CHAPTER XI

THE HARVEST OF THE SEA BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR

In the year 1772 the people of Marblehead, Massachusetts, boasted that "the number of polls was 1203," and that the vessels of all kinds owned in the port measured more than 12,000 tons. In 1780 the number of polls was 544, the tonnage but 1509. Within the borders of the town were 458 widows with 966 fatherless children.

Marblehead was a type of the New England fishing villages of the day. The nation had won freedom, but the fishing industry from which the American merchant marine had originated was ruined. Moreover, there was no immediate return of prosperity after peace was declared. The gross income of the New England cod-fishing vessels for the year 1787 averaged but $483 each; for 1788 it was $456 each, and for 1789 only $273. The average annual expense during this period was $416 each, and the vessels lost on the average $143 each during the year 1789. In that year the fleet measured 19,185 tons. In the next year the tonnage increased to 28,348, for the fishermen hoped for good times following the adoption of the Constitution, and in 1793, when the fleet received a national subsidy of $72,965.32, the tonnage reached 50,163. But in 1794, although the subsidy amounted to $93,768.91, the tonnage was only 28,671. In short, the statistics show that while the tonnage fluctuated from year to year, there was little prosperity for any of our fishermen in the period between the two wars for freedom.

A similar condition prevailed at Nantucket and other whaling ports. So discouraged were the Nantucket men that many of them migrated to England and France. For the British and French governments, to secure them, offered free transportation, free entry for ships and goods, and sums of money with which to begin life anew. Records show that no less than 149 Nantucket men commanded English whalers before the War of 1812.

The foreign aggressions of various kinds account for a large part of the depression of the fisheries during that unhappy period. The losses sustained by our freight carriers at that time were more than made up by the high freight rates received. But when the fish markets of the West Indies and of Europe were closed by adverse legislation, or by wars, there was no way to repair the loss except by national subsidies, and these, when granted, proved inadequate.

There was one other loss to which too little attention has been paid--the loss of men. The Marblehead men who were killed during the War of the Revolution were among the most enterprising of the coast--they were killed because of their courage and dash. Lost ships could be replaced in the course of one winter; the lost men were not replaced until their sons became men. Then, too, the prosperity of the carrier fleet drained away the best men among the fishermen; for the owners of the carriers knew where to get able seamen.

After the War of 1812 the cod fleet averaged somewhat larger than it was before the war, but the increase was not at all commensurate with the growth of the nation. The exports of dried fish declined instead of increasing, and in spite of a protective tariff foreigners began (1812) to sell pickled fish in the United States. These imports increased steadily until 1848, when more than 100,000 barrels were brought in, and the imports thereafter remained above that figure. In describing the situation of these fishermen in 1848, Sabine says:--

"Many crews of fishing vessels owned in Newburyport, on settling with their owners for six and seven months' hard toil at sea, received only about ten dollars per month; and on this miserable pittance they were to eke out the year. They had obtained good fares of fish, but were sufferers from the depressed state of the market. With facts like these before us, can we wonder that the more ambitious young men abandon the employment at every opportunity?"

The vessels in the mackerel and other fisheries were, of course, no more prosperous, on the average, than those fishing for cod. From first to last the fisheries of New England are of interest in the story of the American merchant marine chiefly because they afforded an excellent training school for the sailor _of the sail_. It was because of the school afforded that these vessels were subsidized between 1792 and 1866. The annual bounty ranged from $1.60 to $4 per ton, according to the size of the vessel. Pay from the national treasury at the rate of $2 per month has also been given to the crews of fishermen in order to create a sort of sea militia. During the Civil War many recruits for the navy were obtained from the fishermen. Impressed by the precedent thus afforded, and failing to distinguish between the requirements of the old-time and the modern man-o'-war, the Merchant Marine Commission of 1904 proposed to pay bounties to the crews now employed in the fisheries. Of course bounties paid to the crews of tugs and other harbor steamers would be far more effective for the end in view. The tenacity with which our people cling to the idea that a modern sailor needs training on a ship of the sail is one of the discouraging features of the outlook for a revival of our merchant marine. No one would suppose that a training on a Dakota wheat farm was essential to the making of a finished hot-house florist.

During the period before the Civil War the whaling fleet was enjoying what has been called the Golden Era of its prosperity. This fact is all the more interesting because the prosperity was due to the character of the whalemen as developed by their environment. Because Nantucket as farm land could afford no more than a bare living to a small number of people, the more ambitious residents were obliged to look elsewhere for a career; and when they looked they saw right whales just beyond--sometimes in--the surf. A storm--a seeming disaster--was the means of leading the right whalers to go in search of sperm whales, and that cultivated enterprise, because it took them ever farther and farther from home.

The spirit of enterprise was also cultivated by the "lay" system of paying the crew. Every man received a share of the oil instead of set wages. The system sharpened the eyes of the lookout, gave strength to the arm of the man at the oars, and cooled the nerves of the man who thrust the lance under the shoulder-blade of the whale.

When Captain James Shields reached the Brazil grounds too late in the season, the system of "no oil, no pay" drove him around Cape Horn in search of a new ground. When, in 1818, Captain George W. Gardener found the grounds on the west coast of South America barren, he boldly headed across the unexplored Pacific in search of others--with success. In 1819 a merchantman from China stopped at the Sandwich Islands and told a number of whalemen there that he had seen great schools of whales on the coast of Japan. Thereupon the whalemen raced away for the new grounds. In 1843 two New Bedford captains found fortune on the coast of Kamchatka and another in the Okhotsk sea. Two years later still, Captain Royce, of the Sag Harbor bark _Superior_, entered the Arctic by way of Bering's Strait.

The countries of Europe sent naval squadrons at great expense to explore the Seven Seas; the whalemen of America explored the waters of the whole world more thoroughly, if less scientifically, at their own expense, and made money in the quest. One volume of the American State Papers contains a list of more than 400 islands that were discovered by them in the Pacific alone.

Of less importance in its influence, perhaps, but not to be overlooked, was the ease with which the ambitious whalemen obtained promotion. The larger whalers carried three and sometimes four mates, together with a petty officer called a boat steerer for each of the boats. Because the boat steerer hurled the harpoon, his office was important, and many a daring youth who went afloat as a green hand came home wearing the boat steerer's badge. Last of all, but most important in its formation of character, was the danger of the pursuit. The whalers braved the jaws of the vicious sperm bull; they drove their boats under the uplifted flukes, and with a stroke of a boat spade disabled the monster. They pulled to the tune of "A dead whale or a stove boat," and so "made good" in the world's work naturally and easily.

The Golden Era began with the success of the whalers that sailed for the Pacific in 1815, and returned well loaded in 1817. In 1829 the whaling fleet numbered 203 vessels; in 1840, 552; in 1846 there were 680 ships and barks, 34 brigs, and 22 schooners, a total of 736 vessels, hunting the whale under the American flag. New London owned the largest ship of the fleet, the _Atlantic_, measuring 699 tons, and the smallest, the schooner _Garland_, of 49 tons, that was at work on the coasts of Desolation Island.

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:--

"The two discovery ships sent out by the late Emperor Alexander, of Russia, being between the South Shetlands and Palmer Land, were becalmed in a thick fog; when the fog cleared away they were surprised to find one of the Stonington South Sea Company's barques, a little vessel of about fifty tons, between the two discovery ships, which immediately run up the United States flag, when the frigate and sloop of war set theirs, and the Russian Commodore despatched a boat and officer, with an invitation to Capt. Palmer, of the American vessel, to come on board, which he readily accepted.

"When he arrived on the commodore's deck he was asked what islands those were in sight, and if he had any knowledge of them. 'Yes, sir,' replied Capt. Palmer, 'those are the Shetland Islands. I am well acquainted with them, and a pilot here. I belong, sir, to a fleet of five sail out of Stonington, under the command of Capt. B. Pendleton, whose ship is now at anchor in a good harbor in that island; and if you wish for water and refreshments, I will pilot you in, and my commodore will be much pleased to render you any assistance.' 'I kindly thank you,' said the Russian, 'but previous to being enveloped in the fog we had sight of those islands, and concluded we had made a new discovery; and behold when the fog lifts, to our utter surprise, a beautiful little American vessel, to all appearance in as fine order as if she had but yesterday left her port in the United States, is discovered alongside of my ships, the master of which readily offers to pilot my vessels into port, where _his commodore_ will tender me every aid for refreshment! We must surrender the palm of enterprise to you Americans,' said the Russian commodore. 'Sir, you flatter me,' replied the American captain; 'but there is an immense extent of land to the south, and when the fog is entirely cleared away, you will have from your masthead a fine sight of its mountains.' 'Indeed,' observed the commodore, 'you Americans are a people that will be before us; and here is, now, in your information, and in what is now before my eyes, an example and pattern of the oldest nation in Europe. Where I expected to make new discoveries I find the American flag, a fleet and a pilot!'"

The commodore then arose from his seat, and placing his hand upon Palmer's shoulder, continued:--

"I name the land, which you have discovered, Palmer Land, in your honor. But what will my august master say, and what will he think of my two years' cruising in search of land that has been discovered by a boy in a sloop but little larger than the launch of my frigate?"

The land thus named was a part of the Antarctic Continent.

Among the interesting stories of the sealers found in Goode's _Fishery Industries of the United States_ is one of the ship _Neptune_, Captain Daniel Greene, of New Haven, which shows very well something of the peculiarities of this branch of the American merchant marine. The voyage lasted from November 29, 1796, to July 11, 1799.

The _Neptune_ was a ship of 353 tons, and she carried a crew of 36 all told. Going to the Cape de Verde Islands, Captain Greene bought enough salt to preserve all the skins the ship could carry, and then went to the Falklands, where he arrived February 22, 1797. The first work done there was the building of a shallop for working shoal waters. Then seal-hunting was begun in connection with the crew of a ship from Hudson, New York, which, by the way, had brought a Hudson River sloop as a tender.

The seals were found either on beaches which the hunters reached easily, or on outlying rocks upon which the seas broke with tremendous fury even in the most pleasant weather. Ordinary whale-boats were commonly used in hunting the seals, though dories were preferred for the least accessible rocks. When the weather was at its best, the crews worked the easily reached beaches; incredible as it must seem, it was during the worst storms that the almost inaccessible rocks were visited. The most picturesque and daring work known to the sea was that of taking seals on these rocks. Rowing well out to windward, the officer in command of the boat noted carefully the position of the sunken reefs with which all these rocks were surrounded, selected a safe opening, and waited until the high waves that always come in threes appeared. Upon the crest of the last of a set of these the boat was driven in, and as it was swept along beside the rock the hunters, with clubs in hand, leaped forth to land as best they might.

At other times the boat was rowed up from the lee side to meet the crest of a roller at the side of the rock. The method chosen depended upon the situation of the rock.

Taking the men from the rocks after the killing was often more dangerous, if less picturesque, than landing them. For it was impossible to hold the boat beside the rock, and in leaping out the men often fell into the sea. A favorite way of getting men and dead seals was by throwing a line from the boat to the rock and then, while the boat was held in the lee of the rock, the men and carcasses were dragged through the water by the line.

The crews were continually drenched; the cold winds pierced them to the bone; they fell upon the rocks and were cut and bruised; now and then one fell, helpless, into the sea and was drowned. But the crews of those days were composed of youths who were looking ahead,--the most ambitious and courageous of all who lived around the home port,--and without flinching they took the chances until the ship was loaded.

These were the American fur-hunters of the sea. Rarely if at all elsewhere in the history of the nation can a more instructive contrast be found than that afforded when these men, leaping from the crest of the storm-waves to the seal rocks, are compared with those who traded pot-metal muskets and adulterated rum to the Indians in exchange for beaver skins upon the Western frontier.

Another glimpse of life at sea in those days is found in an adventure of the _Neptune's_ men upon the coast of Patagonia. Captain Greene and some of his men went over there looking for seals, and found some Spaniards engaged in seal-hunting not far from Port Desire. The Spaniards said the _commandante_ of the fort at the harbor would be pleased to give Greene permission to hunt seals in the region, and Greene, being a law-abiding man, went to the fort to see about the matter.

The _commandante_, however, pretended to believe that Greene was an Englishman; and as England and Spain were at war, the Americans were all held as prisoners, while soldiers were placed in charge of the shallop in which the Americans had come to the coast. As it appeared later, it was to get possession of the shallop that the _commandante_ had decided that Americans were Englishmen.

Greene, however, was equal to the emergency. When the priest at the fort gathered the garrison into the chapel at 8 o'clock for the evening services, Greene overpowered the sentinels, ran out of the gate with his men, launched his whale-boat, rowed off to the shallop, set the soldiers ashore, and sailed away.

The _Neptune_, like all American vessels of the period, carried cannon. After seeing that his guns were in service condition, Greene returned to Port Desire and anchored in the harbor just out of range of the fort, and began to take seals from the rocks. The _commandante_ came down the beach, and with much gesticulation (and nothing more effective) ordered him away. Greene might have defied him, but instead of doing so sent the purser to offer him the shallop (which was no longer needed) for permission in writing to go on with the hunt. The offer was gladly accepted, and Greene cleaned the coast of seals.

Greene's way of dealing with the official is especially interesting because it was characteristic of the American sea captains of the day in their intercourse with bumptious officials everywhere.

Then the _Neptune_ went to Juan Fernandez and Mas-a-Fuera, where the cargo was completed.

"During the latter part of the time ... we frequently stove our boats in the surf," says a letter written by Purser Eben Townsend, and that is the extent of his comment on the dangers of landing on outlying rocks in the midst of a gale.

On June 9, 1798, the _Neptune_ sailed for Canton, where she sold her skins for $2 each, and used the proceeds in buying China goods. This cargo, on reaching New York, paid customs duties amounting to $55,438.71, and sold for $260,000. The foremast hands received a "lay" of $1200 each. A paragraph in one of Purser Townsend's letters regarding these foremast hands is worth quoting:--

"Many of our crew were very smart, ambitious young men.... In our voyage across the Pacific they exerted themselves to be qualified for commanding ships, and the captain gave them as much indulgence as he could for that object, allowing them time and giving them instruction. It was quite a regular good school on board, and the progress was even greater than in some literary institutions on shore. Some men that could not do a sum in addition when we left America could now work lunar observations."

By 1825 the seals were so nearly exterminated that the hunt for skins gave no profit, but the amount of sea-lion oil that could be secured was sufficient to keep a fleet cruising in southern seas until 1870, when three vessels fitted once more for a skin hunt and secured 8000. The next year eight vessels obtained 15,000 good fur seals, and in 1876 Captain Athearn, in the schooner _Florence_, took a cargo that sold for $100,000. Between 1871 and 1880 the number of skins taken was 92,756. After that date the hunt again became unprofitable, but the sea-lion oil kept a few vessels busy for some years. The year 1880 may be called the last of the employment of the American seal-hunting fleet.