His CAPTORS. 27 



Whaling Progress. Whaling Profits. 



whaling fleet amounted to six hundred and fifty 

 ships, barks, brigs, and schooners, tonnaging 

 two hundred thousand tons ; and they were 

 manned by seventeen thousand five hundred 

 officers and seamen. At the same time, the 

 English whale fishery, which in 1821 em- 

 ployed three hundred and twenty-three ships, 

 was reduced to only eighty-five. But the New 

 Holland branch of the English whale fishery 

 was rapidly growing, the proximity of those 

 whaling ports of Australia to some of the most 

 productive cruising grounds enabling the ships 

 fitted out there to perform three voyages while 

 the English and Americans are performing two. 

 The number of whale ships from French, Ger- 

 man, and Danish ports, at the same time, was 

 between sixty and seventy. 



The estimated annual consumption of the 

 American whaling fleet was $3,845,500. Val- 

 ue of the annual import of oil and whalebone 

 in a crude state $7,000,000, increased by man- 

 ufacturing to $9,000,000. The number of 

 vessels in the American whale fishery the pres- 

 ent year, .1849, as gathered from the " Whale- 

 man's Shipping List," is estimated at six hund- 

 red and ten, or one hundred and ninety-six 



