THE WHALE FISHERY. 



81 



Imports and Exports of Whale Oil and Whalebone, 

 1880, 1885, 1891 :— 



* The result of this vessel's whaling- cruise was C3 tuns of black oil, worth filj.'iiS, and 17 cwt. whalebone, 

 valued at £800. These figures are included in the total imports for that year. 



From the year 1840 the whaling industry, so far as Sydney 

 is concerned, began to decline. In searching for the cause 

 of that decline the writer cannot perhaps do better than 

 quote as an authority Captain J. B. Carpenter, the master 

 of the "Costa Rica" packet. Captain Carpenter has been 

 for many years engaged in the industry, his vessel liaving 

 been for some time the only one belonging to the Colony 

 employed in the whale fishery of the South Seas. To him 

 and to Mr. H. Crummer, of the Royal Geographical Society of 

 Australia, the writer is indebted for much of the information he 

 has been able to collect respecting this industry. He says 

 that for more than fifty years the American, Erench, and 

 colonial whalers had been so constant and active in their 

 pursuit of the whale in the Southern Ocean that the whales 

 as a consequence became scarce and shy. In the year 1850 

 there were upwards of four hundred ships in the Southern 

 Ocean alone, while in 1872 there were but seventy-two ships 

 in the middle ground. This decline in the shipping so 

 employed must have still further increased, for Captain 

 Carpenter records that the whales having since that time 

 been left unmolested have now multiplied to such an extent 

 that those- seas are fairly swarming Avith them. He relates 

 that between September, 1887, and June, 1888, he met 

 sperm whales on seventy-six different days, and that from 



