244 MARINE MAMMALS OF THE NORTH-WESTERN COAST. 



The average number of vessels employed annually for these years was five 

 hundred and twenty-four, aggregating 158,883 tons, and the amount of oil taken 

 3'carly was a fraction over 96,025 barrels of sperm, and 172,448 barrels of whale ; 

 The number of Sperm Whales required to produce this amount of sperm oil (allow- 

 ing them to average twenty- five barrels each) would be 3,805 ; add to this ten 

 per cent, for whales mortally wounded, lost after capture, etc., brings the number 

 up to 4,253, or thereabouts. The black whales annually destroyed, which includes 

 Plight Whales, Bowheads, California Grays, and Humpbacks, allowing them to average 

 sixty barrels eacli, would make the number 2,875 ; add to this twenty per cent, 

 for whales lost, increases it to 3,450 ; so that the number of Sperm and black 

 whales annually destroyed was 7,703. According to this estimate, during the 

 thirty -eight years, there were no less than 292,714 whales captured or destroyed 

 by the American whaler's lance. 



The history of many of the old whale -ships is of peculiar commercial inter- 

 est, large numbers of them having performed scores of voyages in the merchant 

 service, or served as vessels of war, before being transformed into cruisers for oil 

 and bone. Among them was the ship Maria. This vessel was built at Pembroke 

 (now called Hanson), Mass., during the year 1782, for a privateer, but was pur- 

 chased by the celebrated whaling merchant, William Rotch. It was one of the 

 first vessels to display the American flag in the Thames after the War of Indepen- 

 dence,"'" being at that period employed as a freighter. The Maria concluded 

 her first whaling -voyage September 20th, 1775, and from that time continued in 

 the business for seventy years, during which service she pcrfoi'med twenty -seven 

 voyages. She sailed from New Bedford upon her last whaling -voyage under our 

 flag on the 29th of September, 1850 ; the oil taken in all these expeditions, includ- 

 ing eight hundred barrels on her final voyage, being 24,419 barrels of sperm, and 

 one hundred and thirty -four barrels of whale oil. The vessel was commanded and 

 officered by Nantucket- men while owned by Mr. Rotch; and after his decease, in 

 1828, t she passed into the hands of his descendants. On her last, unfinished 

 voyage mentioned above, she was sold at Talcahuano, Chile, February, 1863, being 

 then eighty -one years old. At this epoch in her history, the venerable craft 

 changed her name and nationality, being christened the Maria Pacheco, and, instead 



* Preble, in his Hislonj of the American Flag In that case, to John Singleton Copley, of 



(page 215), states that "The honor of dis- Boston, the American painter, and the father 



playing our flag in England for the first time of the late Lord Lyndhurst, must be assigned 



does not, however, rest with any vessel, if a the honor." 

 printed representation of it can be considered. | Vide Sauford's Letters. 



