Whalers rated the right whale as their top prize for years after they discov-ered it in large numbers off Kodiak Island. Very similar to the Atlantic right whale so familiar to New Bedford seamen, it moved slowly and contained an average of 125 barrels of oil and 1,250 pounds of baleen. French captain Nar-cisse Chaudiere sailed the first commercial whaler into Alaskan waters in 1835.
His ship Gange brought home oil and baleen from seven right whales. Another French whaler arrived in 1836, and at least one American vessel, the Elbe out of Poughkeepsie, New York, followed in 1837. As whale stocks in the southern Pacific gave out around 1840 and news of the promising new whaling grounds spread, Yankee whalers moved north. Baleen for corset stays and skirt hoops came into fashion, driving up the price and focusing attention on right whales.
Rapidly proliferating numbers of vessels (Table 3.1) quickly exhausted the pods of right whales in the Gulf of Alaska. By the late 1840s whalers moved through the Aleutian passes into Bristol Bay in the Bering Sea.10
Inefficient methods of harvesting hastened the decline of the whales. Fol-lowing a strike by a harpoon, numerous circumstances could result in loss of a whale: the whaleboat being damaged or men injured by flippers or flukes, ropes breaking or being cut by harpoons, men cutting the rope to prevent be-ing pulled down by deep-divbe-ing whales or bebe-ing dragged too far from the ship, harpoons breaking or detaching from the whales, and whales sinking. Men cap-tured well under half the whales they struck, sometimes as few as 20 percent.
As whales learned to avoid whaleboats, harpooners had to throw from greater distances, wounding a higher proportion. A large fleet of vessels, each capturing
table 3.1. American Whalers and Harvests in the Pacific North of 50 Degrees, 1835–1913
62
Sources: 1835–1884 figures from A. Howard Clark, “The Whale Fishery,” in George Brown Goode, ed., The Fisheries and Fishery Industries of the United States, Sect. 5, Vol.2 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1887), 85–86; 1885–1913 data from Reginald B. Hegarty, Returns of Whaling Vessels Sailing From American Ports, 1876–1928. New Bedford: Old Dartmouth Historical Society and Whaling Museum, 1959.
Note: Does not include foreign vessels, about 10–20 percent of total vessels. Harvest data for 1885–1913 listed in year of vessel departure.
table 3.1—continued
Year Ships Ave. Bbls Oil Total Bbls Oil Bbls Sperm Oil Lbs Baleen
whales and leaving many to die of blood loss or infection, soon decimated the North Pacific right whale population.11
Whaling Captain Charles Melville Scammon noted that before the whal-ers laid waste to them, “the right whales are found singly or in pairs; at times, scattered about as far as the eye can see from the masthead. At the last of the season they are sometimes seen in large numbers, crowded together. . . . Hav-ing been chased every successive season for years, these animals have become very wild, and difficult to get near, especially in calm weather.” Portending the ominous future of the North Pacific right whale, he remarked in 1871, “At the
present time, but few right whales are taken.”12 A whaler visited Sitka for re-pairs in 1891 after grounding in a fog and breaking its rudder while pursuing a wounded whale. It boasted a catch unusual for the time: nine right whales taken in eight days in Prince William Sound. One had dragged a whaleboat under-water and drowned a crew member.13 Between 1805 and 1914 whalers landed an estimated 14,480 North Pacific right whales, not counting those struck and fatally wounded or otherwise lost.14
Whalers sought the sperm whale in the Atlantic and South Pacific and found more in the subarctic waters of the North Pacific. Sperm whales aver-aged only 45 barrels of oil in their insulating blubber layer. But they carried spermaceti (sperm oil, in the forehead), used to make candles, and the valuable ambergris, an ingredient in perfume. Less favored, the gray whale yielded only 30 barrels of oil and reacted aggressively when attacked. Sulphur bottom (blue), finback, sei, and humpback whales usually swam too fast for the sailing vessels and rowboats.15
Commercial whalers most highly valued the bowhead, a close relative of the right whale. It migrated between the Bering Sea and the Arctic Ocean, staying close to the pack ice, hence its other name, “ice whale.” When New Bedford whalers first encountered it off the Kamchatka Peninsula in 1843, they real-ized that it bested the right whale in commercial value. They found bowheads farther north in the Bering Sea.16 Thomas Welcome Roys examined the reports and determined that there must be a concentration of whales in Arctic waters.
As captain of the Superior out of Sag Harbor, New York, he signed a crew for the South Atlantic fishery but took them to the North Pacific. There, in the Bering and Chukchi seas, they discovered a treasure trove of large, slow-moving bowheads. Their catch of eleven set off a rush to the Western Arctic, reviving the whaling industry.17
A bowhead contained up to 300 barrels of oil (about 100 on average and less as whaling progressed) and a possible 2,500 pounds (1,100 on average) of baleen.18 Manufacturers used baleen in corsets, women’s hats, buttons, up-holstery, suitcases and trunks, fishing rods, buggy whips, and springs. Whale oil served in cooking, lamps, soap, candles, paint and varnish, and as a lubri-cant. Eskimos had relied on the bowhead more than any other great whale and hunted it for over a thousand years, landing a few each year. The meat and oil furnished food and lighting by stone lamps, the bones a variety of tools and weapons. Eskimos used baleen for many implements: ropes, gillnets, crab traps, containers, sleds and sled runners, snares, spring baits, spear and harpoon tips, knife blades, rivets, and toys.19
Whalers at first found the bowheads docile, trusting, and easy to kill. After being pursued for a season or two, however, they grew shy and elusive. In 1849, the second year of bowhead whaling in the Chukchi Sea, a ship’s log recorded
Captain William Mogg and bowhead whale baleen, ca. 1916. Willoughby coll. 72-116-12n, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Alaska and Polar Regions Archives. Mogg and other Arctic whalers depleted the bowhead whales.
“plenty of whales in sight but all hands too busy [processing whales] to look at them.”20 The catch of North Pacific whales peaked in 1852 during an assault by nearly 300 vessels (Table 3.1), most seeking bowheads.
Whaling ships normally deployed four or five whaleboats propelled by oars and, in the case of bowhead whales, sails to avoid alarming the quarry. Early whalers threw an iron harpoon, let the whale tow the boat by a 600-foot rope until exhausted, and drew alongside and lanced it to death. This method al-lowed bowheads to escape under the ice. By 1880 inventors devised a darting gun, a harpoon bearing an explosive projectile that, if properly aimed, could kill a whale instantly. The crew towed the dead whale to the mother vessel and fixed it to the side. Then they carved it so its head and blubber could be hoisted aboard, the blubber boiled for oil, and the head stripped of baleen. Cooking an average bowhead lasted about 36 hours. During the return voyage the crew dried the baleen on deck and tied it in bundles of 22 slabs, each weighing about 80 pounds. Crews received pay based on their rank and the value of the catch.
Despite risking their lives in difficult work, seamen usually made no financial gain, often owing money to the whaling companies, from which they bought their supplies at inflated prices.21
Technological change kept North Pacific whaling alive in the latter half of the 19th Century. Completion of the transcontinental railroad improved the cost-effectiveness of Alaska whaling, as did the invention of the shoulder-fired harpoon gun and a similar device, the bomb lance. Steamships also revised the economics of Arctic whaling, being less subject to entrapment in the ice. The first steam whaler designed for bowheads, the Mary and Helen out of Maine, entered the Arctic in 1880. San Francisco became the primary supply, ship-building, and whale oil processing center for the Pacific. For fuel, steam whal-ers tapped coal deposits in northwestern Alaska, although most coal had to be shipped from the States. At a high point in 1887 one vessel tallied 28 whales, and a total of 526,000 pounds of baleen reached San Francisco.22
To capture inshore whales, companies set up shore whaling stations, hir-ing Eskimo or white crews of about twenty men each. Shore stations could operate earlier in the spring, later in the fall, and closer to the ice pack than whaling ships could. Fifteen such stations operated in the Bering and Chukchi seas by the end of the 1880s. Crews killed whales in a traditional manner ex-cept for the use of handheld bomb guns. Between 1852 and 1914, company-controlled and independent Eskimo shore whalers captured an estimated 626 bowheads.23 From 1848 to 1909, pelagic whalers tallied about 29,500 North Pacific bowheads.24
Charles Brower—who arrived in 1884, became a shore whaler near Point Barrow, and remained as a trader—dispatched a scout in 1888 to investigate rumors of bowhead whales congregating off the Mackenzie River Delta. The
tales turned out to be true, setting off a last surge of Arctic steam whaling.
Companies sent north the first ships to over-winter in 1890–1891, and one, the Mary D. Hume, stayed two winters. It reaped a plentiful harvest of bowheads on the eastern Mackenzie Delta.25 As many as fifteen ships remained through the winters, most near Herschel Island, to get an early start on summer whal-ing.26 Ship-based whaling continued until 1916 but made few highly profitable catches after 1899. Beginning in 1870 the price of whale oil had sunk as petro-leum products became available. But the price of baleen rose, reaching a peak in 1905. Whalers responded by taking baleen only, wasting the remainder of the whale except for those taken at shore stations and given to Eskimos.27
Arctic whaling posed dangers for the sailors as well as the whales. Captain Roys related the experience of his bark Sheffield, returning in 1850 full of oil and baleen, as a gale drove it toward the cliffs in the Fox Islands passage through the Aleutians:
With great exertion we got the mainsail upon her. All was done that man could do to save the ship with every man at his post, two men at the helm.
Some are weeping, some are praying, some in sullen silence look upon the all exciting scene and calmly await the stroke of death. At this critical moment the gale increases. The tremendous weight of sail is making the ship . . .
Eskimo whaling station, Cape Prince of Wales, 1891 or 1892; revenue cutter Bear offshore.
Bear coll. 89-193-116, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Alaska and Polar Regions Archives.
Some Natives operated their own shore-based stations, selling the whales or baleen to whal-ing ships.
groan throughout her extreme length. The sea is breaking over her, throw-ing the spray upon her topsails and wettthrow-ing down the men at her helm, her leerails are under water. No word is spoken, for the proud ship is laboring with destiny and with fearful speed she staggers on, bearing all on board to safety or instant death. Onward she drives, until only one wave is between us and the rocky bottom, here at a distance of about 100 feet [from shore].
Then the memories of years go flying through the brain, the cheek turns pale, the heart beats thick and the boldest hold their breath. In another moment she is free and a shout of joy resounds through the ship. The rocks are passed and orders to reduce sail are obeyed with alacrity and she runs in safety o’er the sea.28
Captain Henry Pease of the Champion out of Edgartown on Martha’s Vine-yard recounted an even less enjoyable experience in 1870. After a strenuous whaling effort south of Point Barrow, bad weather forced his vessel southward on October 4. Howling winds and “the heaviest sea I ever saw” drove the ship through Bering Strait, smashing whaleboats, equipment, and barrels of whale oil and leaving the ship covered in ice and oil. It nearly foundered, but the wind slackened just before it would have struck St. Lawrence Island. Pease called the episode “the most anxious and miserable time I’ve ever experienced in all my sea service.”29
As might be expected, whaling vessels often came to grief. Normally the unfortunate ones ran into storms and ice, but even war took a toll. During the Civil War, Confederates sank Yankee whalers off the East Coast. In June 1865 their warship Shenandoah sailed to the North Pacific and destroyed 38 whaling vessels, unaware that the war had ended.30
As dangerous as whaling had been elsewhere, it could hardly outdo the Western Arctic for risk. A combination of ice, storms, and cold conspired to call dozens of vessels and scores of men to untimely ends. Almost every year a few ships went down, and in 1871 most of the Arctic fleet did so. When the bark Japan wrecked off East Cape that spring, 8 men died in a long survival march over the ice. As the fleet worked to the northeast between Cape Belcher and Icy Cape, officers chose to ignore warnings by the Eskimos that the wind would drive the ice pack ashore and trap them. The wind changed and the ice came in, crushing some vessels and forcing eighteen into a narrow strip of water not connected to any escape route. At length the captains decided to abandon their ships and transport their 1,219 passengers and crew southward by whaling boats to open water to be rescued by other whaling vessels. They succeeded in saving all hands despite heavy seas that threatened to swamp the rowboats. Thirty-two vessels had been lost, including Captain Henry Pease’s Champion.31
Five years later, in 1876, ice again caught most of the fleet of eighteen American and two foreign whalers. Abandoning their ships to walk to others
not icebound, several of the 300 men died of exposure. About 50 elected to re-main aboard, of whom only one survived by walking to a village. The fleet lost twelve ships that year and seven more during the next three years. These losses hurt the New Bedford whaling industry, and the Arctic fleet’s home port had shifted to San Francisco by 1880.32
Arctic whaling revived somewhat as steam whalers entered the trade in the 1880s. But at least seventeen more vessels succumbed between 1888 and 1896 and eleven more between 1899 and 1913.33 The fleet suffered a telling stroke when ten vessels became icebound off Point Barrow in 1897. About 16 men died trying to reach a rescue vessel. Most of the rest, around 300, remained aboard ship or walked to Charles Brower’s whaling station at Cape Smyth.
Brower found lodging for the survivors and bade his Eskimo employees hunt caribou to feed them.34
Attempts to rescue the stranded whalers led to epic struggles against the elements. Third Mate George Fred Tilton of the Belvedere and officer Charles Walker from the Orca volunteered to go for help. Walker chose the Mackenzie River route through Canada. Sledging southward accompanied by two Siberian Eskimos on October 1, Tilton reached Point Hope where the Siberians quit the expedition. Tilton enlisted two local Eskimos, Tickey and his wife, Canuanar.
The three drove onward through the winter over mountains and treacherous sea ice, so short of food that several times they had to kill dogs to feed the others.
Near St. Michael they met Revenue officers planning to drive a herd of reindeer north to relieve the whalers. No one could be certain the reindeer plan would succeed, so Tilton and his companions kept going. They traversed Katmai Pass in early March and spent three days lowering their sleds and dogs down the steep mountain slopes. While crossing a river to get to the small village of Kat-mai, they lost half their equipment. At Katmai they found an old dory, and Tilton caulked it using his only suit of long underwear. Then, after 1,500 miles by dogsled, the three rowed 37 miles across Shelikof Strait to Kodiak Island.
From daybreak to nearly dark, in rare calm water, Tilton rowed while his com-panions bailed. At St. Paul the Alaska Commercial Company agent demanded an exorbitant fee to take them to Prince William Sound and also charged for their lodging. The three caught a boat to Portland, Oregon, where Tilton wired his company in New Bedford for relief funds. They refused to believe his story, so the three continued to San Francisco, where Tilton found a company willing to send a supply ship. Tilton and his companions arrived in early March and Walker a few weeks later. Vessels not caught in the ice had returned the previous November, prompting a rescue effort by the revenue cutter Bear.35
While Tilton and Walker strove to alert the outside world to the plight of the whalers, word of the crisis had reached Washington. The revenue cutter Bear headed north to aid the rescue but got no farther than Cape Vancouver on
Nelson Island. From there Lt. Ellsworth Bertholf struck out by dogsled carry-ing provisions to Point Barrow, well over 1,000 miles away. Lt. David H. Jarvis and the ship’s surgeon, Dr. Samuel J. Call, separately dog-teamed to St. Michael and on to the Seward Peninsula, where they borrowed two reindeer herds to drive to Point Barrow. Their perilous winter journey in temperatures reaching 60 degrees below zero lasted eleven weeks and ended on March 29, 1898. Lt.
Bertholf arrived afterward. Yet their strivings did not turn out to be essential;
trader Charles Brower had organized a relief effort and made available all the provisions at his disposal. The contingent of more than 300 whalers suffered negligible loss of life.36