The disasters which have befallen the whaling industry are many and
fearful. During the late war rebel cruisers captured fifty vessels,
forty-six of them, with their cargoes and outfits, being burned.
Twenty-eight of them were New Bedford vessels. These, with other losses,
show what New Bedford had at stake before the Court of Commissioners of
Alabama Claims. Her slice of the Geneva Award will approximate, when all
paid, three millions of dollars. The "stone fleets," sunk off Charleston
and Savannah harbors in 1861, drew heavily on whaling vessels; for more
money would be paid by the Government for vessels than they could earn
in whaling. In the first stone fleet were twelve New Bedford whalers,
and in the second, eight. Then there were the horrible calamities of
1871 and 1876. In the former year thirty-three vessels were crushed or
abandoned in the Arctic, twenty-two belonging in New Bedford. The direct
loss from this was one million, one hundred thousand dollars. Twelve
hundred and nineteen men were thrust out on the ice to perish from cold
and hunger. Nothing but the bravery of Capt. Frazier, of one of the
abandoned vessels, in journeying seventy miles over the ice-fields to
the fleet outside for rescue, prevented untold suffering and death. In
the calamity of 1876 twelve vessels were abandoned, causing a loss to
New Bedford merchants of about six hundred and sixty thousand dollars.
But a greater horror was added to this calamity, some fifty lives being
lost.

The wealth that was brought to New Bedford by whaling in its palmiest
days was enormous, and gave the city the reputation of being the
wealthiest of its size in the world. The catch of 1853, the banner year,
was over one hundred and three thousand barrels of sperm oil, valued at
four millions, fifty thousand, five hundred and forty dollars; two
hundred and sixty thousand, one hundred and fourteen barrels of whale
oil, valued at four millions, seven hundred and sixty-two thousand, five
hundred and twenty-five dollars; and five millions, six hundred and
fifty-two thousand, three hundred pounds of bone, valued at one million,
nine hundred and fifty thousand, forty-four dollars,--bone that year
averaging only thirty-four and one-half cents per pound; while it now
sells at from $2 to $2.50 per pound. The catch of the one hundred and
thirteen vessels arriving in the following year brought into the city
some over six millions of dollars. In 1866, when prices were ve