140 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



is an accompaniment to the history of the English fishery in the Green- 

 land seas, is ample attestation to the perils North Atlantic mariners were 

 obliged to encounter, and ample testimony to the bravery and hardihood 

 of those men, English, Dutch, and American, who pursued their prey 

 amid so much of danger, privation, and suffering.* 



The American Greenland sea-fishery affords but few examples of these 

 perils, simply because the fleet in these waters was of late years very 

 small. Vessels have sailed on their voyages to Hudson's Bay and 

 Davis Straits aud never returned, and the fate of the gallant men who 

 composed their crews has been and must ever remain a mystery. 



Mention has been made more particularly of those sources of disaster 

 more peculiar to the business, but it must not be inferred that these are 

 the only trials which beset the life of the whaleman. In common with, 

 but probably not in proportion to, the merchant service, the scenes of 

 shipwreck and suffering are alike the shadows darkening the sunshine 

 of their lives ; shipwrecks, resulting not from the nature of their avoca- 

 tion, but the result of gales, of fire, and of sudden calamity. 



On the 4th of March, 1854, the ship Canton, of New Bedford, was 

 wrecked on a reef in the Pacific Ocean situated in 2° 45' south latitude, 

 and 173° west longitude. The crew gained the shore of a small barren 

 island, and there subsisted as best they could for four weeks. During 

 this time, in the best procurable shade, the thermometer denoted a tem- 

 perature of 135° by day and 94° by night. Long existence there was 

 out of the question, since their only source of supplies was the wreck of 

 their vessel, and it was determined to endeavor to reach the King's 

 Mill group of islands, some eight hundred miles distant. Having pro- 

 cured a very limited stock of bread and water, they started in four 

 boats, reducing themselves to an allowance of one-half a pint of water 

 aud half a biscuit per day to each man. During the night the boats 



* One of the most horrible tales of suffering in the annals of the whale-fishery is that of 

 the English whaleship Diana, which left the Shetlands in 1868 for an Arctic (Davis 

 Strait) voyage, with a crew of fifty officers and men. The time for her return came 

 and passed, and nothing was heard of her whereabouts or fate. A premium was offered 

 for tidiugs from the missing vessel, and at last she brought her own intelligence. On 

 the 2d of April, 1867, the people living near Rona's Voe were startled by seeing the 

 ghastly wreck of a ship sailing into the harbor. Battered, ice-crushed, her sails and 

 cordage cut away and dismantled by the rigors of her terrible imprisonment, her boats 

 aud spars cut up to feed the fires which kept the wretched crew from freezing, her 

 decks strewed with the dead and dying, the long lost Diana returned. The fifty who 

 sailed were all brought back, but how ? Ten bodies, one of them the captain's, lay on 

 the deck carefully arranged for that burial which their comrades could not brin^ them- 

 selves to give to them. Thirty-five lay helplessly sick, some of them dying. Two still 

 retained strength enough to go aloft, and three more were able to crawl around on deck. 

 The man at the wheel fainted with excitement when help was at hand. Oue of the sick 

 died in his berth after the rescuers had boarded the ship. The surgeon had worked 

 untiringly, but cold, hunger, scurvy, and dysentery had done their work as unceasingly. 

 The captain was the first to succumb, and oue by one the others followed him. An- 

 other night and the ship which had been for all a common home would have proved 

 to all a common tomb. 



