216 ALLEN: NEW ENGLAND WHALEBONE WHALES. 



1904. About June 20th, a "Finback Whale, about forty feet long, drifted ashore on the 

 south side of Tuckernuck .... The body was badly blasted, and from its appearance it is 

 thought to have been one of those with which schooner Adelia T. Carkton was in collision last 

 week (Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror, vol. 84, no. 52, June 25, 1904). A later report from 

 the same source (ibid., vol. 85, no. 19, Nov. 5, 1904) states that since July, whales have been 

 seen at various points along the eastern coast of New England. 



1905. About the first of February, a large school of Finback Whales was reported in 

 Provincetown Bay, where they were said to be pursuing the large herring, then in those waters 

 (Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror, vol. 85, no. 32, Feb. 4, 1905). This school was said to have 

 been the largest seen in the Bay since 1880. How long the whales remained does not appear 

 but a dispatch to the Boston Herald, from Provincetown, under date of March 17th, states 

 that the men on the flatfish dredging fleet had seen a large school in Cape Cod Bay the two 

 weeks previous. Captain Mayo of the dredger Little Jennie reports at least a dozen Finbacks 

 blowing at the same moment, March 16th. "It is supposed they have come from off shore 

 in pursuit of herring." 



The highly decomposed carcass of what was probably one of this same school of Finbacks, 

 came ashore at Old Orchard, Maine, June 8, 1905, and furnished the newspapers with material 

 for a sensational account of the "Sea Serpent." A view of its skull is shown in one paper, and 

 is apparently that of a Finback Whale. 



A Finback Whale between fifty and sixty feet long was found ashore at Gay Head, 

 Martha's Vineyard, about the 5th of August. The cause of its death was not known 

 (Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror, vol. 86, no. 7, Aug. 12, 1905). 



1906. The following references to whales off the eastern coast of Massachusetts, proba- 

 bly apply to the Finback. 



About the middle of June, the steamer Admiral Sampson, while running through a fog off 

 Chatham, nearly ran upon a large whale as it rose to spout. As it dove its huge body was just 

 grazed by the starboard side of the vessel and it almost at once came again to the surface and 

 followed the vessel for some distance (Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror, vol. 86, no. 22, June 16, 

 1906). 



From the same source comes the report of a whale that became entangled in one of the 

 strings of thirty nets which stretched for nearly a mile out into Provincetown Bay from the 

 bow of the mackerel drift-netter Letha May. During the night a whale blundered into the 

 net, and became so enwrapped in the countless number of meshes that it was unable to rise 

 to the surface for air and after, a long struggle, died or became so exhausted that a fisherman 

 who was tending the net succeeded in clearing the whale which sank at once (Nantucket 

 Inquirer and Mirror, vol. 86, no. 23, June 23, 1906). 



When off the Nantucket Shoals, about the 20th of August, the Atlantic Transport liner 



