1101 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



Wheu at length they landed, on the morning of October 9, on the island 

 of Flares, their stock of water was already exhausted. They had been 

 at sea seven days and eight nights, and in that time had rowed and 

 sailed nearly GOO miles.* 



The accidents resulting from belligerent whales are numerous and 

 well authenticated. At times it has happened that in their rage they 

 have attacked even ships, apparently treating the boats as beneath 

 their notice. Two of the most remarkable instances of this kind are the 

 attacking and sinking of the ships Essex, of Nantucket, and Ann Alex- 

 ander, of New Bedford. 



The former ship, under the command of Capt. George rollard,jr., 

 sailed from Nautucket on the 12th of August, 3819, for the Pacific 

 Ocean. Nothing out of the ordinary course of events occurred until the 

 20th of November, 1819. On the morning of that day, the ship being in 

 latitude 0° 40' south, longitude 119° west, whales were discovered, and 

 all three boats were lowered in pursuit, the ship being brought to the 

 wind and lying with her maintop-sail hove aback waiting the issue of 

 the contest. The mate's boat soon struck a whale, but a blow of his 

 tail opening a bad hole in the boat, they were obliged to cut from him, 

 and devote their entire attention to keeping afloat. By stuffing jackets 

 iuto the hole, and keeping one man constantly bailing, they were en- 

 abled to check the flow of the water and reach the ship in safety. In 

 the mean time the captain's and second mate's boats had fastened to 

 another whale, and the mate, heading the ship for them, set about over- 

 hauling his boat preparatory to lowering again. While doing this he 



the vessel and cargo were lost. In March, 1855, the British schooner Waterloo was 

 attacked and sunk by a whale in the North Sea. In 1859 the ship Herald of the 

 Morning arrived at Hampton Roads leaking badly, having been struck by a large 

 sperm-whale off Cape Horn. She was found to have started seven feet of her stem as 

 far as the wood ends, and to have carried away both bobstays. The whale spouted a 

 large quantity of blood. In 1865 the British schooner Forest Oak, on her passage from 

 Boston to Yarmouth, N. S., struck a whale with such force as to nearly knock her fore- 

 mast out. She was going at the time at the rate of seven knots an hour. In 1873 the 

 three-masted schooner Watauga, of Washington, N. C, was wrecked on a reef off one 

 of the West Indies. She was originally a side-wheel steamer, and was of 200 tons 

 register. "While running along with a fine six or seven knot breeze, a sudden and 

 heavy shock and jar was felt, and all supposed that the vessel had scudded into a 

 sea with violence. The next moment a pair of whales were seen close alongside to lee- 

 ward. One of them seemed frisky enough, and made off rapidly, but the other seemed 

 loggy, moved with apparent difficulty, and presently disclosed a huge gash in his side, 

 from which the blood was issuing and coloring the sea about him. The Watauga 

 passed on, and soon lost sight of the whale, wheu it was discovered that the false 

 stem was torn off, her main stem split, and the wood ends started. The bobstay had, 

 of course, parted, and the bowsprit was adrift. * * * She was with difficulty kept 

 free until she had made Point Peter, where temporary repairs were made to enable her 

 to reach home. Upon her arrival at Washington she was repaired, and the damage 

 found to exceed $700."— (Preble's Notes on Whales and Whaling.) In 1860 the steamer 

 Eastern City, en route for St. John, ran into a humpback whale 60 feet long, displacing 

 her cutwater. 



* Macy, pp. 237 to 242. 



