100 EEPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



to 106,829 barrels of sperm and 86,274 barrels of whale, as in 1845, 

 when 157,017 barrels of sperm and 272,730 barrels of whale were 

 brought in.* Then came losses, and as whales became more scarce 

 and voyages were more prolonged and far more expensive, these 

 reverses became more and more serious, until individual owners dropped 

 out of the corporations, corporations became extinct in the ports, and 

 finally the ports then^selves became disconnected with the business.t 



Tlie war of the rebellion came with a suddenness that was entirely 

 nnexpected to the larger portion of the people of the aSTorth. The ignis 

 fatHus of compromise beguiled them on with illusory hopes of peace, 

 and when the storm finally burst it found them wholly unprepared. No 

 special commercial interest was in a poorer state to withstand war than 

 the whale-fishery. Ships were in various portions of the Pacific, on 

 voyages averaging nearly four years, and were gone from port months 

 at a time. If they were communicated with, the remedy was scarcely 

 better than the disease. To go into port and there lay idle was quite as 

 disastrous — even more so — to the owners than to continue their perilous 

 calling at the hazard of capture by southern privateers. 



But whalemen in the Pacific continued for several years unmolested. 

 Those engaged in rebellion were unable to fit out the throng of priva- 

 teers which their disposition prompted them to do. The first vessels of 



* A similar and somewhat ludicrous case (as viewed in our present ligbt) occurred 

 in the early history of the cotton factory of the Boston Manufacturing Company. Not 

 many years after its establishment, at one of the corporation dinneis, a prominent 

 director expressed great alarm arising from a dread that the mill at Waltham would 

 prove an unfortunate speculation, because of its prospectively overHlocking the market 

 Then there were probably not half a dozen cotton factories in the country. The time 

 is within the memory of people who are not yet what would be culled old when the 

 little town of Weston, in Massachusetts, could overstock the boot and shoe market of 

 Boston. 



In 1849, the English made an effort to revive the southern whale-fishery. Some mer- 

 chants were incorporated under the name of " The British Southern Whale Fishery 

 Company," and an attempt was made to establish a colony at the Auckland Islands, 

 having in this company its recognized head, but dissensions arose as to jurisdic- 

 tions, and the design fell through. 



t In IBfiO, Sau Francisco became a whaling port. On the 13th of December of that 

 year the Popmnnnett (an old whaler) sailed from there on a whaling voyage to the 

 Gallipagos Islands and coasts of Peru and Chili. The bark Sarah soon followed her 

 on a sperm whaling voyage, intending to obtain a cargo and carry it to the Eastern 

 States. In 1855, two stock companies were formed at Monterey and Crescent City for 

 the prosecution of shore whaling. Boats were kept in constant readiness to put out in 

 chase when a school of whales appeared. Quite a successful business was pursued in 

 this way. 



In January, 1858, the freighter, John Gilpin, with a largo cargo of oil, was wrecked 

 and sunk oft' Cape Horn. On the 1st of January, 1861, the Congress, of New Bedford, 

 while cruising between Cape Leurwin and Bull Head, picked up a cask of oil, covered 

 with barnacles, a relic of the wreck of the John Gilpin. In three years this cask had 

 drifted east by north 7,780 miles. In February of the same year, 150 miles from New 

 Holland, two other casks from the same cargo were picked up, having, in their three 

 years of wandering, drif;ed from lougitude 70° west to longitude 111° 15' east. 



