28 ECONOMIC MAMMALOGY 



St. John says that in 1769 the first fifty Nantucket whaling vessels 

 coming in brought 11,000 barrels of oil. In 1770 they fitted out 197 

 vessels with 2158 men for whaling. 10 . 



Sanford 11 says there were over 700 vessels from the United States 

 engaged in whaling in 1850 and less than 100 in 1882. Smiley 12 gives 

 the number in 1853 as 543 vessels, with a total tonnage of 171,484 

 tons, which in 1884 had declined to 144 vessels, with a total of 33,119 

 tons. From his statistical tables the following items show the decrease 

 in imports and exports: 



Barrels of Barrels of Pounds of 



Sperm oil Whale oil Whalebone 



Imports 1853 103,077 260,114 5,652,300 



Imports 1883 24,595 24,170 254,037 



Exports 1867 25,147 18,253 717,496 



Exports 1883 13,096 4,543 175,614 



Stevenson 13 tells us that in 1860 the production of the United States 

 whaling fleet was 73,708 barrels of sperm oil and 140,005 barrels of 

 whale oil, and in 1902 only 21,970 barrels of sperm oil and 4725 

 of whale oil; and that the manufacture of spermaceti from 1835 to 

 1845 averaged over 3,000,000 pounds, and then dropped to 200,000 

 pounds in 1890, and 400,000 pounds, worth $100,000, in 1901. Clark 14 

 says that in 1880 the American whaling industry employed 171 ves- 

 sels, worth $2,891,650, with an additional $1,733,000 invested in 

 wharfs, warehouses and oil refineries. 



From Starbuck's History of the American Whale Fishery the fol- 

 lowing items are gleaned: During several years from 1804 to 1876 

 over 5,000,000 gallons of sperm oil, over 10,000,000 gallons of whale 

 oil and over 3,000,000 pounds of whalebone were imported into the 

 United States, the total value of all for that whole period being 

 $331,949,480. Total exports from 1791 to 1876 were sperm oil, 

 35>399>7 8 5 gallons; whale oil, 105,967,473 gallons; whalebone, 

 54,967,200 pounds; sperm candles, 33,395,056 pounds; total value of 



10 St. John, An account of the whale industry of Nantucket, Massachusetts, one 

 hundred years ago, Bull. U. S. Fish Comm., in, 179-182, 1883. 



11 Sanford, Notes on the history of the American whale fishery, Kept. U. S. Fish 

 Comm. for 1882-83, pp. 205-220. 



12 Smiley, Review of the whale fishery for 1882-1883, Kept. U. S. Fish Comm. for 

 1883, pp. 325-336, including statistics from 1853 to 1883. 



13 Stevenson, Aquatic products in arts and industries, Rept. U. S. Fish Comm. for 

 1902, pp. 177-252 ; see especially pp. 204, 244-247. 



14 Clark, The whale fishery: History and present condition of the fishery, The 

 Fisheries and Fishing Industries of the U. S., Sec. v, Vol. n, pp. 3, 293, 1887. 



