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Updated: June 14, 2025
"No, sir never; but I've got a half-brother wot has bin in the Greenland whale-fishery, and I've bin in the South Sea line myself." "What line was that, Buzzby?" inquired David Summers, a sturdy boy of about fifteen, who acted as assistant steward, and was, in fact, a nautical maid-of-all-work. "Was it a log-line, or a bow-line, or a cod-line, or a bit of the equator, eh?"
All that beautiful wealth was won from the deep, and for years as many ships came and went as there were dwellings to give them speed and welcome. But the glory and the gain of the whale-fishery are past. The noble prey, too persistently and mercilessly pursued, has retired northward, and hidden among the icebergs.
"She's a first-rate craft in all respects; and you have too high an opinion of your own judgment," replied the youth indignantly. "Do you suppose that my father, who is an older man than yourself and as good a sailor, would buy a ship, and fit her out, and go off to the whale-fishery in her, if he did not think her a good one?" "Ah!
The last, and once the most considerable of all the trading companies, is that of the South Sea, established by Act of Parliament in the ninth year of the late Queen Anne; but, what by reason of the mismanagement of its directors in 1720, the miscarriage of their whale-fishery, and the intrigues of the Spaniards, their credit is sunk, and their trade has much decreased.
In the whale-fishery men must, like soldiers, expect to risk their lives frequently, and they have too often, alas! to mourn over the loss of a shipmate or friend. Up to this time our voyage had gone prosperously.
Too unwell to accompany him, I continued on to the Bluff and then took steamer to Hobart, Tasmania. New Zealand has a great whale-fishery and it was my hope to see something of it by a short trip on one of the ships employed; but the opportunity did not present itself. May I here offer a few notes picked up on the subject of whales, etc.
In pursuance of his original intention, Captain Guy now proceeded through Davis' Straits into Baffin's Bay, at the head of which he intended to search for the vessel of his friend Captain Ellice, and afterwards prosecute the whale-fishery.
About the month of June, the whales proceed along the coast, going northward; and then visit the various bays and inlets as they pass, in pursuit of the shoals of small fish that precede them in their migration. They generally return towards the south about six weeks afterwards, and at these times the whale-fishery is eagerly pursued both by the Americans and the colonists.
This wonderful ground was first cruised by a London whale-ship, the SYREN, in 1819, when the English branch of the sperm whale-fishery was in its prime, and London skippers were proud of the fact that one of their number, in the EMILIA, had thirty-one years before first ventured around Cape Horn in pursuit of the cachalot.
In 1725 the South Sea Company commenced a whale-fishery, in which they employed twelve ships, and were sometimes very successful. In 1726 an expedition was sent to the Spanish West Indies, under Rear-Admiral Hosier, for the purpose of blocking up the galleons or seizing them should they venture out.
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