398 The Story of the New England Whalers 



all that winter. At the Kadiaks he was able to 

 secure transportation to San Francisco. 



"If Tilton had been a professional explorer," 

 says the Mercury, "the world would have pro- 

 claimed this marvellous achievement, and he 

 would have been celebrated in books," but he 

 "made nothing of it and reshipped for another 

 whaling voyage." 



Captain Tilton's adventure is made to serve 

 as an introduction to this, the final chapter of 

 the book, because the story of the whalers in the 

 later years is to be found chiefly in the annals of 

 the Arctic beyond Bering's Strait, along the 

 northwest coast of Alaska, where Tilton found 

 his opportunity. On the whole, the story is one 

 of disasters, and the greatest disaster of all was 

 that occurring in the fall of 1871, when thirty-four 

 whale ships, and one trader from San Francisco, 

 with crews numbering more than 1200 souls, 

 were caught by the ice near Point Belcher, on 

 the extreme northwest coast of the continent. 



In all, forty-two whalers gathered at the edge 

 of the ice early in May, 1871, and worked their 

 way north as the ice retreated or opened, until, 



