408 The Story of the New England Whalers 



"'Captain,' says I, 'I was just down to the 

 rail to see about going off to the other ship, but 

 some one had cast off the painter and there she 

 goes now.' 



"So we stayed. The fleet of seven vessels 

 waited until the next day, and we counted up 

 around, after a fashion, to see that none was 

 left, and then made sail for the Sandwich Islands. 



"It is the habit of the New Bedford owners 

 to go to the Sandwich Islands every fall to meet 

 the fleet and audit the accounts. It is a pleasant 

 excursion for them, and it is good policy to attend 

 to the business in person. It took us thirty days 

 to get there. The owners were down on the beach 

 to welcome. Instead of casks of oil and stacks 

 of whalebone we discharged 1200 sailors, penni- 

 less, and with only one shift of clothes each, before 

 the expectant owners." 



When the whaling fleet returned next year 

 (of course a fleet did return. Twenty-eight 

 American and four foreign whalers went there), 

 they found one of the abandoned vessels, the 

 Minerva, afloat in Wainwright Inlet, as sound 

 in hull as on the day her crew left her. All the 



