Whaling as a Business Enterprise 313 



cost of ship and outfit, and left a large sum as 

 clean profit in addition. In her last cruise, which 

 ended in February, 1847, she brought home a 

 cargo worth $56,000, and in the meantime she 

 had done so well that she had cleared well up 

 toward $200,000 for her fortunate owner, or say 

 $12,000 a year during the fourteen years, on an 

 original investment of perhaps $35,000 all told. 



But now the ship was far gone, worn out in 

 "bucking" the gales off Cape Horn, and the ice 

 beyond Bering's Strait. Captain Everett was rich 

 enough to retire from whaling and the ship was 

 sold, as said, to the owner of a "nautical bone 

 yard/' 



When the Envoy reached New Bedford, how- 

 ever, Captain W. T. Walker took a look at her. 

 Captain Walker wanted a ship. During a pre- 

 vious voyage he had purchased on speculation, at 

 Wytootacke, a thousand barrels of oil that had 

 been saved from a wreck, and he wanted a ship, 

 first of all, to carry that oil to market. In addition 

 to the freighting venture, however, he also wished 

 to try whaling again. The Envoy was certainly 

 a hard-looking specimen of a ship, but Captain 



