dispensed with their services, and young men found elsewhere more
profitable and easier employment.

The great days of Nantucket as a whaling port were passed before the
Revolution wiped out her ships and killed or scattered her sailors.
It was later discovered that larger ships were more economical, and
Nantucket harbor bar was too shoal to admit their passage. For this
reason New Bedford became the scene of the foremost activity, and
Nantucket thereafter played a minor part, although her barks went
cruising on to the end of the chapter and her old whaling families were
true to strain. As explorers the whalemen rambled into every nook
and corner of the Pacific before merchant vessels had found their way
thither. They discovered uncharted islands and cheerfully fought savages
or suffered direful shipwreck. The chase led them into Arctic regions
where their stout barks were nipped like eggshells among the grinding
floes, or else far to the southward where they broiled in tropic calms.
The New Bedford lad was as keen to go a-whaling as was his counterpart
in Boston or New York to be the dandy mate of a California clipper, and
true was the song:

I asked a maiden by my side,
Who sighed and looked to me forlorn,
"Where is your heart?" She quick replied,
"Round Cape Horn."

Yankee whaling reached its high tide in 1857 when the New Bedford fleet
alone numbered 329 sail and those owned in other ports of Buzzard's Bay
swelled the total to 426 vessels, besides thirty more hailing from New
London and Sag Harbor. In this year the value of the catch was more
than ten million dollars. The old custom of sailing on shares or
"lays" instead of wages was never changed. It was win or lose for
all hands--now a handsome fortune or again an empty hold and pockets
likewise. There was Captain W.T. Walker of New Bedford who, in 1847,
bought for a song a ship so old that she was about to be broken up for
junk and no insurance broker would look at her. In this rotten relic
he shipped a crew and went sailing in the Pacific. Miraculously keeping
afloat, this Envoy of his was filled to the hatches with oil and bones,
twice running, before she returned to her home port; and she earned
$138,450 on a total investment of eight thousand dollars.

The ship Sarah of Nantucket, after a three years' cruise, brought
back 3497 barrels of sperm oil which sold for $89,000, and the William
Hamilton of New Bedford set another high mark by