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Show 1 MEW WMAIVES KCfe I 1 AGAM ALEVE WflTM WlHIALERMlEiM I g Some Look Forward to a Bevival of the Romantic Industry This Year's Returns Will Bo Considerably ' ' ' Larger Than Were Last Year's Picturcsquo Sights That Attract tho Tourists' Attention. g I Special to The Tribune MEW BEDFORD, Aug. 22. It looko ' llko old times on tho wharves of this city, i Xor tho whnlers aro coming In wltli heavy J cargoes of oil and whalebone Whether tho whaling Industry. Is or Is not In pro-coss pro-coss of revival no nicro outsider can say. Evon tho wlso arc not wlso ng to next year and the yoar after. Some of the authorities In This ancient whaling port bellevo that tho tide has turned, or to chango tho meUiphor thnt the New Bedford Bed-ford whnlers havo agnlri lnick oil. Others say that tho .ships for tho last yoar or so havo heon moro than ordinarily ordi-narily lucky, but that tho host catches of I today would havo boon , considered but slim fares In tho bravo days of old. For naturally In such a town thero In always al-ways more or less sighing for tho glories that havo departed and contrasting of tho figures of the CO's with thoso of tho present time It's pessimist against opll- nnd tho Falkland islands, tho stock but thrilling talcs of tho exploits of other days, together with tho usual criticisms of the writers of whaling stories, such as tho author, who, as ono votcran mariner expressed It. "tolls a pootty good story, but there wan't no whale ever built that leapt clean out o' the water" To many a visitor from West or South It comes as a grcator surprise that so much of tho Whaling- Industry has been left In fnce of tho competition of pouo-Icuni pouo-Icuni than that so much of It has disappeared. dis-appeared. It Is now only a small Horn in the Industrial activity of a large manufacturing manu-facturing city. Actually only forty-thrco American vessels, with a tonnage of D37S. aro now engaged in whaling, as against (155 vessels, with a tonnago of 20I.20C. In 1S57; and of theso Now Bedford's lleet numbers onlv twenty-live, with a tonnago of 52f Every ono of tho Atlantic vessels, I furthermore. " with the exception of the srlmonor John R. Manto of Provlnce- imvn, now four months at sea on her Making Heady for Iho Voyage-Scenes Such ns This Greet tho Eye of tho Tourist in Now Bedford. I mist, doubting Thomas ngalnat enthusiastic enthusi-astic Peter. Thoso who arc hopoful hold that the Jonah has been lifted from tho whale business; tho others continue to croak their Jeremiads. What Is appm-ont, however, to tho landlubber Is that something is doing in , tho whaling Jlshorles juet now. Ono stands to seo sights on the harbor-front that recall, even If faintly, tales of the Intrepid mariners whoso exploits Burke ' immortalised. Tourists passing through New Bedford In the summer season and there arc thousands of them brought In by tho New Haven trains or by the Old Colony company's steamboats, steam-boats, which now make Now Bedford tho eastern terminus of one of the popular Long Island sound services between New York and Boston go always with lnter- est to the two wharves at which whatever vessels aro left of tho Atlantic lleet discharge dis-charge their cargoes and repair for tho next voyagi- into seas full of wonder and maiden voyage, Is at least twenty-two years old. It Is. Indeed, a venerable Lrkdro,,nfnCnaptC,,i,?tl1 by th0 launch batk Canton, .which made Its bow to l-alner Neptune sixty-nlno vears ago. Yet appliances lends charms to the sights. If H lannf, ,sme,ls of, lhc whaling port If whale-fishing wero done in seven-masted steel schooners equipped with brass S?W..o a,l,00t,nK the leviathans It wouldn t be half so Interesting to the average man. i Diminished though Its. fleet of whnlers is. Now Bedford has never lost Its virtual monopoly of tho business. Provlncetown now has four ships. "Nantucket, once a Jealous rival, has none at all. New Bedford Bed-ford has. In fact, been tho center of tho Industry since about 17C0. From 1S43 down a 1 tho statistics havo been carefully kept by tho Whalemen's Shipping List and Merchants Transcript, a little trade weekly which l3 -still published with un- DYNAMITE! GUN l,, -ST1 The Whaler's Weapons Modern Implements With Which the Monarch of tho Deep Are Captmed. I peril. It Is ono of tho picturesque eights , of America, tho removal of thousands of barrels of oil and great stacks of whalebone whale-bone from tho black holds, and tho provisioning pro-visioning of tho craft for another voyage of two or thrco years. Since tho barquo aiornlng Star arrived at tho Central wharf tho other day, filled up with 1230 barrels of cperm oil and a considerable quantity of whalebone, tho crowd of Blghtscera has been grcator than over, es-S.u1'1'8 es-S.u1'1'8 ,th? bartiue Josephlno. another f.. fle?U has not finished unloading. , While waiting to go over to Falrhaven and tako a train for tho Capo resorts1. vJEE .!00k .ve1 Baunt whalers, rub-&3.,aBa,ins.,t,tno rub-&3.,aBa,ins.,t,tno sroasy barrels, peering peer-ing witlj shudders Into gloomv fore-SSlv fore-SSlv 1C,Lavlv3 ilrK th0 fo1 questions thit only tho very wlso can answer. And often 1 &ero a tUcllca ,irom ffrilod author" I . ties, who havo wintered In Hudson bay falling regularity by Georgo R. Phillips. Beroro that tlmo they wero less accurately accurate-ly compiled, but It Is known that a very great number of vessels and men wero engaged In the whaling Industry beforo the Revolution, and after tho disturbances disturb-ances of, tho war with tho mother country coun-try wero settled, during all tho early years of tho nineteenth century. Tho banner years wero 1550-9. Then began a decline In tonnage extending down to 1302, slnco when there has been a slight Increase. Tho destruction wrought by the Confcdorato prlvalcors did much to spoil tho Industry- A particularly great disaster befell when. In June. 1SC5, tho Shenandoah. entering Behring strait, captured and burned twenty-flvo vessols. Other misfortunes followed after tho war was over, as when, In September. 1S71, a fleet of thlrty-threo vessols had to bo abandoned In tho Arctic ocean, all hope- essly crushed In tho Ice, the 1200 men on board making their escape after a perilous peril-ous Journey over tho Ico floes. Again, In ISiC. twelvo vessels won loft in tho Arctic nnd In 1SS3 fivo went down In a terrific galo off Point Barrow. Abovo all, how-over, how-over, the competition of the petroleum In-dUHtrles In-dUHtrles and tho gradual disappearance of leviathans from waters In which they woro formerly numerous, havo reduced whaling to tho present low estate. Tho great business built up under tho management man-agement of a man from tho neighboring vlllago of Falrhaven has effectually removed re-moved tho likelihood that there will over again bo a great demand for tho oils that onco mado New Bedford famous. It is gonorally complained that, although tho catcheo of lato years have been somewhat some-what moro satisfactory than formerly, tho prlco of oil has ruled nt so low a figure, namoly, from CO to C3 cenla per gallon, that results havo been far from satisfactory. satisfac-tory. Whalebone, on the other hand, has continued In good demand, slnco no effectual ef-fectual substitute for It has ever been discovered by tho corset makcra. One man now controls most of tho whalo-bono whalo-bono output and ho kcep3 tho prices well up. It is thought that the importations of oil nnd whalcbono will bo considerably larger In 1903 than In 1901, when tho pounds of bono brought In amounted to 123,.KK: barrels of sperm oil, 17,003, and barrels of whale oil, 2750. ' Most of tho fishing of tho Atlantic fleet Is now carried on in the South Atlantic. A consldorablo number of sperm whales havo lately been taken In the neighborhood of Capo Town. The right whales those, that Is. which yield whalebone aro found only In moro frigid waters, north nnd south. The whales of both species aro said to bo more difficult to tako now than formerly. As a New Bedford captain said tho other day: "The differenco between now and the first days of whaling Is that the whalo Is moro frisky and nlmblo than ho used to be. Ho gives us moro sport for our money and he dies harder than his brother of a few years ago. From obsorvatlon I should say that In tho first days tho hunters struck tho patriarchs of tho tribe, tho quiet, old follows, who were dosing away their days on top of the water; and now wo nre getting down to tho tough grandmothers and grandfathers." To tako theso nlmblo chasers modern appliances In tho way of acid harpoons, dynamite guns, explosive harpoons and darting guns are employed. Most of. the sperm oil which comes to New Bedford in casks Is thick and of a dirty brown appearance. It Is refined In the factories here, giving in tho various vari-ous processes, first a crude oil. then refined re-fined sperm oil, and finally spermaceti Such whale oil ns reaches Now Bedford for refinement Is still In consldorablo demand for Illuminating purposes, especially for tho headlights of engines. Theso products aro dispersed to every part of the Union and mako up a really considerable bulk In tho Now Haven's freight shipments from tho city: although, al-though, of course, the total Is small compared com-pared with that of antc-bollum days. An Important part of the shipping business of Now Bedford consists In preparing supplies for the Portuguese whalers of tho Azores. Theso hardy followers of the sea havo dlscovored a great fondness for American products At this writing, the staunch merchantman merchant-man Harry Smith Is being filled with Immense stores of wheat flour, solf-rnlslng solf-rnlslng buckwheat, New England pickles, pick-les, canned apples, corn, tomatoes, pepper pep-per sauce, maplo syrup, mustard, molasses, mo-lasses, saltlncs nnd various other articles, usual and surprising, which the Islanders who follow tho whalo up and down the lanes of the Atlantic llko to llvo on. Needless Need-less to say that If It had not been for the Portuguese sailors who servo on both foreign and American ships, tho whaling Industry would hardlv havo persisted to this time; the New Bedford ships aro manned with them In this era, when American boys no longer tako to tho sea. |