240 The Story of the New England Whalers 



and 45,000 pounds of bone worth $2 a pound. 

 She was afterward sold to the United States for 

 use in the search for the survivors of the 'Jeanette 

 Expedition, and was accidentally burned on No- 

 vember 30, 1 88 1. The success of this ship, and 

 that of another which her owners built to take 

 her place, made the use of steamers popular for 

 the Arctic fishery. The American whale fleet of 

 1880, including outfit and steamers, was valued 

 at $70 a ton. 



Perhaps the most interesting novelty adopted 

 by American whalers was a steam whale boat. 

 The noise made by a propeller was the chief 

 objection to such a craft. Whales were and are 

 so wary that they are sometimes frightened by 

 the approach of a boat under sail; that a boat 

 with a whirling screw under its stern should ever 

 get alongside a whale seemed impossible. Never- 

 theless, in 1882, at the suggestion of Lieutenant 

 Z. L. Tanner, U.S.N., the firm of J. H. Bartlett 

 and Sons, of New Bedford, sent a 28-foot steam 

 cutter, of the navy pattern, but fitted to burn 

 "scrap," with their bark Rainbow, Captain Ber- 

 nard Cogan. Aldrich, previously quoted, saw the 





