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editors’ prologue This day commences with Light breeses from the SE. and Clear weather—at 9 am took our anchors and stood to sea—at 11:30 the Captian [sic] came On board with officers—Crew all on board. —Catalpa Log, Thursday, April 29, 18751 There was nothing unusual about the bark Catalpa working its way out to sea that afternoon. For years whalers departing from New Bedford had followed this route through Buzzards Bay. As was customary, the local papers had listed the ship’s crew and stated its destination (accurately) as being the Atlantic and Indian Oceans.2 Originally built as a merchant ship, the Catalpa had been converted to a whaler and then, nearly two decades later, it reverted back to its original form. When purchased by new owners in 1875, it was again made a whaler.3 The wisdom of that decision had raised a few eyebrows among the whaling merchants of New Bedford.4 The American whaling industry was in decline, the golden age of whaling having long passed. In 1846, 735 American whalers produced over three hundred thousand barrels of oil. Thirty years later, there were only 15 1. The daily log entry recorded information from noon to noon. The date of the entry was the date at the end of the period. In this entry, there was nothing recorded (the voyage had not commenced ) for the first part of the 24-hour period that started at noon on April 28. Not until the following morning (29th) does the entry start. Any events recorded for the afternoon of the 29th appear in the next day’s entry, dated April 30, and so on and so forth. The chief mate was responsible to the owners for keeping the log. Captain George S.Anthony,Logbook of Bark Catalpa of New Bedford, Mass.,April 29,1875 toAugust 23,1876.The Kendall Institute, New Bedford Whaling Museum: microform, Log #557; #283/397-488; R. H. Dana, Jr., TwoYears Before the Mast and Twenty-fourYears After, 61st printing (New York: Collier, 1937), 16. 2. “Crew List,” [New Bedford] Evening Standard, April 29, 1875. 3. The ship had returned to the United States from Surinam in 1874. “Marine Intelligence,” New York Times (hereafter NYT), August 21, 1874, 8. 4. “The Escaped Fenians,” New-York Daily Tribune, August 21, 1876, 5. 169 ships, and they produced less than seventy-three thousand barrels.5 Nantucket had some years earlier ceded its dominance in the industry to New Bedford,6 and New Bedford had flown the banner well. The elegant houses of owners, agents, and captains lining the streets attested to its success and wealth as well as the overall vibrancy of the city. Sailors from ports around the world were visible in all quarters. But the 1859 discovery of petroleum in Pennsylvania foretold the end of the demand for whale oil. No longer would small ships need to undertake expensive and dangerous voyages throughout the seven seas. The Civil War also took its toll on the industry, particularly when Confederate cruisers , built in Britain during the war, destroyed American whalers as distant as Australia. New Bedford even prepared for an attack by these rebel cruisers .7 While the “Alabama claims” addressed this issue and were eventually settled in America’s favor after the war, bitterness about the destruction, the complicity of the British government, and that government’s arrogant response to negotiations lingered. The fleet had also been pruned during the war when the Navy Department purchased a dozen or so of the older whalers to join the Union’s “Stone Fleet.” (These ships were filled with stone and sunk at southern harbor entrances to help enforce blockades.)8 Then, in 1871, thirty-three whalers were destroyed in the Arctic, trapped by ice. Miraculously, not one of the twelve hundred people aboard was killed, but New Bedford’s share of the lost oil and ships was significant. The local natives had warned the captains of the danger, but their advice was ignored, and the unheralded explorers of the oceans learned a devastating lesson. Those ships would never be replaced.9 The past successes, or excesses, of the industry had forced whalers to go farther and farther for their prey, making the average journey last three Editors’Prologue 16 5. Elmo Hohman, The American Whaleman:A Study of Life and Labor in the Whaling Industry (Clifton, NJ: Augustus M. Kelley, 1972), 302. 6. Edouard A. Stackpole, The Sea-Hunters: The New...

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