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About Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 10, 1904)
Golden Days of the Big Right Whale . ; .; j t yv '. ij. ' - v , , .i-t r ,..y. V-v.r?-j ? fi,1 Jttt iLin i WHALING DARK "HOVE DOWN" TO HAVE IIEK HULL REPAIRED. OLD TIMKR8 IN THE GRAVE YARD BASIN COMMODORE MORRIS IN THlfl KORKU ROUND. iv , n n 11 i r . vi tin; i tig I fleet of twenty returning to port I 'Vlntin1' vithnnt hvlncr tiirnixt up a nn and with only 70,000 pounds of whalebone to show for tho entire cruise of the whole fleet, the old. right whale has hit the whalemen of the United States hard even for these latter days. The pursuit of this whale Is the only branch of the business now that means big profits, for the sperm whale, that once made New Bedford rich, lias dwindled In Importance as the price of sperm oil baa declined. Today the pursuit of the sperm whale Is carried on as much because of sentiment and family pride as because of any busi ness advantage. The profits made are email, except when an occasional big kill ing Is made by ono of the old "sparm" whalers; and although many of the famous old firms of New Bedford of twenty-five and even fifty years ago still exist a whaling concerns, they make their money nowadays as merchants, mill owners and bankers. New Bedford's pre-eminence as a manu facturing city today did not come as a sur prise to them. If ever there was a busi ness in America that demanded the high est type of business acumen, financial talent and commercial daring, it was that of whaling in the famous days of old New Bedford; and the men who were at Its head were quick to see their chance In new New Bedford. Hence they can afford now to send out their old whaling barks to cruise for "sparm" even if there is no profit in it; and queer as it may seem to those who have an idea that the New England man is all business, it is absolutely true that a proportion of the famous old ships are Bent out purely because of loyalty. The old whaling owners have a love for their ships that can be understood only when It Is remembered that often an old whaling bark has a record of having been commanded successively by grandfather, father and son. These old vessels are overhauled year after year with loving care, fitted with the best nnd sent out with much of the same pride that Impels a nation to cherish Its old warships. It Is different with the whalers who go forth into the Arctic and Okhotsk seas and along the "northwest coast" for right whale and bowheads. The right whale was hardly worth going for in the days when "sparm" was king, for the oil of right whale and bowhead, known as "whale oil" as against "sperm oil," was not nearly so valuable, and the whalebone was prac tically worthless In those far-off days. Now conditions are exactly reversed. Bperm oil is low in price and whalebone has gone up. Therefore the pursuit of the right whale is still a promising busi ness proposition, as may be seen from the fact that whalebone is expected to rise to 6 a pound as a result of the bad luck of the Pacific and Arctic whalers. Even at that price the Arctic fleet will how a loss. Most of the twenty ships in the business are steamships, and they cost on an average $25,000 to fit. Seventy thou sand pounds of bone, even at $6 a pound, will not cover the expenses. The crack captain of the season was a New Bedford man, Captain James Tillon, whose ship, the Alexander, made the record by catching eeven bowhead whale. It Will probably declare the only profit on the cruise. Another steam whaler, the William Bayllss, which sailed away on September 20, 188G, has returned with fifty pounds of bone , taken in trade and two polar bear cubs as the net returns of Its adventuring. It is a true jcke of fortune that, in the early days, when whalebone was practically worthless, the whalebone carrying whales were plentiful near the New England shore, A. .: - .. - .. .? -T- VgraL.v.,,.'L., TUB FAMOUS OLD MORNING STAR JUST IN PROM A THREE TEARS' CRUISE. while the precious sperm whale had to be sought for in the open ocenn and In dis tant seas; and now the sperm whales are fairly plentiful In tho Atlantic between tha Massachusetts coasts and the Azores, whllo the whalebone whales are hidden away In the Arctic. They were right whales that were taken by William Hamilton, who appeared on Cape Cod In 1043 and became bo overwhelm ingly successful that his pious fellowmtn soun made him the object of the'r eialcm regard as being one who dealt In witch craft. Mr. Hamilton found It prudent to abandon whaling over night and to remove himself Into another neighborhood a.i swiftly as possible. However, Cape Cod swallowed Its doubts as to witchcraft In the whule fisheries rnd its inhabitants soon learned tn kill whales full as well ad the suspected Hamilton had done. So, In 1090. the folk of Nanturk t engaged Ichabod Paddock of Cape Co l to settle on their island and teach them to kill whahs. They killed right whales at short dis tances from the shore until 17fi0, when the animals found the matter monotonous and moved off. Then Binall sloops of ubjut fifty tons were used to go out to eff-shore grounds. In the meantime, in 1712, a Nantucket whaler that had been blown oft elure in a gale struck the first sperm whale and began the great business of "deep" ocean whaling. Before long the whalers of New England had ventured north to the Gulf r.f St. Law rence and to the Grand Banks in pu:suit of the right whales, whMi were withdraw ing more and more from the over hunted Massachusetts coast In 17C8 almost a hun dred vessels, few of them more than seventy-five tons In burden (not so large fas many pliusure yachts of today), took whala oft Newfoundland and worked Into the Ice of tho Straits of Belle Isle. Before the revolutionary war began tho Nantucket whalers had begun to occupy all the whaling grounds of the Atlantic. Oip tain Uriah Bunker in the brig Amazon, the first Nantucket whaler to crovs the equator, arrived at homo from his voyage on the very day of the battle of Lexington. It was a Nantucket man, Captain Folge-, who first charted the Gulf Stream, lk'nji mlu Franklin caused this e hart to bo en graved for the use of navigators and It is substantially correct today. It was n New Belford whiler, the Bed ferJ, which was the first ship that ever flew the ,,rol e lluus thlrte-n stripes" of Ame lca In any Eng'Hh port. It was dis patched from MasFuehuutts the moment pence was e'ecliiel, und It arrived in the Thames with Its cargo of oil b fore all the acts of Parliament ag.Unst the "rebels" had leen rose lnded. In 178 the log book of the Nantucket Fhip Penelope recorded Its arrivul In tho Arctio siux In 7S north latitude, with "100 Ame: lean whale ships In lght." And this point, so far north that it st 11 is a Polar rdvcr.ture for expeditions to reach It, was reached In these early days by little craft which did not even havo cop pered bottoms. Long before that, solitary American whalers h.d peiu'trjtcd Into the frozen Teas. Inieed, in 175'J a Boston schooner had tried to find the northwest passage and had spent seven or eight months in the Ice. It was the sperm whale that first in duced American whalers to rounl the Horn and enter the Pacific. In 1791 seven uuln Bil'od around thn Horn from N.inlucket and New Bedford. Then began the era of enterprise during which the whale ships carried the Amer ican flag into every spot on the globe, one Nantucket man entering even the Rod sea. The first right whales were taken on the northwest coast In 1-35, again by a Nantucket chip, and In 1S43 the first bow bead whales ever taken In the North Pa cific ocean were killed by two New Bed ford ships off Kamtschatka. In 1S48 the tng Harbor bark Superior, under Captain Royce, pnssed through Bering straits, and within three years 60 American ships were filling with oil and Whalebone there. Bone was only Just beginning then to amount to something In value. In 1723 the finest kind was worth only 3 shillings a pound In Philadelphia. In 1X20 to 1824 it was worth only from 8 to 10 cents a pound. In 1K57 .whalebone was selling for 85 cents a pound. The price of sperm oil then whs 82 cents and of whale oil 35 cents a gallon. In those days the meeting ground of the whalers was off the islands of Cahu and Maul, in the Hawaiian group, end that land was then In practice ns American as It is now in reality. The mall station was a deserted coral reef far to tho west, known as Baker's Island, where a cask on a polo was used for the deposit of letters by every passing ship. Even before tho capture of right and bowhead whales had brought the American ships to the Arctic ocean and the Boring sea In foree, small whalers from New Eng land had ventured Into unknown seas. Before 1843 two Russian war ships on ft voyage of exploration sighted a group of Islands in tho Antarctic ocean nnd had begun to send men ashore to take posses plon In the name of tho czar when the fog lifted nnd they were nmazed to see a little sealing sloop from Long Island riding quietly In the harbor. The Russians were disappointed and disgusted, but honest enough to namo the Islands "Palmer's Land," after the captain of the little sail boat. The British ship Caribou had a simi lar experience at almont the same time, for it thought It had discovered tho lund now known as Hurd's Island, but on ap proaching It found the schooner Oxford of Falrhaven, Mass., there, engaged in whaling. Many of the ships ihat openoj this rarlfla and Arctic fishery are afloat today and catching whales as bravely as if they were brand new. There ia the famous old baric Morning Star, which, when last reported, hud sailed out of Fayal In the Axoros with 125 barrels of sperm oil which it had ob tained since last July, when it left New Bedford on Its cruise. The Morning Star entered the Taclflo fishery in 1853 and made rich hauls of oil and bone even through the civil war, evad ing privateers successfully and landing Its cargo at a time when the market had soared to dizzy heights. In one cruise, of 270 days It killed 203 whale. It penetrated Hudson's bay In 18u4 and 1866 and brought back oil and bone that made its two voyages net more than litO.OOO. This was at "top" prices, when oil wae worth $1.CS a gallon and whalebone was Belling for $2.40 a pound. Great as this record was, It was excelled at that same period by Captain Ebeneor Morgan, who entered port In 1806 with 1100,000 worth of bone and oil. Even before tho civil war, and without tho aid of war prices, tho whalers of those days made fortunes In singlo voyages. In 1S5 the schooner Alabama, under Cap tain Consider Fisher of Slpplcan, made a Blx months' voyage and came In with $13,000 worth of whale. It was worth only $2,200 originally with its full outfit (Continued on Sixteenth rage.)