Oil stored on the wharves at New Bedford awaiting a favorable market. The owners, dressed in silk hats, long-tailed coats, and polished top boots, might often be seen watching, testing, and marking the oil-barrels.
OTHER NEW ENGLAND WHALING PORTS
Rhode Island pursued whales in 1731, Newport and Providence being the two most successful ports. Fifty ships were owned by Connecticut and Rhode Island in 1775. Massachusetts owned over three hundred at this time. Rhode Island was more of a “slave” than a whaling State. New London became a great whaling port in 1846, and was the third in importance in New England.
The people of Cape Cod began sending ships to sea about 1726, and a few years later a dozen or so vessels were fitted out at Provincetown. Boston claimed twenty whaleships in 1775, and registered from one to eleven vessels almost every year until 1903, since which date no whaleship has been recorded from this port. Gloucester turned to whaling in 1833.
The following figures show the different whaling ports in Massachusetts and the largest number of vessels enrolled in any one year in each. New Bedford, of course, held first place with 329 in 1857, with Nantucket 88 in 1843, Provincetown claimed 54 in 1869; Fairhaven 50 in 1848 to 1852; Edgartown and Mattapoisett owned 19 each; Salem had 14 in 1840; Boston 11 in 1868; Dartmouth, 10; Plymouth, 9; Falmouth, 8; Wareham, Fall River, and Marion, 7 each; Beverly, Holmes’ Hole, Orleans, 5 each; Lynn, 4; Newburyport, 3; Gloucester, Dorchester, and Sandwich, 2 each; and the following claimed 1: Braintree, Hingham, Marblehead, Barnstable, Duxbury, Quincy, Truro, Yarmouth, and Wellfleet. Of the Rhode Island towns Warren owned 25; Newport, 12; Bristol, 10; Providence, 9. Connecticut towns that owned whalers were New London, 70; Stonington, 27; Mystic, 18; and a few scattered among half a dozen other places. Portsmouth, N.H., at one time owned two vessels, and between the years 1835 to 1845 Bath, Bucksport, Portland, and Wiscasset in Maine each had one. Massachusetts, however, could claim five-sixths of the total fleet.
A few words must be said in praise of Samuel Mulford of Long Island. Governor Hunter of New York claimed for his State a share of all whales caught, whereupon Mulford waged war against this act in every possible way. Finally he sailed to London and put his case before the Crown. The people in London were much amused at his country clothes, and the pickpockets in particular became a nuisance to him in the streets. Mulford, however, showed his resourcefulness by sewing fish hooks in his pockets and succeeded in capturing the thief. Another incident shows the ingenuity of the whaleman. The ship “Syren” was attacked by a horde of murderous savages, and the crew of the ship would, doubtless, have been murdered had it not been for a quick stratagem of the mate. He remembered a package of tacks in the cabin and yelled, “Break out the carpet tacks and sow ’em over the deck.” The natives, yelling with pain, jumped headlong into the sea, and the ship was saved.
The Japanese method of capturing whales was to entangle them in nets. A great many boatloads of men would drive the whale toward the nets by throwing bricks and stones at it. When once entangled the infuriated animal could be easily killed. In 1884 the Ukitsu Whaling Company employed over 100,000 whalemen. One of the most successful of the Japanese in this pursuit was Masutomi Matazaemon, who accumulated a large fortune. The Japanese have been very slow to adopt our Western methods.