242 A HISTORY OF THE WHALE FISHERIES 



to arrive at New Bedford and Fairhaven in 1858, 

 forty-four were calculated as making losing voyages, 

 the total loss being one million dollars. In 1871 

 the entire Arctic fleet was destroyed by pack ice with 

 a loss of over two million dollars, thirty-four vessels 

 becoming a total loss. 



Two other adverse circumstances for the whalers 

 were the discovery of gold in California in 1 849, and 

 the commencement of the manufacture of cotton 

 goods in New Bedford in 1846. 



It was customary for the Pacific whalers to touch 

 at a Pacific port to refit, and during the gold boom 

 whole crews of whalers deserted, so that shipping on 

 a whaler came to be recognised as a cheap means 

 of reaching the goldfields from the eastern states. 

 The whaling capitalists lost large sums of money 

 through their ships being laid up owing to these 

 desertions. The cotton manufacture afforded a 

 steadier yield to capital than the enormously fluctuat- 

 ing whaling industry, so there can be no question 

 but that its establishment in New Bedford led to 

 the withdrawal of capital from the latter, to say 

 nothing of the diversion of new capital that other- 

 wise might have been devoted to the development 

 of whaling. 



In the fifties and sixties of the nineteenth century 

 the Pacific whalers made Honolulu their rendezvous. 

 Twice a year the harbour was full of whalers, firstly 

 in March, when they fitted out for the summer season 

 in the Arctic, in Behring Strait, off Japan, and in 

 the Sea of Okhotsk, and secondly in November, 



