In 1835 the value of the annual product of the whalers exceeded for the first time $6,000,000. In 1845 the sperm-whale fishery reached its highest point in the amount of product—4,967,550 gallons. The price was then 88 cents a gallon. In 1855 the price was $1.772 per gallon, but the amount saved was only 2,228,443 gallons. Right whale-oil reached record figures in 1840, when the amount saved was 11,593,483 gallons. The price was then 33 cents. The highest income received by the whalers in any one year was in 1854, when the take sold for $10,802,594.20. The years 1854 to 1857, inclusive, paid the whalers $51,063,659.59. The average catch was worth about half the estimated value of the fleet, or say near the actual value. It is certain that a well-handled whaler was a most profitable ship until after the petroleum industry was developed.
A picturesque offshoot of the whaling fleet was the fleet of seal-hunters that came into existence at the end of the eighteenth century. When Captains Gamaliel Collins and David Smith, of Cape Cod, went to the Falklands (1774) in search of whales, they found there thousands of seals, both hair and fur, and sea-lions without end. The oil of these animals being of good quality, the whalers carried some of it home, together with the skins, which were found to serve well for covering trunks. The fur-seals as well as the hair sealskins were used for this purpose. Soon after the War of the Revolution a Mrs. Haley, of Boston, sent a large ship to the Falklands especially for seals. The number taken was 13,000, and the skins sold for fifty cents each in New York. This voyage, like that of the Columbia to the Northwest coast, shows well the extraordinary enterprise of the ship-owners of the day.
In 1790 Elijah Austin, of New Haven, sent two vessels to the Falklands for seals, and when they were filled, Captain Daniel Greene, who commanded one of them, took his cargo direct to Canton for sale, because the skins Mrs. Haley's ship had taken had been exported from New York to Canton with profit.
The work of the brig Betsey, of Stonington, Connecticut, is perhaps the most memorable of any of the ships that entered the early trade. Though of but 100 tons' measurement, she made two voyages to the southern seal islands, beginning in 1790, both of which were remarkably profitable—the better voyage paid $52,300 net. The outfit, vessel included, probably cost little more than a tenth of this sum.
The Betsey's success naturally increased the number of vessels in the hunt very rapidly. Mas-a-Fuera, Juan Fernandez, the South Shetlands, the Prince Edward and Crozet islands, Desolation and Heard's islands, all soon became as well known to the sealers as Long Island Sound was to the coasters. Captain Henry Fanning, of the ship Catharine, obtained a manuscript copy of the notes made by the original discoverer of Crozet's Island, and with that as a guide went to the islands and obtained a full cargo.
The most famous of the American seal-hunters was Captain N. B. Palmer, born in Stonington, Connecticut. In 1799 he began his career afloat as the cabin-boy of a coaster at the age of fourteen. At nineteen he was made second mate of the brig Hersilia, Captain J. P. Sheffield, bound from Stonington to the Falklands in search of seals. On reaching the Falklands, Palmer and a number of sailors were landed to search the group for seals, while Captain Sheffield went south to search for another group. According to a story told by "gaming" parties on the whalers of the day, a whale-ship that, in spite of a heavy fog, was cruising through the waters to the south of the Falklands, had sailed out of the fog unexpectedly, and found herself almost on top of a mountainous group of islands, the outlying rocks and the beaches of which were alive with seals. The crew of the ship, animated by the danger of their position, hastily tacked and sailed away. Then the fog enclosed them again, and when the captain thought to chart the strange group he had to guess at the position. Sheffield was in search of this group.
A few days after he was left at the Falklands, Palmer saw the brig Espirito Santo (owned by Englishmen at Buenos Ayres) come to the anchorage in search of water; and when she was anchored, Palmer noted that she carried a sealing outfit. Thereupon he made friends with the mate, and although sealers had the habit of keeping their destination secret, he learned that the brig was bound for the uncharted islands; also the course she was to steer from the Falklands. Accordingly, when the Hersilia returned unsuccessful, Palmer was able to follow the Espirito Santo to the new group. These islands are now known as the South Shetlands.
In the following year (1820) thirty sealers gathered at the South Shetlands, including five belonging to the Stonington South Sea Company. One of the five was the Hero ("but little rising forty tons," according to one old account), of which young Palmer was captain.
While working the group, Captain Isaac Pendleton, commodore of the five vessels mentioned, on climbing a mountain, saw what he thought was the loom of land far away to the south, and in the hope of finding other rookeries, sent Palmer in the Hero exploring.
Land was found, and Palmer soon discovered that it was of continental dimensions. As no seals were found, he finally headed back for the Shetlands, but before he had crossed the intervening water a heavy fog shut him in and he hove to. During the night a ship's bell was heard striking the hour off the port bow, and the stroke was followed by another off to starboard. To the crew these sounds seemed supernatural, for they could not think that real ships were there; but when morning came, they found the Hero lying between two war-ships. The story, as told by Captain E. Fanning, of Stonington, to Secretary of the Navy J. N. Reynolds, in a letter written in 1828, is as follows:—