Preface. My interest in the English southern whale fishery arose out ofa study in 1989 of the Journal of the whaleship, Vigilant, on a whaling cruise to the Pacific between 1831 and 1833. I The events of this voyage, made under the command of an American born, yet English-based whaling master, were fascinating, and on completion of the task I had a good record of one English whaling voyage but many incomplete answers to questions of a wider nature concerning the trade. The main problem, one which I had encountered numerous rimes as I attempted to determine who owned the Vigilant and how profitable was its whaling cruise, was that there was very little evidence about the business side of English whaling at either a detailed or wider level. This thesis then looks at this other side of the English southern whaling trade ; it does not deal in depth with the events of any single cruise, the catching of whales or the numerous visits made by English whaleships to the many attractive islands of the Pacific or East Indies. It instead looks at English whaling as a business in the period after the Napoleonic Wars. Following the peace there was considerable growth in factory based production in England and the southern whaling trade was one of maritime trades to benefit from this new activity. Machines needed oil and the best machine oil came from the sperm whale. Reference is also made to the wider political and economic circumstances which first nurtured the southern whaling trade then later squeezed it out of existence. By the 1840s the southern whaling trade was a matter insignificant in the Government's trade policy. The thesis al so charts the price of sperm oil between 181 0 and 1860 and examines the demand for oil over the period. The need for oil to lubricate machines was not the only reason why sperm oil was in high demand in the post war economy. There are hints here and there in the whaling literature but it seems incredible that the extent of the use of sperm and other whale oils in domestic lighting has never been clearly recorded. A result of the gas lighting of the streets of England's cities in the 1820s and 1830s was a concomitant desire to light the interior of houses, particularly amongst the wealthy elite. 2 The nature ofwhaleship ownership is also examined and changes in the structure of the trade brought about by pressures within the shipping industry and wider developments in the growing British economy are highlighted and discussed. The circumstances of three firms involved in the whaling trade during the period are detailed and an attempt to determine the profitability of whaling using the prices index, cargo returns and some 1 2 Dale Chanvin 'The Voyage of the Vigllant' Frederick Debell Bennett Narrative of a Whaling Vo"agc round the globe from the vear 1833-1836, vol. 2, p 188.
II recently unearthed information detailing costs is made. Finally, the thesis returns to the men and the ships. Arising out o:( and compounding difficulties imposed by changes made by the government, occurred a significant deterioration in the performance of the English ships 'on the whaling grounds' from the mid 1830s. By the 1840s, in the words of one owner, 'fiscal and other changes...(had] nearly annihilated both the northern and southern whale fisheries'. 3 Acknowledgements Over the last five years I was able to undertake the research for this thesis as a long-term reader in the Petherick Room of the National Library of Australia (NLA). The privileged status that being a Petherjck Room reader bestows has been inestimable. My grateful thanks go to my former work colleagues, the staff of the NLA. In April 1994 I was fortunate enough, due to a grant from the ANU Faculty of Arts, to undertake research for this project in England and in the whaling towns of New England. In the Library of the National Maritime Museum in London I received considerable assistance in locating material in the Green and Wigram collections from Andrea Ford, Assistant Librarian ; in New England, librarians at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, the Nantucket Historical Society and Kendall Whaling Museum were all very helpful. Sometimes, when a researcher's topic is so specialised, it is hard to find others with whom to enthuse. Surprisingly, there are a number of people who are very knowledgeable about nineteenth century English south sea whaling. In Canberra, Honore Forster, a former ANU staff member, kindly commented on a draft of the thesis. It was Honore who, in 1990, provided the vital clue that led me to the Green and Wigram collections. Her husband, Professor Colin Forster, also clarified the issue of home production and imports for me. I must also thank Jeremy Spencer of Canberra who lent me copies of a number of important manuscript items. In New Zealand, and now the Solomon Islands, resides Rhys Richards, a regular correspondent and a frequent reader and critic of a number of drafts of this thesis. Rhys has published extensively on south sea whaling and sealing and if his influence seems under-represented in the footnotes, it is because much of his work has concentrated on the earlier period of British whaling prior to 1815. Much of Rhys' contribution has come 3 S. C. on British Shipping 1844 (545) viii, Q. 196. Evidence of George Young.