/>' 



HUMPBACK WHALE. 313 



at sea and bringing it ashore to try out the oil in the vats there seems to have been generally 

 followed on the Massachusetts coasts at this time. 



In these years too (from 1810 to about 1840) Humpback Whales were undoubtedly the 

 chief object of the Maine shore-fishery, an account of which is given by Earll and Clark/ as 

 follows: "Capt. J. Bickford, a native of Winter Harbor, is reported by Mr. C. P. Guptil to have 

 cruised off the coast in 1845 in schooner Huzza, and to have captured eight whales, one of which 

 was a finback, the rest humpback whales. This schooner made only one season's work. . . . 

 Mr. Earll states that according to Capt. George A. Clark and Captain Bickford whaling was 

 extensively carried on from Prospect Harbor, [Maine] for many years. The fishing began 

 about 1810, when Stephen Clark and Mr. L. Hiller, of Rochester, Mass., came to the region, 

 and built try works on the shore, having their lookout station on the top of an adjoining hill. 

 The whales usually followed the menhaden to the shore, arriving about the first of June and 

 remaining till September. When one was seen the boats, armed with harpoons and lances, 

 immediately put out from the land and gave chase. If they succeeded in killing the whale, 

 it was towed to the flats of the harbor at high water, where it was secured and left to be cut up 

 at low tide. Ten years later they began using small vessels in the fishery, and by this means 

 were enabled to go farther from land. The fishery was at its height about 1835 to 1840, when 

 an average of six or seven whales was taken yearly. The largest number taken in any one 

 season was ten. The average yield of oil was 25 to 30 barrels for each whale. The business 

 was discontinued about 1860, since which date but one or two whales have been taken." The 

 skeleton of a Humpback, probably one of those killed by the Huzza in July, 1845, was mounted 

 and exhibited in Boston that summer.- 



The specimen found dead in July, 1844, off Petit Manan Lighthouse, and later made by 

 Cope (1865) the type of his Megaptera osphyia, was perhaps also killed by the shore whalers. 

 The same account says that "shore-whaling in the vicinity of Tremont, [Maine,] began about 

 1840. Mr. Benjamin Beaver and a small crew of men caught three or more whales annually 

 for about twenty years, but gave up the business in 1860. No more whales were taken from 

 this time to the spring of 1880, when one was taken and brought into Bass Harbor, and yielded 

 1,200 gallons of oil [38 barrels], but no bone of value." Of the whales captured during these 

 years, a few were probably Finbacks, but there can be little doubt (from the time of year, 

 amount of oil, and the fact that Finbacks were generally unmolested) that Humpbacks were 

 the species chiefly sought. Apparently no other regular efforts were made to capture 

 Humpbacks on the Maine coast until the eighties, when small steamers with bomb guns 

 probably took a few together with Finbacks. 



' Clark, A. Howard. The Whale Fishery, in Goode's Fisheries and Fishery Industries of U. S., 1887, sect. 5, vol. 2, 

 p. 40. 



2 Jackson, J. B. S. Proc. Boston See. Nat. Hist., 1845, vol. 2, p. 53. 



