250 CRUISE OF THE NEPTUNE 
These discoveries led to a rapid increase of the British whal- 
ing fleet, and vessels were fitted out from the ports of Hull, 
Dundee, Kirkcaldy, Peterhead, Fraserburg and Aberdeen. 
The introduction of steamships in the early sixties, and the 
combination of the whale fishery with the sealing industry of 
Newfoundland and eastern Greenland, led to further increases 
in the fleet, which, in 1868, totalled thirty steam and sailing 
vessels as follows : Dundee, 13 steam and 1 sailing ship; Peter- 
head, 4 steam and 8 sailing ships; Fraserburg, 2 sailing ships; 
Aberdeen, 1 sailing ship; Hull, 1 steamship. This was the last 
year in which ships sailed from Hull; since then the British 
whaling fleet has been from Scotch ports only. Steam soon alto- 
gether replaced sails, so that in 1877 only the former was 
employed. The fleet at that time had been reduced to thirteen 
vessels, all sailing from the port of Dundee. No new ships have 
been built during the past twenty-five years, and the construc- 
tion of these strong oak vessels, sheathed with greenheart or 
ironbark, is fast becoming a lost art in these days of steel and 
iron ships. The Dundee fleet is now reduced to five, without 
much prospect of their being replaced by British-built ships. 
The future ships of the whaling fleet will probably be Norwe- 
gian-built. four of the above vessels were, in 1904, whaling 
in Baffin bay, the fifth was in Hudson bay. 
The American Whalers did not attempt Arctic whaling until 
1846, and have since confined their operations to the waters on 
the west side of Davis strait (Cumberland gulf and southward) 
and to those of Hudson strait and Hudson bay. 
The American ships have always been sailing vessels, and the 
American methods differ considerably from those of the Scotch 
Whalers, the chief difference being that their ships are provi- 
sioned for two years, and remain one 'or two winters in the 
north on each voyage. Americans were the first to erect perma- 
nent stations in the eastern Arctics. 
