in the little pink-stern schooner Cordelia. According to a note in H. A. 

 Jennings's Provincetown or. Odds and Ends from the Tip End (1890, p. 193) this whale was 

 estimated at nearly three hundred barrels of oil and about one and one half tons of whalebone. 

 "The little craft not having the facilities for handhng the monster, saved only about one hun- 

 dred and twenty-five barrels of the oil and three hundred pounds of the bone, which was over 

 fourteen feet in length [!]. The little craft was then full, hold and deck. Signals were made 

 to a passing vessel but no notice was taken, so the rest of the whale was abandoned. The 

 value of the fish was over .§12,000." A contemporary item in the Boston Advertiser, copied 

 in the Nantucket Inquirer of July 1, 1843, briefly recounts this capture, and gives the locality 

 as thirty-five miles offshore, Nantucket bearing W. by N. It adds that "the whale is the 

 largest that has ever been caught from Provincetown, and is supposed to be the largest ever 

 seen upon our coast." If the statement be really correct that the whalebone was fourteen feet 

 long, it may be that the whale was a stray specimen of the Arctic Bowhead (Balaena viysii- 

 cetus), a supposition that is somewhat strengthened by the fact of its immense yield of oil. 



