74 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 
Francisco, including those used as transports in the cod, salmon, and oys- 
ter fisheries, numbered 71, with an aggregate net tonnage of 11,820.65; 
manned by 1,451 men. Of these, 12 vessels, with a tonnage of 630.52, 
were engaged in pelagic sealing, sea-olter hunting, and the capture of 
walrus ; 28 vessels (of which 8 were steamers), with an aggregate tonnage 
of 8,278.46, were employed in the whale fishery. In the cod fishery 
there were 2 barkentines, with a combined tonnage of 623.41 tons, that 
went to the Okhotsk Sea, and 7 vessels, of 1,075.31 tons, that fished 
about the Aleutian Islands, in Bering Sea, or acted chiefly as trans- 
ports. Three sloops, averaging about 13 tons each, and three sailboats 
transported oysters from the beds in the San Francisco Bay to the city; 
two were also used for other purposes in connection with the salmon 
fishery. In addition to the vessels a fleet of 429 boats of less than 
5 tons each are employed in the shore fisheries of this region, many of 
these being feluccas. 
THE WHALE FISHERY. 
Importance , etc . — The whale fishery prosecuted from San Francisco is 
now an important industry. Its development in the last decade has been 
most remarkable, and is in striking contrast to the marked decline of 
the fishery from New England ports. This clearly illustrates the ad- 
vantages San Francisco has for controlling the industry, so long as the 
chief whaling grounds are in the Arctic Ocean, north of Bering Strait, 
along the northeastern coast of Asia, and in the northern Pacific. 
Clark notes that there were only 3 vessels engaged in the North 
Pacific whale fishery (including the Arctic Ocean) from San Francisco 
in 1879. Their aggregate tonnage was 1,470. In 1888 the San Francisco 
whaling fleet numbered 28 vessels, with an aggregate tonnage ot 8,278.46 
tons, manned by 932 officers and seamen. Of these, 8 were steamers 
with a tonnage ranging, for each vessel, from 250 to 860 tons; 14 were 
barks, averaging upwards of 300 tons each; and there were 1 brig and 
5 schooners. Of this fleet, 3 barks fished in the Okhotsk and Japan 
Seas, and all the rest went to the Arctic Ocean. The fleet included two 
“tenders,’ 7 the steamer Jeanie and the bark Thomas Pope. In 1889 there 
were 26 vessels actually eugaged in whaling, exclusive of 2 tenders. Of 
these there were 7 steam -whalers, 12 barks, 1 brig, and 6 schooners, the 
whole having a value, with outfit, of nearly $940,000. . • 
It is as true now as in 1880 that u the interest of San Francisco in 
the whale fishery can not be measured by the number of vessels owned 
there, for almost the entire North Pacific and Arctic fleets are accus- 
tomed to make that place a fitting port and the headquarters for re- 
shipment of oil and bone to the Atlantic seaboard.”* The facilities for 
shipment afforded by the transcontinental railroads have had a marked 
influence on the industry in San Francisco, and from being a place where 
*The Whale Fishery, by A. Howard Clark, in “The Fisheries and Fishery Indus- 
tries of the United States.” 
