238 The Story of the New England Whalers 



Rhode Island, for Stonington owners, and regis- 

 tered at New London on August 23, 1842, was a 

 favorite size. As described by James H. Weeks 

 in the Westerly Sun (January 2, 1900), she was 

 107.5 feet long by 27.5 wide and 13.75 deep. 

 She measured 362^ tons. Such a ship and her 

 outfit cost from $60 to $70 a ton. In 1847 a 

 writer in Hunt's Merchants' Magazine boasted 

 that New London owned "the largest and the 

 smallest whalemen in the world, the ship Atlan- 

 tic being 699 tons burden, while the schooner 

 Garland is only 49 tons." The Atlantic lost her 

 captain, William Beck, during that voyage, but 

 she saved a cargo worth nearly $80,000. Though 

 the largest whaler in the world, she was yet 

 shorter than the sloop yachts that have in recent 

 years sailed for the America s cup in the races off 

 Sandy Hook. 



The first steamer employed in the whale fishery 

 was the Innuit. She left Peterhead, Scotland, for 

 the Greenland grounds in 1857, and came back 

 at the end of three weeks with 150 tons of oil. 

 This good luck led the owners of many steamers 

 to venture into the Arctic whale fishery; but out 



