Nineteenth-century ship-based catches of gray whales, Eschrichtius robustus, in the eastern North Pacific.

Reeves, Randall R. ; Smith, Tim D. ; Lund, Judith N. 等

Introduction

In a broad analysis of global whaling, Reeves and Smith (2006) identified no fewer than 22 different whaling "operations" that targeted gray whales, Eschrichtius robustus, in the North Pacific Ocean, ranging from aboriginal hunts that began many hundreds or even thousands of years ago, to the more recent factory ship activities using modern searching, killing, and processing methods. Among those 22 operations, they identified five American-style pelagic (or ship-based) operations that took gray whales (Dutch, French, German, Russian, and American; operation numbers 54-56, 61, and 64 in their Appendix). In addition, during this study, we have established that vessels registered in Great Britain and Hawaii also took gray whales (operation numbers 57 and 58 in Reeves and Smith, 2006). These seven operations, along with the other whaling on this species, had reduced gray whale numbers to an unknown, but apparently considerable, extent in both the eastern and western North Pacific by the end of the 19th century.

The widely held view that the eastern population (often called the California population or stock) has recovered to its pre-whaling abundance was recently challenged by a study suggesting an average long-term abundance of about 96,000 gray whales in the North Pacific Ocean (Alter et al., 2007). This figure is several times higher than the number of gray whales estimated alive today. If the DNA-based estimate were considered accurate and were applied to the period just before large-scale commercial exploitation began in the 1840's, it would imply that a far greater number of animals had been removed from the California population by whaling than generally assumed. Even without that DNA-based estimate, however, there are concerns about the accuracy of the catch record used in population modeling of eastern North Pacific gray whales (IWC, 1993; Butterworth et al., 2002: Table 2). Wade (2002:85-86), for example, stated:

"An unresolved issue regarding the eastern North Pacific gray whale is that it has not been possible to reconcile the catch history from the 1800s with the recent time series of abundance data in a simple way. Several attempts have been made to project population models forwards from the1800s assuming the population was at carrying capacity prior to the start of commercial whaling in 1846, but such projections cannot produce a trend that agrees with the recent abundance estimates, which indicate the population roughly doubled between 1967 and 1988 .... The catch history and current trend can only be reconciled through fairly dramatic assumptions, such as an increase in the carrying capacity from 1846-1988 of at least 2.5 times, an underestimation of the historic commercial catch from 1846-1900 of at least 60%, or annual aboriginal catch levels prior to 1846 of at least three times the level previously thought (Butter worth et al. 2002)."

In a separate paper in this issue, Reeves and Smith (2010) reviewed and reanalyzed the history of commercial shore-based whaling for gray whales and humpback whales, Megaptera novaeangliae, along the coast of California in an initial attempt to address Wade's (2002) "dramatic assumption" that the historic commercial catch has been substantially underestimated. This paper considers another aspect of the gray whale's catch history that bears on the same assumption. Thus, we review commercial 19th century ship-based whaling on gray whales in the eastern North Pacific and evaluate the extent to which previous compilations have led to underestimation of removals by that component of the overall whaling effort on this species.

Previous Gray Whale Catch Estimates in the Eastern North Pacific

By ship-based whaling we mean the whaling by crews of ships (rigged as brigs, schooners, barks, or ships) that went to sea from a home port and hunted whales using this main vessel as a "mother-ship," pursuing the whales from small boats and towing their catch back to the main vessel (or in some scenarios to a "tender" vessel) for processing (Fig. 1). Although ship based whaling was usually a pelagic activity, in some circumstances, for example when hunting gray whales in their breeding and calving lagoons, the ships were anchored near shore or in a bay while the boats scouted for and caught the whales. Such whaling is sometimes called "bay whaling," a term that is not, however, without ambiguity. For example, Dall (1872 as quoted in Scammon, 1874:22) referred to what has been called shore whaling at Monterey, Calif. (Sayers, 1984; Reeves and Smith, 2010), as "the bay-whaling of that locality." Scammon (1874:23), in contrast, referred to the start of "bay-whaling" for gray whales in 1846 in a clear reference to the start of ship-based whaling in Magdalena Bay, Baja California. Although gray whales were taken in the eastern North Pacific by both offshore or alongshore whaling and by bay whaling, the latter apparently was responsible for the bulk of the removals.

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Scammon (1874:23) estimated that no more than 10,800 California (i.e. eastern Pacific) gray whales had been "captured or destroyed" by whalers between 1846 and 1874. Given his estimate of 2,916 killed by shore-based whalers, this would imply that about 7,900 were killed during that period by the lagoon, alongshore, and offshore commercial whalers and aboriginal whalers, combined.

Henderson (1984:169, his Table I) estimated lower total removals (including hunting loss) of gray whales from the "California herd" by commercial whalers (i.e. taking no account of catches by aboriginal whalers): 8,044-8,099 from 1846 to 1874. Of that number, 2,592 were killed by shore whalers, leaving roughly 5,500 (5,452-5,507) to have been taken by ship-based whalers operating in the lagoons (3,235-3,290), alongshore (1,678), and in northern areas (539). Henderson (1972:260), in compiling his catch record, had deliberately tried to err "on the side of exaggeration" because he was concerned that his estimates were lower than Scammon's. Although Henderson appears to have redressed that bias to some extent in his 1984 reanalysis, the net overall effect of the changes between his 1972 and 1984 estimates was, in his estimation, negligible (Henderson, 1984:166).

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Best (1987) estimated even lower catches of gray whales by American ship-based whalers throughout the North Pacific between 1850 and 1879. One of his estimates was based on oil production (2,665 whales landed) and the other on logbook-recorded catch per voyage (3,013 whales landed). However, these estimates are difficult to compare to those by Scammon and Henderson as they include whales taken from the western North Pacific population and do not include catches by non-U.S. vessels.

Three related estimates of the catches of eastern North Pacific gray whales over time have been used in modeling the status of the population. Reilly (1981) divided the commercial whaling era into three periods, defined according to the nature of his sources: 1846-1874, 1875-1911, and 1912-1981. For the first period, which is the main focus of this paper, Reilly relied principally on Henderson (1972). The second catch series, compiled by Lankester and Beddington (1986, their Appendix 1), benefited from the comprehensive review and analysis of ship-based whaling by Henderson (1984). Cooke (1986) used the Reilly (1981) catch series in his analysis, noting that it was "very similar to more recent compilations by Henderson (1984) and Lankester and Beddington (1986)." The third series was produced (by Butterworth et al., 1990, 2002) for a special meeting of the IWC Scientific Committee in 1990 to assess gray whales. The commercial component (at least) of that catch series was "based primarily upon Lankester and Beddington's (1986) table" (IWC, 1993:243). Although the Butterworth et al. (1990) catch series was considered the "best available" at the time of the special meeting, participants suspected that it was incomplete and that the commercial catches could have been underestimated by up to 1.5 times (IWC, 1993).

The IWC special meeting agreed (based on Mitchell, 1993) that although Henderson's (1972, 1984) studies of American ship-based whaling for gray whales off Mexico and California had been definitive in some respects, at least two things deserved reconsideration (IWC, 1993). One was Henderson's use of 35 barrels (bbl)/whale as an average yield for converting oil production statistics into gray whales secured and processed. The other was the smallness of the loss rates (i.e. whales struck but lost as a fraction of the total killed) applied by Henderson (1972, 1984).

A number of additional issues that were not cited in the IWC report deserve attention. One is the possibility that some gray whales taken by non-American ships operating in the North Pacific, including the Mexican lagoons and the Bering Sea, were not accounted for in Henderson's published work. Another is the possibility that the oil returns used by Henderson to estimate catches were not complete. A countervailing (positive) bias might have come from the inclusion of oil from humpback whales, blackfish (mainly pilot whales, Globicephala macrorhyncha), and occasionally right whales, Eubalaena japonica, fin ("finback") whales, Balaenoptera physalus, and blue (sulphur bottom) whales, Balaenoptera musculus, in the whale oil returns of vessels visiting the gray whale grounds along the Mexico and California coasts. We have attempted to address all of these concerns, with varying success, in this study.

Review of Ship-based Gray Whale Fishery

Henderson's Work

A central feature of the present study was a detailed examination of Henderson's published work (1972, 1984) and his extensive notes and files held by the library of the New Bedford Whaling Museum. We reviewed how Henderson made his estimates and attempted to evaluate their accuracy and completeness. The new estimates of catches and removals presented herein are based to a considerable extent on the Henderson material, supplemented by data from our own searches of logbooks, newspapers, and customs records.

Henderson's (1972) monograph on the fishery for gray whales in the eastern North Pacific focused on Scammon's Lagoon (Fig. 2) but included consideration of the entire species range. It was one of the earliest attempts to reconstruct a whale population's catch history from logbook and other data. He used, in particular, period newspapers such as the Seaman's Friend and Temperance Advocate and the Pacific Commercial Advertiser (Fig. 3), both published in Honolulu, Hawaii, the Whalemen's Shipping List and Merchants' Transcript, New Bedford, Mass., and various California newspapers, including the San Francisco Alta California, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Bulletin, San Diego Herald, and San Diego Union.

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In a follow-up study, Henderson (1984) reconsidered his earlier estimates. For his overall catch summary for the eastern Pacific population (his Table I, p. 169), he appears to have relied on a combination of newspaper reports, the Dennis Wood Abstracts (Wood, N.d.), logbooks, and a few published sources. He probably also consulted The Polynesian, a Honolulu-based newspaper that provided sometimes-detailed reports on whales taken per vessel, referring to the "California Coast" and at least occasionally to specific locations such as Turtle Bay or Magdalena Bay (Fig. 2). For the northern kills, Henderson used unpublished data provided by John Bockstoce (Bockstoce and Botkin, 1983) . Henderson's final conclusion (1984:166) was that his earlier estimate of the total kill of eastern gray whales for the period 1846 to 1874 had been about right, i.e. ca. 8,000 gray whales, even though some of the details differed between his 1972 and 1984 analyses.

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Henderson's 1972 book included the identities of the specific vessels that whaled in Scammon's Lagoon in each season from 1857 to 1873. His later book chapter (1984) had a broader focus, encompassing gray whaling in additional lagoons and bays in Mexico between 1846 and 1874, but without specifying the vessels and seasons. His summary totals of whaling vessel visits, which he termed cruises and which we term vessel-seasons, and his associated text led us to conclude that he had identified most, and probably nearly all, of the gray whaling activity in Mexico. We therefore assumed that, by scrutinizing his published work (Henderson, 1972, 1984) and his unpublished notes and files, we would be able to identify most of the vessel-seasons of whaling on the gray whaling grounds, including specific lagoons, bays, and "alongshore" areas.

Henderson's material included references to roughly 300 apparently uniquely named vessels that whaled for at least one season in Mexico beginning in 1846, for a total of roughly 500 vessel-seasons. (1) These vessel-seasons included many that were gray whaling, but also some that were taking sperm whales, Physeter macrocephalus, humpback whales, or elephant seals, Mirounga angustirostris, either exclusively or in addition to gray whales. (2) Some of the vessel-seasons proved to be spurious because a vessel's name had been spelled differently in different sources; this variation included instances where the appropriate Roman numeral was present in one source but missing in another (e.g. Congress vs. Congress II). Moreover, for some vessel-seasons, we were unable to determine the species targeted.

Henderson (1972:81) believed that gray whales had been largely or entirely "unmolested" by commercial whalers from 1795, when they were first observed and reported by Captain John Locke of the British whaleship Resolution ("the first captain to engage in a genuine whaling venture in the eastern North Pacific Ocean": Henderson, 1972:17, also see Henderson, 1975), to 1846, when, according to Scammon (1874), gray whaling began in Magdalena Bay. This large lagoon complex of smaller bays and channels had been visited by sperm whalers well before 1846, but apparently there is no record of a single gray whale having been taken before then, even though they must have been available in relatively high densities in winter. Henderson (1984:163) concedes that some whalers "chased" gray whales but he concludes that "so far as the record shows they never caught any."

General Characteristics of the Fishery

Henderson's extensive examinations of logbooks and newspapers allowed him to define the typical seasonal rounds, or itineraries, followed by the North Pacific whaling fleets. The ships usually sailed from the Hawaiian (Sandwich) Islands to the summer sperm, right, or bowhead, Balaena mysticetus, whaling grounds to the north and returned to Hawaii

in the autumn and thence to one or more southern grounds, e.g. off New Zealand or Chile, along The Line (the equator), in the Marianas, or along the Coast of California, which mainly meant the western coast of Baja California (Henderson, 1984:162). Although there is little evidence that ship-based whalers hunted gray whales in low latitudes in the western Pacific as they did in the east (Henderson, 1990), considerable numbers of gray whales were taken in the Sea of Okhotsk (Reeves et al., 2008). This meant that on a given voyage, a vessel may have pursued eastern gray whales in the lagoons or alongshore Mexico and California in the winter, and western gray whales in the Sea of Okhotsk in the summer. In his synthesis, Henderson (1984) appears to have maintained the distinction and included in his Table I (1984:169) northern catches only from the "California herd," i.e. the Bering and Chukchi Seas. Therefore, there is no systematic compilation of gray whale catches by ship-based whalers in the Sea of Okhotsk (see Henderson, 1984:176, footnote 14; Kugler, 1984:157, footnote 6) although these are implicitly included in the estimates by Best (1987).

Henderson (1972:81) reported that American whalers arrived at the shores of Baja (Lower) California in Mexico and Alta (Upper) California in the Unites States in the early 19th century and that there was a "major movement of American whalers into the North Pacific from Hawaii after 1820." The vessels often provisioned at San Francisco and Monterey before heading to the Californias for winter sperm whaling. By the 1830's, scores of vessels were doing this. During 1846-47, the number of ships visiting Magdalena Bay for gray whaling rose rapidly from several to perhaps 50 (according to Scammon) or 20-25 (according to Henderson, 1972:83; 1984:165) in 1847-48. Apparently all of these represented "between the seasons" cruises by New England (especially Connecticut) vessels or by foreign vessels (including some from French, Dutch, and German ports) that, in summer, had been engaged primarily in right whaling in the northern North Pacific. (3) There is a suggestion by Henderson that this phase of lagoon whaling was facilitated by the U.S.-Mexico war. As he put it, during the hostilities the Mexican government was "even less able to control, or benefit from, the whaling than prior to 1846" (Henderson, 1972:83).

Interest in gray whaling waned temporarily after 1848, a trend attributed by Henderson (1972:84, citing Williams, 1964; also Henderson, 1984:165) to "the inferior quality and low price of the dark-colored gray whale oil, the low quality and quantity of whalebone from the gray, and the dangers of lagoon whaling." In fact, lagoon whaling for gray whales stopped entirely for three seasons--1848-49, 1849-50, and 185051. A San Francisco ship (Aquetnet) whaled at Magdalena Bay in 1852-53 (Henderson, 1984:164), followed in the mid 1850's by, among others, the ship Leonore and schooner Hopewell (Henderson, 1972:84). As Scammon (1874:270) noted, "... Magdalena Bay whaling was resumed with ardor about the years 1855 and 1856, and was continued and extended along the whole coast of both Upper and Lower California." Many vessels returned to San Francisco after the winter season and then went back to Mexico for sperm and humpback whales in the summer.2 It was not until 1861, when the barks Sarah Warren and Carib did so, that San Francisco vessels began to participate in the northern summer hunt for bowheads and right whales (Henderson, 1972:86).

By the early 1860's, a gray whaling circuit had been established, consisting of summer cruises out of Hawaii or San Francisco to the Gulf of Alaska, Bering Sea, Arctic Ocean, coast of Kamchatka, or Sea of Okhotsk principally for right whales and bowhead whales, followed by winter cruises to Baja California and along the mainland Mexican coast (Henderson, 1972:85). Some of the ships discharged their cargoes and refitted in Hawaii or San Francisco before going south while others proceeded directly to Mexico, often still carrying their cargo of northern oil and whalebone. Lagoon whaling for gray whales continued to be dominated by Hawaii and New England vessels operating out of Hawaiian ports. So-called "pick-up" cruises by small vessels out of San Francisco going for various whale species in addition to gray whales, plus elephant seals, sea turtles (probably mainly Cheloniidae), and even abalone (family Haliotidae) were also common in the late 1850's and early 1860's (Mulford, 1869; Henderson, 1972:94-6; 1984:171).

Henderson (1972, 1984) recognized three distinct contexts or phases of ship-based gray whaling: lagoon whaling, coastal or alongshore whaling (including kelp-whaling, where the boats were stationed in or near the kelp beds and waited for the whales to swim within shooting range; Scammon, 1874:26-27, 258-259), and pelagic whaling on the northern summering grounds. In his statistical scheme for organizing the catch history of eastern gray whales, Henderson (1972, 1984) divided the 19th century ship-based era into three periods, as follows: Initial, 1845-46 to 1853-54; Bonanza, 1854-55 to 1864-65; Declining 1865-66 to 1873-74.

Unfortunately, the lack of lists of the vessels and voyages included in Henderson's analyses seriously hampers attempts to trace his reasoning and verify his catch totals, which in any event are presented in his various published tables only as quasi-decadal aggregates. Following Henderson, we have organized our review according to three phases (lagoon, alongshore, pelagic), further subdivided by time intervals as appropriate.

Lagoon Whaling

Lagoon whaling was centered in three lagoons along the outer (Pacific) coast of Baja California: Magdalena (Margarita) Bay (a deep basin with appended lagoons and shallow margins where gray whales concentrated; Mulford, 1869; Henderson, 1972:30), San Ignacio (Ballenas) Lagoon (not to be confused with Ballenas Bay on the outside where alongshore whaling occurred), and Ojo de Liebre (Jack Rabbit Spring; see Henderson, 1984:183) Lagoon (now better known as Scammon's Lagoon; Fig. 2). Black Warrior Lagoon (Laguna Guerrero Negro), although named after the whaling bark Black Warrior of Honolulu, was not a significant whaling lagoon, and Henderson (in Scammon, 1970:38, note 52) concluded that it was only visited in 1858-59 when "the captains of the few vessels from Honolulu which entered the lagoon probably mistook the mouth for that of Scammon's Lagoon."

In the Initial Period, there was no lagoon whaling in 3 of the 9 years (1848-49, 1849-50, and 1850-51). The entire lagoon catch in this period was in Magdalena Bay, where ships sailing from Connecticut ports predominated, accounting for about half of the 50-60 vessel-seasons. Also, vessels from Havre (5 seasons), Bremen (1), and Amsterdam (1) visited Magdalena Bay and whaled for gray whales there. Presumably, Henderson's (1984:165, 169) estimate of the lagoon catch in this period (400-450 by 50-60 cruises) includes the activities of non U.S. registered vessels. He accounted for the downward revision of his earlier estimate of 500-550 for this period (Henderson 1972, his Table I) by suggesting that about 100 catches of sperm and humpback whales had been inadvertently included with the earlier tally (Henderson, 1984:165).

Henderson (1984:165) stressed that some vessels and crews were especially adept at gray whaling in the lagoons (and perhaps also alongshore) and took many whales, while others left the grounds "without a drop of oil." The difficulty of approaching and securing the whales could well have increased with time. Even by the mid 1850's, Mulford (1869) found, for example, that the gray whales in Magdalena Bay were extremely wary:

"Near as the Graybacks came to the schooner, they were shy of the boats. They had been chased before and know something of our deadly intentions. Two hours elapsed before we managed to creep up near one of the great fish. The oars were handled without noise; the men spoke not a word; they came within a few yards of the black mass; the suspense and half dread was akin to that experienced by the soldier in the hush before the battle."

Indeed, the literature (not just Henderson) consistently characterizes lagoon whaling for gray whales as a specialized endeavor that attracted only a particular subset of whalemen. Scammon (1874:268-269) claimed that lagoon whaling was not equally attractive to all who tried it. For example, many of the 50 ships that visited Magdalena Bay in the winter of 1848 left after only a few days, choosing instead to spend the between-seasons period sperm whaling in the open sea. This pattern described by Scammon may have changed to some extent in later years (the Bonanza period) when in some seasons a very high proportion of the Honolulu- and San Francisco-based fleets were engaged in lagoon (and alongshore) whaling for gray whales. Improved practices, techniques, and equipment, particularly wider use of the bomb-lance (see later), evidently made gray whaling in and outside the lagoons more feasible and less dangerous (Henderson 1984:171).

The catch (and kill) in lagoon whaling was strongly biased toward adult females and calves of the year. In Magdalena Bay, there was a distinct break in timing between the cow/calf season (approximately late December through mid February) and the season for "the bulls" (approximately the second half of February), and the two seasons were also spatially separate, with mothers and calves being hunted in Lee (Almejas) Bay and bulls in Weather or Main Bay (Saratoga, 1857-1858, logbook; Fig. 4). Some shifting of the center of whaling activity through the season also occurred in Scammon's Lagoon. For example, in the 1858-59 season, Scammon (1970:66-8) took most of his whales (apparently all cows and calves) in the inner lagoon in January and early February, then relocated toward the outer (Weather) lagoon in mid February where whaling continued into early March.

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Modern studies of gray whales in the Mexican lagoons (mainly centered in San Ignacio Lagoon) indicate that mother-calf pairs tend to remain inside the lagoons about three times longer than single whales (including males as well as females unaccompanied by calves) (Urban et al., 2003). Calving females are among the earliest whales to arrive at the lagoons and the cows, with their calves, are the last to leave on the spring northward migration (Norris et al., 1983; Swartz, 1986). There is a sharp distinction between the cow-calf pairs and "courting" whales in how they use the lagoons. The former tend to occupy the very shallow channels deep inside the lagoons while the latter generally remain in and near the lagoon entrances. Also, although cow-calf pairs do circulate among the different lagoons to some extent, the turnover rate of courting animals appears to be higher.

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For some years, there is precise information on lagoon catches. For example, at the end of Paulina's 1858-59 season, its logbook entry for 21 February summarizes the Magdalena Bay catches to that date in two parts of the Magdalena Bay complex, as follows: in the outer or Main Bay--L.C. Richmond 12 whales, Majestic 6, Benjamin Morgan 6, Paulina 10, Fortune 6, Hibernia 3, Hawaii 1; in Weather Bay--Reindeer 8, Rambler 8, Addison 8, Scotland 5, Massachusetts (of Nantucket) 7, Levi Starbuck 5, Benjamin Rush (no report), Euphrates (no report), Dromo 8, Tenedos 6, Hercules 4. The Paulina log also notes that there was no definite information from vessels whaling in the upper lagoon, "but they are reported as doing extraordinarily well." If all of the whales taken in Main Bay and Weather Bay were grays, this would mean that well over 103 had been secured in the Magdalena Bay complex that season prior to 21 February.

Henderson (1984) assumed that in lagoon and alongshore whaling, one whale was killed and lost for every ten secured (loss rate factor: 1.1). This appears to have been intended to account for non-calf whales that were harpooned or shot but never secured and processed, and thus would not account for killed, injured, or orphaned calves (discussed later). According to Henderson (his Editor's footnote 86 in Scammon, 1970:68), "Scammon may not have bothered to record all of the calves killed or he may have instructed his men to stay clear of the calves in order to avoid infuriating the cows." Ocean Bird's tally in 1858-59 consisted of 47 cows and 5 calves. "It would appear that, after taking four calves with the first seven whales killed [in 1858-59], Scammon's boat crews had tried to avoid killing calves and thus enraging the cows, or that Scammon simply ceased recording the calves taken" (Henderson, in Scammon, 1970:57, Editor's footnote 74). In a later voyage on Ocean Bird (1860-61), Scammon "captured many calves along with their mothers" in San Ignacio Lagoon (Henderson, in Scammon 1970:68, his note 86; and see Henderson, 1972:138-139). "The calves, however, were not calculated in the catches of the gray whalers. Some very large calves killed at end of the season at the lagoon may have been counted as adult whales" (Henderson, Editor's footnote 86 in Scammon, 1970:68, citing San Francisco Alta California 1 January 1860:4).

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The detailed, legible logbook of Saratoga (1857-1858) provides further insights. Of 14 gray whales landed by Saratoga in the 1857-58 season in Magdalena Bay, 13 were "cows" and only one a "bull" (Fig. 5). In a number of instances, the logbook offers hints at how the whalers did, or did not, strike the calf to improve their chances of securing the cow. For example, on 20 January 1858 one of the boats passed between a mother and calf, and the calf was harpooned--"in an instant the cow stove the stern of the boat," then wreaked havoc. Two days later, a cow was taken whose calf was judged to be less than 24 hours old, and "way too small to fasten to, as an iron would have killed it and the cow then, would have made 'music' among the boats." The next day, one of Saratoga's boats was "stove" (damaged) by a calf. On 29 January the logbook records that a boat from another vessel (Splendid) "struck a calf ... and killed it instantly, the cow then left, before they could fasten to her, and they lost her." A day later, the crews from Saratoga and Draper, working together ("mated"), struck both members of a cow-calf pair but the lines fouled and "parted," and the whale (singular) was lost. The same approach was taken on 1 and 6 February, but these times successfully, with the cow secured and the fate of the calf not mentioned in the logbook. Also on 6 February, a Saratoga boat "fastened" to another calf but the iron "drew" and "they lost the cow." On 10 February Saratoga and Draper killed three cows but lost one of them, "the calf drawing the irons out of the cow, the lines being foul and she sinking." Yet another description was provided by Mulford (1869:64), who mentioned an incident in which a harpooned cow became enraged and smashed the whaleboat after her calf had "received the lance intended for the mother." Although it is impossible to be sure, it seems that in this instance the whalers had not intended to lance the calf.

The notion that more calves were at least struck, if not killed outright, than is suggested in the tallies of whales killed, or indeed than is implied by the amounts of oil landed, was echoed by other authors, including Scammon himself. He stated (Scammon, 1874:259), "A cow with a young calf is usually selected, so that the parent animal may be easily struck." Although the usual practice was to avoid striking calves, they were lanced at least occasionally by accident when they got in the way at a critical moment during the capture of the cow (Scammon, 1874:29). Also, at times the whalers deliberately harpooned the calf instead of the cow. Scammon (1874:29) described two occasions when a particularly wary cow was taken only after the calf was harpooned and hauled into shallow water where the attendant mother could be shot with a bomb-gun from the beach. The published journal of a whaleman's wife who spent the 184647 season in Magdalena Bay (Druett, 1992:177) states that gray whales "can only be taken when they have a young one which they [the whalemen] fasten to and by this means secure the mother who will never forsake it till dead .... When dead they tow the whale [i.e. the mother] to the ship ...."

Overall, Henderson (1984:178) found that tactics varied. "Whalers handled attacks on calves in two ways: some preferred to harpoon the calf first so that the cow would stay close by; others left calves alone out of fear that wounded and dying calves provoked the cows into more destructive behavior." Regardless of whether calves were struck, killed, or left alone by the whalers, however, their death was virtually certain, and therefore it is reasonable to infer that one calf was killed for every cow killed in the lagoons (Fig. 5). Again, Mulford (1869:42) provides a clear example of what must have been a typical outcome:

"We towed the upturned carcass to our vessel. But the poor calf still followed the dead mother. It was playing about the body in the morning, ... and still after we had stripped from the carcass the blubber and turned it adrift to float up and down the lagoon ... the poor, helpless, starving creature still swam by the dead mother's side."

Henderson (1972:132) observed:

"... as the catch on the calving grounds consisted largely of cows, many of which had calves that were killed or died without their mothers, the current and future reduction of the population exacted in the calving waters was far greater than the actual reported catch there, which usually did not account for calves, would indicate."

Scammon (and presumably other whalers in the mid 19th century) regularly used explosives ("bombs") to hunt gray whales in the lagoons (Scammon, 1970:31, 46; Henderson, Editor's footnote 41 in Scammon, 1970:30). A bomb lance was a small, metal cylinder filled with gunpowder and fitted with a time-delay fuse that allowed it to explode a few seconds after entering the whale (Bockstoce, 1986). It was fired from a shoulder gun. The use of bomb lances allowed the operation in Scammon's Lagoon to become a "shoot and salvage" operation (Reeves et al., 2002), with the whalers simply shooting the whales and hoping to retrieve the floating carcasses either soon afterward or the next day (Scammon, 1874:264; Henderson, 1984:178-179). This practice of shooting the whales without first fastening to them with a harpoon would have contributed to hunting loss although in lagoon whaling the prospects of recovering bombed whales that escaped or sank certainly would have been higher than in the open ocean (Henderson, 1984:166). Some whalers clearly fastened first and then fired bombs, but even then the whale could be lost. For example, in Magdalena Bay in 1861, boats from the Hawaiian schooner Maria reported having "fastened to another cow whale, and fired two bomb lances, which set her spouting thick blood, but unfortunately the iron drew and we lost the whale, being close to the passage at the time" (Pacific Commercial Advertiser, 18 April 1861, 5(42):2).

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Within the confines of a lagoon, carcasses could be found "washed ashore or drifting ... if the internal decomposition had generated gasses to float the whales" (Henderson, Editor's footnote 43 in Scammon, 1970:32). Sometimes the position of the carcass was marked with a buoy to aid in relocating it (Editor's footnote 49 in Scammon, 1970:34; Henderson, 1984:178). It seems consistent with both the circumstances (i.e. sheltered or enclosed conditions) and the evidence from logbooks to infer that the rate of recovery of gray whale carcasses was much higher inside the lagoons than outside.

At least one "shore party" was active in Magdalena Bay in the late 1850's (Saratoga, 1857-1858 logbook; also see Henderson, 1972:100, 126-127; 1975; 1984:170). On 18 January 1858 a trypot and three empty casks from Saratoga were towed to shore where a group of "Spaniards" had agreed to "take the oil from the carcasses, on halves." We interpret this to mean that the team on shore received whale carcasses after the blubber had been stripped for cooking aboard the vessel, and that for their efforts they were allowed to keep half of the oil produced from the flensed carcasses. On 23 January 1858 the Saratoga logbook notes:

"The shore party of Spaniards came off and assisted us [in cutting in a gray whale taken the day before]. They try out the carcasses for us and two other ships on halves. ... They keep a sharp look out on shore with a telescope and when they see either of the three ships cutting, immediately put off in their boat, and when we have finished cutting, tow the carcass on shore to their works."

On 31 January, the logbook records that Saratoga received 6 bbl of oil and "settled up" with the shore party, as did the other two ships. The shore camp was dismantled on 19 February but there is no further mention in the Saratoga logbook of oil received from the camp.

"Carcassing" (Henderson, 1972:127; 1984:170) complicates catch estimation for lagoon whaling in a number of ways. The returns of vessels whaling in Magdalena Bay were sometimes reported in terms of "body" oil versus "carcass" oil. For example, Massasoit was reported as "full" in April 1861 (Polynesian, 20 April 1861, 17(51):3), having taken 20 whales yielding 860 bbl of "body" and 93 bbl of "carcass" oil. The latter may refer to oil obtained from carcasses found and tried out by the crew of Massasoit. Massasoit reportedly also "bought 78 bbls besides," which could refer to oil obtained from carcassers.

In some instances, operations on shore seem to have been directly integrated with the ship's whaling strategy (as could be true of the Saratoga example, above, but it is impossible to know for certain). In 1860, when the Hawaiian schooner Maria arrived at Magdalena Bay on 3 December, the crew immediately went ashore, constructed tryworks and huts, and prepared a scow for transporting blubber to land (Pacific Commercial Advertiser, 18 April 1861, 5(42):2). From 24 December, when the first gray whale was observed, through the end of March, Maria's crew, along with those from several other vessels, apparently deployed from the anchorage and took more than 65 gray whales.

Floaters or "stinkers" that were found by a ship's crew or a shore party may have yielded lower-than-average amounts of oil, whether due to putrefaction and leakage or to scavenging by sharks. Best (1987:417) noted that in Townsend's (1935) sample of logbook data, 11 of the gray whales processed had been found dead (representing 4.4% of the total listed as landed). Best considered this an underestimate of the true proportion and assumed that most found carcasses were of whales that had died as a result of whaling-related injuries (as opposed to natural causes). "If so, this fact should be borne in mind when corrections are applied to the landed catch to account for whales struck and lost that subsequently died" (Best, 1987:417). On one occasion when Saratoga (mated with Draper) lost a cow in Magdalena Bay due to sinking, the carcass was secured two days later "but was so much blasted that it was a stinker in every sense of the word" (Saratoga, 1857-1858, 12 February 1858 logbook entry). Still, the whalemen managed to make 40 bbl from it. Scammon made no mention of shark damage, but Henderson (Editor's footnote 43 in Scammon, 1970:32) cited evidence from other whalemen that this could be a serious problem (e.g. in Banderas Bay and in Estero Santo Domingo at the northern end of Magdalena Bay).

Coastal or Alongshore Whaling

Whaling outside the lagoons but along continental or island coasts was generally a mixed-species hunt: humpback whales and sperm whales were as or more likely to be taken than gray whales (humpbacks were also taken in Magdalena Bay). Henderson (1984) estimated that only 25 grays were taken alongshore in five vessel-seasons during the 9-year Initial period (1845-46 to 1853-54). However, the intensity of alongshore whaling increased greatly thereafter, with Henderson (1984:168) estimating about 900 grays taken in 80 vessel-seasons during the 11-year Bonanza period (1854-55 to 1864-65). Referring to the seasons of 1858 and 1859 (presumably meaning 1857-58 and 1858-59), Scammon (1874:270) stated:

"... not only the bays and lagoons were teeming with all the varied incidents of the fishery, but the outside coast was lined with ships, from San Diego southward to Cape St. Lucas. A few vessels of this fleet cruised near the shore by day, standing a little way off at night; but by far the largest number anchored about the islands, points, and capes, wherever the animals could be most successfully pursued."

Henderson (1972:97) concluded that 1860-61 was the peak year of alongshore whaling for gray whales.

The principal places for alongshore whaling included: San Quintin, Natividad Island, Punta San Eugenio, Turtle Bay (San Bartolome), San Roque Island, Asuncion Island, San Juanico, Cape San Lucas, and the near-shore waters off and inside Todos Santos, Ballenas, and Maria Bays (Henderson, 1972:97). Some gray whales may have been taken near the San Benitos Islands and Cedros Island as well (Henderson, 1984:168). Although generally not viewed as part of the main theater for gray whaling, several bays along the mainland Mexico coast of Sonora, Sinaloa, and Jalisco were used by gray whales and were visited by the whalers. These included Altata (Scammon, 1970:16, his note 10), Navachiste, Santa Maria (Reforma), and Banderas Bays (Henderson, 1972:31; also see Gilmore et al., 1967).

One additional area where gray whales were hunted, but which has not been mentioned by previous authors, is Mulege Bay on the eastern coast of the Baja California peninsula. The New Bedford bark South America hunted gray whales (referred to as "devilfish" and "ripsacks") in the bay for most of January and February 1858, taking two large whales (27 January, 2 February; Fig. 6). The 27 January whale was taken "in company" with the New Bedford bark Sarah Sheafe and therefore at least one other vessel was hunting gray whales in Mulege Bay that season. The logbooks of both South America and Saratoga provide insights on the apparently opportunistic nature of some coastal gray whaling. In early December 1857, South America, Saratoga, Sarah Sheafe, the bark Islander of Nantucket, and the bark Tybee of Stonington were all "endeavoring to work up the Gulf [of California]." Working in company until mid December, South America, Saratoga, and Sarah Sheafe reached as far north as Carmen Island (lat. 25[degrees]57'N, long. 110[degrees]50'W), where the crew of Saratoga went ashore and interrogated local people concerning whales. On 16 December, the logbook of Saratoga states: "... giving up all further intention of proceeding up the gulf and starting for Magdalena Bay." In contrast, South America and Sarah Sheafe continued sailing northward and stayed in the gulf, coming to anchor in Mulege Bay in the third week of December and remaining in the area until 27 February. Time was spent on shore--fishing, clamming, and gathering wood--from their arrival in the bay until mid January. Humpback whales were sighted "bound up the bay" on 6 January (South America log), but no effort was made to chase them. On 13 January, the log notes, "waiting for whales, expect them any day," implying that the whalers had come to Mulege Bay for the explicit purpose of hunting gray whales. More humpbacks were seen on 23 and 25 January, and then "a few California grays" were chased on the 26th.

After taking their second gray whale (on 2 February), South America's crew saw whales on only four more days before leaving the bay on about 20 February. Two of those sightings were of humpbacks, one of which was chased without success. South America sold 372 gallons of oil and 7 barrels of "slush" (4) locally--the oil being a reminder that catch estimates based on oil returns may be negatively biased. While working out of the Gulf of California (en route to Hawaii, where it arrived at the port of Wohoo on 21 March), South America struck but lost a "sulphur bottom" (blue whale). Also, the boats were lowered for humpbacks as the bark passed Cape San Lucas on 2 March.

Henderson (1972:166, also his Table I) seems simply to have guessed that about 150 grays were secured between southern Sonora and Banderas Bay during the Bonanza period, and the same number again during the Declining period. He noted that the whalers who whaled there were interested primarily in sperm and humpback whales--they "probably took gray whales only when sperms and humpbacks were scarce or absent" (Henderson, 1972:166). Without explanation, Henderson (1984:174) concluded that the gray whale catch along the Mexico mainland during the Declining period was only 50 (in 10 vessel-seasons), rather than 150 as he had estimated earlier (Henderson, 1972, above). A recent study of gray whale usage of these mainland sites found that calving no longer occurs there, and that this situation is unlikely to change given present levels of fishing activity and maritime traffic in the region (Findley and Vidal, 2002). We are unaware of recent investigations in Mulege Bay and therefore cannot comment on whether some gray whales still visit that area.

As mentioned earlier, some coastal whaling was described as "kelp-whaling," where the boats were stationed in or near the kelp beds and waited for the whales to swim within shooting range. In later years of the fishery, when the whales had become wary of the whaleboats, small 2-man boats were used, with one man to scull and the other to shoot. Still later, as the whales passed farther offshore, the whaleboats were anchored outside the kelp, chasing the whales as they passed inshore. Evidently, much of the whaling was "shoot-and-salvage." Even if a line was secured before the whale died, the carcass often sank and would only be secured after it rose to the surface as much as a day later. Sometimes the blubber was tried out in "pots set for that purpose upon the beach" although most often the flensing was conducted alongside the ship. Scammon described another variant of coastal whaling for gray whales as "whaling along the breakers" (Henderson, 1972:96).

[FIGURE 6 OMITTED]

As indicated above, Henderson (1984) used the same loss rate factor for adjusting catches in alongshore whaling as in lagoon whaling even though he acknowledged that the chances of eventually securing a struck/lost whale were better inside a lagoon or embayment than outside in the open ocean. Our own findings in this regard are discussed later.

Pelagic Whaling

Almost no whaling for gray whales occurred in offshore waters of Mexico and California, presumably because the whales themselves tended to remain close to shore and congregated mainly in bays or lagoons. Most of the pelagic catch therefore centered in high latitudes, particularly in the Bering and Chukchi Seas. Although whalers searching for right whales in the Gulf of Alaska chased gray whales occasionally (Henderson, 1972:26), there is no evidence to suggest that they made significant catches there. Henderson (1984:166), with unaccounted-for precision, gave "probably ... only about 52" as the number taken in 20 vessel-seasons on the northern grounds in the Initial period, followed by about 175 (80 vessel-seasons) in the Bonanza period, and 175 (40 vessel-seasons) in the Declining period for a total catch of 402 (539 killed) over the entire period from 1845-46 to 1873-74 (1984:169). He further stated (1984:170-171) that on the northern grounds, many gray whales were lost under the ice or in foggy conditions and that "more whales were lost [there], relative to those caught, than in any other sector of the gray whale fishery."

Bockstoce (1986:72-73, 132) estimated that about 500 gray whales were taken over the entire life of the ship-based commercial fishery for bowheads in the Bering Sea and Arctic Ocean (1848-1914), and that about 300 more were killed but lost (implying a loss rate factor of 1.6, as compared with 1.34 implied by Henderson's numbers [539/402]). In considering why so few gray whales were taken, Bockstoce (1986:72-73, 132) noted that 1) they lacked commercially valuable baleen, 2) they yielded comparatively little oil, which in any event was priced at about 5 cents less per gallon than "whale" oil, 3) they were both difficult and dangerous to subdue, and 4) most importantly (according to Bockstoce), by the mid 1860's their numbers had been reduced considerably by the lagoon whaling in Mexico.

Regarding the difficulty of capturing gray whales, noted whaling captain Thomas Welcome Roys described them as fast swimmers that "generally could not be taken with hand harpoons from open boats" (Schmitt et al., 1980:25). Further, according to Roys (in Schmitt et al., 1980:64), gray whales, along with humpback whales and blue whales, "will not generally allow a boat to come nearer than three or four rods of them, hence the difficulty of fastening."

Bockstoce and Burns (1993:568) stated that by 1866 the bowhead whale population in the Bering and Chukchi Seas was in "steep decline" owing to nearly two decades of intensive commercial whaling. As a result, the American whalers tried to "offset poor catches" by hunting walruses, Odobenus rosmarus, and gray whales during the "middle season" between late spring and autumn. Elsewhere (Bockstoce and Botkin, 1982:184), it was suggested that most of the walrus hunting took place between mid June and early August, at a time when the bowheads were "generally inaccessible to the whaleships."

In their analysis of the walrus kill, Bockstoce and Botkin (1982) extrapolated from logbook data covering 516 complete cruises, or about 19% of the total number of whaleship cruises to the western Arctic from 1849 to 1914. No similar extrapolation to estimate the total kill of gray whales has been published, but Bockstoce and Burns (1993) stated that the kill amounted to "about 840 ..., of which 539 were captured (Bockstoce in Henderson, 1984: Table I) and another 300 were lost (Bockstoce 1986:73)." Those authors' statement is not consistent with Henderson's (1984) conclusion (his Table I) that only 402 gray whales were "captured" on 140 cruises to the "Northern Summer Grounds" from 1845 to 1874, the total killed (including hunting loss) amounting to 539. Nowhere is it made clear whether the values of 402 and 539 refer to numbers of gray whales recorded in the logbooks of 516 cruises examined by Bockstoce and Botkin (1982, 1983), or instead are extrapolations meant to account for the whales taken on those plus the other 81% of the total cruises to the western Arctic between 1849 and 1914.

Non-American Whaling Vessels

As mentioned earlier, whaleships from countries other than the United States visited the coasts of Baja and Alta California during the 19th century. The British whaler Toward Castle wrecked on the Malarrimo coast just southwest of the mouth of Scammon's Lagoon in 1836 (Henderson, Editor's footnote 16 in Scammon, 1970:20; but see Henderson, 1984:182, footnote 18). The French ship Valiant of Havre wrecked near the entrance of Magdalena Bay at the end of December 1847 with 600 bbl of oil on board (The Friend, 1 April 1847, as quoted in Druett, 1992:184, footnote 33). Some of Valiant's oil (200 bbl) was salvaged by J.E. Donnell of New Bedford and is presumably subsumed within that vessel's returns (which included 3,066 bbl of whale oil for its voyage of 1845-49; Starbuck, 1878:422-423).

German and French whalers, as well as one Russian vessel (from Finnish Russia, captained by a Swede), participated in lagoon whaling for gray whales between 1854-55 and 1864-65 (Henderson, 1984:172). Henderson (1972, his Table II, p. 261-263) included in his list of vessels whaling in Scammon's Lagoon between 1857-58 and 1872-73 the following foreign vessels: bark Cleopatra from New Granada (presumably present-day Colombia; probably sailing out of San Francisco with New Granada as a "flag of convenience" according to Henderson, 1984:184), brig Stoofursten Constantin of Russia, brig Comet from the German port of Oldenburg (purchased in Honolulu and put under the Hawaiian flag in 1868), and a variety of vessels from Honolulu--four barks (Faith, Metropolis, Harmony, Cynthia), two schooners (John Dunlap, Kalama), and two brigs (Victoria, Kohola). Kalama was a tender to the brig Comet at Turtle Bay in 1862.

There is ambiguity concerning the rig and name of the so-called John Dunlap, which apparently also cruised as a brig under the name Alice, but in any event it whaled for gray whales at Scammon's Lagoon in at least the 1858-59 season (Henderson, Editor's footnote 68 in Scammon, 1970:50). Some gray whales may have been taken by French whalers between 1842 and 1868 (Du Pasquier, 1986:274). In Du Pasquier's (1982) list of voyages, 15 are identified as having visited locations in California or Mexico where they could have taken gray whales between 1843 and 1864. At least three of those voyages included visits to Magdalena Bay (Ste-Marguerite or Baie Ste-Marguerite) and at least one to Lower California (Basse Californie). The voyage of Valiant of Havre, which wrecked in 1847 as noted above, is not among the 15.

The ship-based fisheries for right whales in the North Pacific Ocean and Bering Sea and for bowhead whales in the Bering Sea and Arctic Ocean were both dominated by vessels from the United States. Scarff (2001:266), however, estimated that non-U.S. ships might have constituted as much as 15-20% of the fleet on the right whale grounds, whereas Bockstoce (1986:94) referred to ships from Bremen, Havre, Nantes, and Hobart (Tasmania) as having flocked along with the American fleet to the Bering Strait in 1850 immediately after discovery of the bowhead whaling grounds there. According to Bockstoce and Botkin (1983:110), the western Arctic fishery included vessels from the United States, Hawaii, Germany, France, and Great Britain (Australia). Some foreign vessels stopped to recruit crew and obtain provisions at Hawaiian ports, primarily Honolulu and Lahaina. Beginning in the early 1850's, some of these vessels were purchased by a small number of foreign residents in Hawaii. This burgeoning Honolulu-based fleet included vessels that continued to sail under foreign flags. By 1856, many vessels in this fleet began to be placed under the Hawaiian flag, including some whose owners did not meet the legal requirements for obtaining Hawaiian registry.

Oil Returns and Average Yield

As mentioned earlier, concern has been expressed that the average oil yield used by Henderson to estimate catches from oil production data may have caused him to underestimate the number of gray whales taken (Mitchell, 1993). A large proportion of Henderson's (1972, 1984) catch estimates was derived from oil returns. However, the idiosyncratic nature of his catch tallying method makes it impossible, in many cases, to determine whether the catch attributed to a given voyage represents a count of whales taken (e.g. as reported in the voyage logbook) or instead an estimate made (after the fact) by converting an amount of oil on board or returned to port.

Often, the latter was clearly true, and therefore the average oil yield used by Henderson as the denominator for his conversions takes on particular importance. He recognized that some oil was shipped from the whaling grounds on cargo vessels or "sent home" on a different vessel, and he attempted to account for this in his compilation of catches (Henderson, 1972:259). He nevertheless cautioned that reports emanating from the whaling grounds (e.g. as a result of message exchanges between vessel captains) tended to exaggerate the amounts of oil inboard (we have not been able to corroborate this statement by Henderson).

Another consideration is whether oil inboard or returned by a given vessel came from gray whales rather than from one or more other species. The oil inboard a "gray whaler" obtained from sperm whales, elephant seals, and other seals was, according to Henderson (1972:259), "regularly distinguished," but so-called polar oil from right or bowhead whales taken in the previous summer season, humpback oil, and oil from other balaenopterids (such as fin and blue whales) "usually was not distinguished from the gray whale oil." In Henderson's view, this meant that oil-based estimation of gray whale catches are inherently positively biased. However, there must have been an economic incentive to mix gray whale oil with that of other species as, according to Scammon (1874:269), it was "of an inferior quality." Therefore, it would have been more profitable to adulterate other oils with gray whale oil rather than vice versa.

In our own reading of one logbook, it was noted that when Mary and Helen II had taken and processed three gray whales in the northern Sea of Okhotsk, the logbook entry for 24 September 1885 stated, "... stowing in lower main-hold the oil of the last Bowhead taken and what we have boiled of these last [gray or "ripsack"] whales mixed together." In this instance, without checking the logbook, the whale oil returned by the voyage would be considered to have come entirely from bowhead (and right?) whales as there would be no way to distinguish the contribution made by gray whales.

Mixing gray whale oil with other more valuable oils that would be reported and landed as such would tend to bias the data toward underestimation of the gray whale catch. At the same time, however, humpback whales, in particular, were hunted along the coast of Baja California and even inside Magdalena Bay during the gray whale season (Henderson, 1972:89; Josephine, 1863-1867, 5 January 1866 logbook entry), and they were at least seen in San Ignacio Lagoon in May and June (Henderson, 1972:195). This creates the potential to overestimate gray whale catches if it is assumed that all whale oil from a given cruise in the Mexican whaling grounds came from gray whales.

Henderson (1972) noted that "coast oil," at least in the context of San Francisco-based whaling in the mid 19th century, generally meant oil from gray whales. For example, the bark Carib of San Francisco returned to port in April 1859 after 10 months at sea with 800 bbl of coast oil, 50 bbl of sperm oil, and 300 bbl of humpback oil, and Henderson (1972:89) explicitly considered the coast oil to be from gray whales. In his catch compilations, Henderson (1972) sometimes corrected what he assumed were reporting errors. For example, the New London barks Tempest and Ripple were reported as returning 550 and 500 bbl, respectively, of humpback oil to Honolulu following a 1859-60 cruise to Scammon's Lagoon, but Henderson (1972:265) concluded that "the kind of oil ... must have been in error," noting that "no other vessel was ever reported to have taken humpback whales" in this lagoon. In another instance, Henderson inferred that a newspaper report of 400 bbl of sperm oil returned to Honolulu by the New London bark Pearl (1863-64) "may have been erroneous" because this vessel had been reported at Scammon's Lagoon with 190 bbl of oil (unspecified) on board two months earlier. He assigned a gray whale catch of "5+" to Pearl for that season.

Scammon's Ocean Bird returned to San Francisco in 1859 with a cargo of 1,600 bbl of oil from 47 gray whales (all "cows"), which led Henderson to conclude that 35 bbl/whale was a reasonable average yield (Scammon, 1970:68). One whale secured by Scammon in December 1858 yielded 55 bbl (Scammon, 1970:37), and one large cow taken in Magdalena Bay by Saratoga yielded 62 bbl, another 631/2 bbl, both in January 1858 (Saratoga, 1857-1858, logbook). Scammon (1874), who had extensive first-hand knowledge of gray whales and the ship-based whaling industry, gave the average yield of gray whales as 20 bbl, with males sometimes producing up to 25 bbl (1874:21) and "some individuals" as much as 60-70 bbl (1874:20).

Rice and Wolman (1971:35) observed that the mean body weights and yields of oil, meal, and meat from southbound gray whales were 2.5-3.0 times those of northbound whales. As summarized by Sayers (1984:123), gray whales taken during the "going down" season (December-February) were "fat, well nourished, and rendered a fine quality of oil," whereas those taken during the "going up" season (February-April) were much leaner as a result of fasting and, in the case of adult females, nursing their calves. In addition to the variability in oil yield due to seasonal changes in body condition, towing distance, shark scavenging, sea conditions, and various other circumstances could affect processing efficiency.

Bockstoce (1986) considered the average yield of gray whales on their northern feeding grounds to be 25-30 bbl (1986:72), 25 bbl (1986:132), or 30 bbl (1986:95). Henderson (1972, 1984), who was convinced that 35 bbl/whale was a good overall average for gray whales, acknowledged that yields tended to be lower on the northern grounds, reasoning as follows (1972:137):

"Captures of small, young gray whales probably were more common on the northern summer grounds than along the coast of California, where the few slaughtered calves were not usually counted as part of the catch, and where rapidly growing young whales, returning to their place of birth, were at least a year old."

The question of average oil yield becomes relevant in the present context only, or at least primarily, if it is to be applied in catch estimation. In one of the earliest efforts to estimate whale catch from both oil returns and logbook data, Ross (1974:95) ended up averaging the "conflicting figures [on bowhead whale catches by American whalers in Hudson Bay] obtained by different methods ..., there being no satisfactory criteria for choosing either one or the other." Similarly, Mitchell and Reeves (1983) presented estimates from both "oil yield" (from Starbuck, 1878 and Hegarty, 1959) and "catch-per-voyage" (from logbooks), and then arbitrarily used midpoints of the two in their table of annual catches of humpback whales in the West Indies attributed to the ship-based American fishery. Both Bockstoce and Botkin (1983) and Smith and Reeves (2003) employed data on oil returns to stratify vessel-seasons and to guide logbook sampling, but in the end used only average numbers of whales landed per vessel-season (mainly from logbooks and newspaper accounts) as the basis for estimating catches of bowhead whales and humpback whales, respectively. Finally, in his multispecies study of the American 19th century ship-based fishery for baleen whales, Best (1987) estimated catches in 5-year intervals using both production (oil averages to 1879 and whalebone thereafter until 1909; all from Starbuck, 1878 and Hegarty, 1959) and whale catch per voyage (1805-1914, from Townsend, 1935). He made no attempt to reconcile the two alternative sets of estimates but instead simply reported them as a range, such as 2,665 ("based on oil production") to 3,013 ("as calculated from the catch per voyage") gray whales taken over the period 1850-1879 (1987:416). Best found that the two approaches gave "somewhat similar" results, differing by less than 10% in all cases except three: for South Atlantic right whales, E. australis, and humpback whales, the overall production-based estimates exceeded the catch per voyage estimates by 13% and 29%, respectively, and for gray whales, the overall catch per voyage estimate exceeded the production estimate by 13% (as indicated above).

Although Henderson (1984) appears to have depended primarily on oil returns to estimate gray whale catches, our own extensive experience with production data has led us to share the skepticism expressed by Bockstoce and Botkin (1983:110), who note the difficulty of allocating quantities of products to vessel-seasons (as opposed to entire voyages) and the risk that oil from multiple species (especially humpback whale and pilot whale oil in the present context) has often been included in whale oil returns. Therefore, like those authors, we consider data on numbers of whales taken, as recorded in logbooks and newspapers, to provide a more direct and reliable basis for interpolation and extrapolation, as explained in the following section.

New Catch Estimates from Voyage and Vessel-season Analyses

Our review of the literature and of Henderson's files and notes in the library of the New Bedford Whaling Museum (described earlier) led us to an approach for producing a more detailed alternative catch series. Rather than adopting Henderson's method of tracking and evaluating the intricacies of whale oil reports, newspaper snippets, and logbook entries in a largely opportunistic and ad hoc fashion, we chose to rely primarily on two sets of data sources for estimating the ship-based catch of gray whales.

First, we used the catch data in a sample of voyage logbooks (including some also checked by Henderson) and newspaper sources to estimate the average number of gray whales taken (both secured/processed and struck/lost) per vessel-season in Mexico. Second, we used the information from a broad search of published and unpublished sources to identify and count the vessels that whaled for gray whales in Mexico (and to a limited extent southern California) each year beginning in the winter of 1845-46.

Together, these two sets of sources allowed us to estimate the number of gray whales taken each year by the ship-based fishery in the winter season. Because the greatest catches of gray whales were made in Mexico on the whales' calving and breeding grounds, we focused our logbook sampling and catch estimation on the winter portions of voyages spent there rather than on portions of voyages in the northern summering areas. For the ship-based catches in northern waters, we had no reason to believe that we could improve significantly on the gray whale catch and removal estimates (approximately 400-500 and 800, respectively; see earlier) presented by Henderson (1984) and Bockstoce (1986).

Logbook and Newspaper Sampling

Photocopied sections of some logbooks were available in the Henderson material in New Bedford, and these were examined for information on numbers of whales secured. We also checked (either directly or on microfilm) the relevant sections of additional logbooks selected to make the overall sample as representative as possible, especially over time. For those logbooks that provided sufficient detail, we also extracted the information on "condition" of whales that escaped (e.g. whether the harpoon iron drew, the line broke, the whale sank or was "spouting blood" when it escaped), the sex of caught whales, and the presence and fate of any calves mentioned.

To supplement that logbook sample, we used 1) Townsend's (1935) worksheets containing logbook data for about 800 voyages by vessels with names beginning with the letters A through J and 2) data that we had collected in previous studies from logbooks of about 160 voyages. Further, we used gray whale catch data found in 19th century Hawaiian newspapers. In a few cases, the same vessel-seasons were represented in two of the four types of sources, allowing us to check for consistency. For example, the numbers of gray whales indicated on three Townsend worksheets (5, 46, 10) were both higher and lower than those indicated in newspaper entries (4, 47, 14, respectively). Similarly, the Townsend data, which normally include only landed whales, were generally consistent with the more detailed data (catch, struck/lost whales, daily positions) taken directly from logbooks.

In some instances, logbook entries fail to identify whales to species. Where possible, we inferred the species from the circumstances surrounding the whaling activity or from the described behavior or other characteristics of the whales. Unless there was a marked change in whaling pattern or location, the other catches (including struck/lost) for that vessel-season were assumed to have been gray whales. For unidentified whales tried out during vessel-seasons for which catches of both gray whales and humpback whales were reported, we prorated the unidentified whales according to the ratio of grays and humpbacks reported in the logbook for that vessel-season.

Data on landings were available for 94 unique vessel-seasons. Of that number, 51 were covered by logbooks read specifically for this analysis, 18 were covered by the Townsend worksheets, 17 were covered by newspaper accounts, and 8 were covered by logbooks read for our previous studies. Seventy-seven of the 94 vessel-seasons involved gray whaling while the other 17 focused entirely on other species, notably humpback whales, sperm whales, and pilot whales. The mean number of gray whales taken (i.e. secured and processed) per vessel-season for the 78 vessel-seasons that involved gray whaling was calculated for four time periods selected to reflect the varying intensity of the fishery (without regard to Henderson's Initial, Bonanza, and Declining periods, noted earlier), and ranged from 14.0 down to 7.9 whales. The rates were higher in the earlier periods (Table 1).

Some information on the sex and maturity status of struck whales was obtained for a portion of the vessel-seasons covered by logbooks read specifically for this study. As expected, given the information summarized from the literature (above), 32 of the 35 whales (92%) for which sex was identified were cows. Although, as noted earlier, whaling inside the lagoons often involved calves, this was mentioned only 11% of the time (52 of460 logbook entries). The subsample of logs with entries referring to calves included 18 vessel-seasons, and the percentage of strikes involving calves for those vessel-seasons averaged 29.7%, with a range from 6.2 to 100%. The logs of three vessel-seasons indicated that more than 60% of the strikes involved calves. The fates of 40 of the 52 calves (76.9%) were reported, with 39 of them struck or killed but apparently only one of them processed for its oil. Although this information from logbooks on sex of adults taken and the involvement of calves is clearly incomplete, it reinforces the general understanding from the literature (see above) that lagoon whaling in Mexico focused primarily on adult females and that calves were involved, often dying as a result.

Using a subset of the logbook data for 36 vessel-seasons for which sufficient detail was recorded, we estimated the proportion of struck animals that were lost. The 408 struck whales were each assigned to one of three classes: 1) landed and processed, 2) escaped when the harpoon drew or the line parted, and 3) either escaped spouting blood (interpreted to mean the whale was mortally wounded) or actually died and sank before being secured by the whalers. The proportion lost when the harpoon drew or the line parted was much higher than that for animals that escaped spouting blood or sank (28% and 6%, respectively; Table 2). This makes it difficult to estimate total removals. Although it can be assumed that the 5% of struck animals that were lost because they sank or escaped spouting blood were effectively dead, at least some of the 24% of the struck animals that escaped when the harpoon drew or the line parted probably survived, considering that wounds and scars from previous encounters with whalers have been observed on some caught whales (Jordan, 1887; Starks, 1922). We have no basis for estimating the proportion that survived.

Following Henderson's suggestion that the loss rate was higher in alongshore gray whaling (i.e. "outside" rather than "inside" the bays or lagoons), we also classified the reported vessel locations for strikes reported in the logbooks according to whether they were "inside" or "outside" and computed the respective loss rate factors. The alongshore Drew-Parted (DP) LRF (1.41, SE = 0.080) and the Sank-Bleeding (SB) LRF (1.08, SE = 0.027) were both larger than the corresponding "inside" LRF's (DP: 1.26, SE = 0.043 and SB: 1.05, SE = 0.016, respectively). One-sided t-tests suggest that the outside Drew-Parted LRF was significantly greater than the inside (p=0.013), while the difference between the two Sank-Bleeding LRF's was not significant (p=0.084).

However, for most vessel-seasons we were unable, in the absence of the relevant logbook data, to distinguish catch locations on a sufficiently fine geographic scale to apply loss rate factors differentially. As Henderson (1984:168) noted, it was "sometimes difficult to determine if a particular ship captured a whale inside or outside the lagoon itself; only if one has logbook records at hand, rather than newspaper accounts, can he determine how many whales were taken inside or outside the lagoon." For example, the newspaper Polynesian reported (29 March 1862, 18(48):3) that the Hawaiian brig Victoria arrived in Honolulu in late February from the "coast of California" with 400 bbl of oil on board, having left Margarita (Magdalena) Bay 14 days earlier. The report indicates only that the oil had been obtained "in Bollnas [Ballenas] and Margarita Bays." In order to apply differential loss rate factors, it would be necessary to know or estimate the fraction of the 400 bbl obtained alongshore (i.e. in Ballenas Bay) rather than in the Magdalena Bay complex, which is classified as a lagoon-whaling site. Like Henderson (1984), then, despite the significant difference in loss rates, we had to use the same loss rate factor to estimate total kills from numbers secured in both lagoon and coastal whaling.

Number of Vessel-seasons

In addition to the vessel-seasons identified directly from the Henderson material, we made use of port and newspaper records concerning arrivals and departures of whaling vessels in Hawaii compiled by Lebo for this paper. The Hawaii data generally included the vessel's name (adjusted for obvious misspellings) and its dates of arrival and/or departure in Hawaiian ports. Most of the records also included the vessel's nationality of registry, master, and rig (e.g. schooner, bark, ship). In many instances, the records indicate where the vessel had come "in from" or where it was "bound for." Some of these geographical entries refer to specific places that are well known for gray whaling, such as Magdalena (more often given as "Margarita") Bay, but many are more general. These latter include the obvious and uninformative (e.g. "Pacific") and the somewhat more specific and informative (e.g. "South Pacific," "Japan," "Okhotsk"). Some entries are informative but difficult to interpret at first glance, such as "coast of cala," clearly meaning Coast of California but leaving open various possibilities other than the Mexican gray whaling grounds (e.g. humpback whaling around the Socorros or Revillagigedos Islands, sperm whaling off Cedros Island or in the Gulf of California, whaling for one or several species, including gray whales, along the coast of what is now the U.S. State of California).

For voyages with incomplete or conflicting information, we consulted the Dennis Wood Abstracts (Wood, N.d.),which include, for example, selected dates and specific locations where the vessel was known to have been during the voyage and the quantities of oil and whalebone on board at the time.

We combined the Hawaii arrival and departure records with those obtained from the Henderson material (and supplemented by any relevant details found in the Dennis Wood Abstracts) into a single list of vessel-seasons of whaling in Mexico, using a stepwise procedure as follows.

First, we used the Henderson material, maps, and our general understanding of the fishery to identify a set of geographical entries likely to represent whaling areas in the region. We then selected those vessels that arrived in Hawaiian ports late in or soon after the gray whaling season (i.e. between about February and May, or "spring") or that departed shortly before the season (i.e. between October and December, or "autumn"), with locations (either outgoing or incoming) indicative, or least suggestive, of time spent in Mexico. We did not try to account for vessels in the Hawaii records associated with only generalized geographical locations (e.g. Pacific or North Pacific), but see later discussion.

Second, we compared the two lists of vessel-seasons (one Henderson-based and one Hawaii-based) to two lists of whaling voyages, the American Offshore Whaling Voyage list (AOWV) (Lund et al., 2008; available through National Maritime Data Library, www.nmdl.org) and the French whaling voyages listed in Annex 7 of du Pasquier (1982:242-9; numbered in our system as 30,000 plus the numerical sequence). We thus attempted to identify specific multiyear voyages corresponding to each vessel-season, accounting for dates, master, and rig as available.

Because some vessels had the same name and because key information was missing from some records, it proved impossible to assign all of the vessel-seasons to their appropriate voyage with certainty. Also, we were hampered by the lack of systematic voyage lists from nations other than the United States and France. However, the registry information reported in the Hawaii arrivals and departures records, especially for the Hawaiian fleet, made it possible to identify the nationality for most of the non-American and non-French vessels.

Where more than one vessel had the same name, and especially in the few cases when such vessels were whaling in Mexico in the same season, it was sometimes impossible to pin down and track the vessel-season with complete confidence. Newspapers and other sources proved useful for resolving some of these problems. For example, they allowed us to distinguish among the American Maria, the Hawaiian Maria, and the Chilean Maria in the 1861 and 1862 seasons. The latter two vessels were gray whaling in Mexico, while the first was on a sperm whaling voyage.

Third, we merged the Henderson and Hawaii lists, and this resulted in 660 unique vessel-seasons that were considered candidates for having involved some whaling in Mexican waters between 1846, when gray whaling began there, and 1875, by which time it had essentially ended there (although some killing of gray whales in the northern feeding areas continued into the 1880's). Of these 659, 480 were identified from the Henderson material and 179 from other sources only, especially the Hawaii port records. We then used the multiple sources of information available to classify each vessel-season according to the likelihood that it involved gray whaling in Mexico. For some vessel-seasons, we found no information that could be used as a basis for classification. For others, there was enough information to classify as definitely or likely gray whaling, definitely or probably not gray whaling, or possibly gray whaling. For analysis, we established four categories of the likelihood of gray whaling, as follows: Yes (definitely or probably gray whaling), Maybe (possibly gray whaling), No (definitely or probably not gray whaling), and Unknown.

The proportions of vessel-seasons that fell into these categories varied according to the source (Table 3), with, for example, 17% (82/478) of the vessel-seasons identified from the Henderson material judged as "definitely not" gray whaling compared to 29% (52/179) of those from the Hawaii port records. The proportions also varied over time, with, for example, a higher proportion Unknown after 1860.

[FIGURE 7 OMITTED]

To account for such differences, we addressed the uncertainties in the vessel-season data separately by source (i.e. Henderson vs. Hawaii) and by year. We addressed the uncertainty inherent in the Maybe and Unknown categories in two ways. First, we assumed that at least half of the vessel-seasons categorized as Maybe gray whaling were in fact gray whaling (i.e. we treated that half as Yes). Second, we prorated the number of Unknown vessel-seasons according to the frequency of Yes, Maybe, and No vessel-seasons.

We then considered three cases--low, medium, and high--to compute the total number of vessel-seasons. For the low vessel-season case, we took the total vessel-seasons to be the number categorized as Yes and half the number categorized as Maybe. For the high case, we took the total to be the sum of those categorized as Yes, those prorated to be Yes, and those prorated to be Maybe. Finally, for the medium case, we summed the number categorized as Yes and prorated as Yes, plus half of the number categorized as Maybe and half of the number prorated as Maybe. This procedure resulted in total numbers of vessel-seasons of 416, 466, and 489 vessel-seasons for the low, medium, and high cases, respectively, with standard errors due to the proportions used in the prorating. The numbers of vessel-seasons for the three cases for each year are shown in Figure 7, along with 95% confidence intervals for the medium case.

The identified vessel-seasons of whaling in Mexican waters are listed in the Appendix, which includes each combination of vessel name and season, the vessel's known or likely nationality, whether the vessel-season was identified from the Henderson material, and the likelihood that the vessel-season involved some gray whaling. Also included, where available, are the known or probable vessel and voyage identification numbers (see above). In some cases, we indicated a likely AOWV vessel number corresponding to the vessel name, even though a precisely corresponding voyage number could not be identified because the departure and arrival dates were not consistent with the vessel's being in the gray whaling grounds at the appropriate season. It is possible that a few vessel-seasons are listed twice because of inaccuracies and inconsistencies in vessel names, although we tried to minimize this by evaluating the voyage records carefully to account for vessels with similar names.

Vessels with American registry were responsible for nearly 89% of the whaling activity, with 272 vessels involved in some 587 vessel-seasons. Hawaii-registered vessels were the next most common, with 17 vessels involved in 32 vessel-seasons, followed by French-registered vessels, with 6 involved in 10 vessel-seasons. In addition, vessels registered in German states (e.g. Bremen), the Netherlands, Russia, Great Britain, Colombia, and Chile were identified as having spent one or more seasons in the Mexico whaling grounds. Only 14 vessels were unidentified as to nationality, and they were responsible for 14 vessel-seasons.

Estimates of Gray Whale Catches and Total Removals

The number of gray whales taken (i.e. secured and processed) was estimated for each gray whaling season between 1846 and 1874 (Fig. 8; with, for example, the 1858-59 season denoted as 1859) as the product of the estimated number of vessel-seasons that were, or maybe were, gray whaling in the low, medium, and high vessel-season cases (Fig. 7) times the average number of gray whales secured per vessel-season in the respective time periods (Table 1). The standard errors of the estimated takes were computed from the corresponding sample standard errors of the number of vessel-seasons and of the mean gray whales landed per vessel-season for each of the three cases (Table 4). For the medium case, the estimated catch reflects a combination of differences in the average catch rates by period and the variability in numbers of vessels whaling each year, with the number of vessel-seasons rising to a peak in the early 1860's and then declining rapidly (Fig. 7).

[FIGURE 8 OMITTED]

There is a greater spread between the estimated landings for the three vessel-season case lines in some years than in others, especially during the middle years of the fishery, which are also the years that contribute most to the cumulative catch. In most of those years, the spread between the estimated landings for the three case lines is less than the width of the confidence intervals around the medium-case estimates (Fig. 8). In other words, the uncertainty in the estimated landings due to the standard errors (as reflected by the confidence intervals) is greater than the uncertainty due to the cases (as reflected by the spread between the case lines in the figure). We interpret this to mean that our estimation of landings would be improved most efficiently by reading more logbooks and not by simply trying to resolve more of the Unknown or Maybe gray whaling vessel-seasons.

The estimated total number of gray whales taken (secured and processed) by whalers in Mexican waters was 5,269 (SE = 223.4) for the medium vessel-season case, and ranged to roughly 9% lower and 7% higher for the low and high cases, respectively (Table 4). To estimate the total number of whales removed, an adjustment needs to be made to account for whales that were struck and lost (Table 2). At a minimum, a LRF of 1.06 can be applied to landings to account for the animals that were lost because they sank, because of poor weather, or because they escaped spouting blood (considered by the whalers as an indication of certain death). Alternatively, landings can be multiplied by 1.42 to account for all whales struck, regardless of their "condition" (Table 5).

Thus, actual removals would be at least 5,076 to 5,961, using the LRF of 1.06, although it is unreasonable to assume that no other struck whales died of their injuries. The estimated total number of struck whales would be between 6,800 and 7,986. However, it is also unreasonable to assume full mortality of all struck whales. Even though, as mentioned earlier, bomb lances were frequently used to subdue gray whales in the Mexican whaling grounds, not all bomb lances exploded. This is evidenced by the report from one California shore station where the equipment was said to be "of marginal quality" and "two thirds of the whales wounded were lost due to the harpoon's failure to explode" (Nichols, 1983:109, citing the diary of a judge who visited the whaling station at Ballard Point in 1860). In another example from the shore fishery (at Point Conception, California, 1879-80), all but one of 16 gray whales secured bore wounds attributed to previous strikes by bomb-lances (Jordan, 1887).

We are aware of two other studies that attempted to address the struck-lost issue in novel ways. Bannister et al. (1981), in their study of sperm whaling on the Japan Ground, sorted logbook records into three classes: whales tried out, whales struck and lost, and whales lost spouting blood. They then provided alternative LRF's, dependent on assumptions--one that only those lost spouting blood were "removed" (LRF: 1.20) and the other that all struck whales were removed (LRF: 1.61). This allowed them to offer two alternative estimates of total removals by year, essentially one high and one low, i.e. "a range within which total removals from the stock may lie during the study period ..." (Bannister et al., 1981:830). Because their main interest was in trends in catches and catch per unit of effort, rather than in aggregate totals of whales removed (as here), Bannister et al. apparently saw no need to comment on which of their sets of estimates was likely the more accurate.

The other study (Mitchell and Reeves, 1983) assigned logbook records of humpback whale catches to six classes: 1) whales tried out, 2) whales known to have been killed but that were lost, 3) whales struck and lost but with no specific details on the circumstances, 4) whales struck and lost because the "iron drew," 5) whales struck and lost carrying gear, and 6) calves whose mothers were known to have been killed (i.e. they were orphaned on the calving grounds). These authors then developed a single LRF (1.86), based on the assumption that all of the whales in classes 1, 2, 5, and 6 and half of the whales in classes 3 and 4 were removed. They then used this single LRF to estimate removals from landings.

We are not able to evaluate in a meaningful way the potential of gray whales to survive various types of encounters with 19th century ship-based commercial whalers on the breeding grounds. Therefore, we have chosen to present multiple options according to assumptions, essentially following the lead of Bannister et al. (1981).

To account for the total effect of ship-based whaling on the gray whale population, the estimated 539 whales removed on the feeding grounds in the Bering and Chukchi Seas (Henderson, 1984) would need to be added.

Discussion

Comparisons to Earlier Estimates

Estimates of catches or total removals of gray whales by other authors have accounted for the various relevant whaling operations in different ways, and this makes it difficult to compare those estimates with ours. Henderson (1984) estimated that 4,466-4,516 eastern gray whales were secured and processed by ship-based whalers in Mexico between 1846 and 1874. This compares with our medium-case estimate of total landings of 5,269 (SE = 223.4). Henderson's estimates of landings were based largely on reported whale oil production, while ours are based on average landings per vessel-season. Our decision to consider the medium case for vessel-season uncertainty (Table 4) as providing our "best" estimates of total landings reflects our considered judgment concerning the many uncertainties surrounding the 19th century commercial catch history.

Henderson (1984) assumed that on the Mexican grounds, one whale was "mortally wounded" for every 10 secured, so his loss-adjusted estimate of total removals from those grounds was 4,913--4,968. Our medium-case estimate of total removals is 5,585 when we account only for whales that were lost due to sinking or escaped spouting blood and 7,482 if we assume (unrealistically) that all struck whales eventually died of their wounds. Thus, our medium-case estimate of removals in Mexico is somewhere between about 12 and 52% higher than that of Henderson (1984). We have made no attempt to investigate catches in the northern summering areas and therefore accept Henderson's (1984) estimate of an additional 402 eastern gray whales landed there, which he adjusted to 539 removed, assuming that in the north one whale was mortally wounded for every five secured. Adding that value to our range of Medium-case estimates suggests that a total of 6,124 to 8,021 gray whales were removed from the eastern North Pacific population.

Scammon (1874:23) stated: "From what data we have been able to obtain, the whole number of California Gray Whales which have been captured or destroyed since the bay-whaling commenced, in 1846, would not exceed 10,800." Because Scammon was well acquainted with whaling activities throughout the range of this gray whale population, we infer that his figure of 10,800 was meant to include all removals (catches plus hunting loss) by 1) ship-based commercial whalers in the Mexican breeding areas as well as in the northern feeding areas, 2) shore-based commercial whalers in California (Scammon, 1874:251), and 3) shore-based aboriginal whalers in northern latitudes (Scammon, 1874:29-32). We are not aware of any specific estimates of commercial ship-based catches by Scammon, but he gave the shore-based commercial catch between about 1850 and 1874 as "not less than 2,160," to which he proposed adding 20% to account "for the number of whales that escaped their pursuers, although mortally wounded, or were lost after being killed either by sinking in deep water or through stress of weather" (1874:251).

Scammon did not attempt to quantify the removals by aboriginal whalers but made a number of statements implying that he was aware of how widespread this whaling was and of its importance to some aboriginal communities. For example, in describing gray whale hunting by Indians of Washington and British Columbia and by Eskimos in the Arctic, he notes (1874:32) that in those northern latitudes the gray whale "is exposed to attack from the savage tribes inhabiting the sea-shores, who pass much of their time in the canoe, and consider the capture of this singular wanderer a feat worthy of the highest distinction." Given the incompleteness of information on how Scammon derived his estimate of total removals from the population, we cannot meaningfully evaluate the differences between his estimate of the ship-based commercial component and our own.

Finally, our estimates are considerably higher than those of Best (1987), who estimated landings on a voyage by voyage basis in two ways: 1) using published oil returns and Henderson's estimate of 35 barrels/whale for an estimate of 2,665 gray whales secured, and 2) using an average catch per voyage derived from Townsend (1935) for an estimate of 3,013 gray whales. He made no attempt to account for whales struck but lost. Moreover, he suggested that his catch estimates were 6-19% too low because he, unlike Henderson (1984), did not account for catches by non-U.S. registered vessels. Importantly, Best (1987) made no attempt to distinguish between eastern and western gray whales even though whales from both "stocks" were included in the oil data and the Townsend tabulations. It is unlikely that our inclusion of non-U.S.-registered vessels would account for the differences between our estimates and Best's estimates, considering that American vessels were responsible for 89% of the total ship-based gray whaling activity.

Uncertainties in the Estimates

Several of the uncertainties in our estimates of gray whale landings and removals are accounted for in the estimation variances, including the variability in the number of whales landed per vessel-season, the loss rate factor, and the prorating of the vessel-seasons for which we had no information about gray whaling activity. In sum, the width of the confidence interval for the medium-case estimate of total landings (4,811-5,726, Table 4), which reflects the sampling uncertainty, is 17% of the estimate. That percentage is similar to the difference between the low-case estimate and the high-case estimate (4,789 and 5,624, respectively), which is 15.8% of the medium-case point estimate and reflects the case variability.

We also explored the sensitivity of our estimates to the arbitrary assumption that half of the vessels in Mexican waters judged to have been "maybe" gray whaling actually were gray whaling. To do this, we computed estimates assuming that as few as one quarter or as many as three quarters of the "maybe" vessels actually were gray whaling. This resulted in differences of less than 5% in the estimated total landings. Thus, the magnitude of this uncertainty is small compared to that of uncertainty due to sampling variability and also small when compared to the differences among the three cases of numbers of vessel-seasons.

Another point to consider is that it was not always possible to distinguish vessels that gray whaled unsuccessfully (i.e. chased gray whales but made no catch) from those that pursued only other species (e.g. humpback whales or sperm whales). This inability to identify such "zero-catch" vessel-seasons would have biased our list of gray whaling vessel-seasons downward, but at the same time it would have biased our estimates of the average catch of gray whales per vessel-season upward. The two effects would tend to offset each other to an unknown extent, but the latter would likely be greater than the former because of the relatively small size of the sample used to estimate average catch per vessel-season.

Temporal Changes in Catch Levels

Gray whaling in the eastern North Pacific by 19th century ship-based whalers was concentrated in a 3-decade period, with the bulk of the landings occurring between 1853 and 1863. Levels of both whaling activity (Fig. 7) and landings (Fig. 8) increased steadily over the decade beginning in 1853. Effort dropped abruptly in 1861, at the start of the U.S. Civil War, although it rapidly recovered to levels lying between the 1861 low and the pre-1861 high. Landings per vessel-season declined disproportionately as whaling became much less productive, with landings dropping by 45% from the peak level of 14.0 from 1856 to 1860 to a low of 7.9 from 1866 to 1874 (Table 1).

The decline in ship-based whaling activity paralleled the decline in shore-based gray (and humpback) whaling along the coast of California (Reeves and Smith, 2010). It is unlikely that the decline in either fishery was due to changes in the price of whale oil because, although the price declined briefly in the 1860's, it had recovered by the 1870's, even as gray whaling continued to decline. It is difficult to judge whether catch rates or effort to kill gray whales in the northern feeding areas also declined, given the relatively small catches there and the fact that the available tabulations (Henderson, 1972, 1984) provide only very coarse temporal resolution (i.e. totals approximately by decade).

The overall decline in gray whale catches in the 1860's was interpreted by some contemporary observers as a reflection of whale depletion. For example, when an American employee of a land-concessions company visited Baja California in 1866, he claimed that lagoon and alongshore whaling was no longer profitable and nearly abandoned, noting that two whaleships in Magdalena Bay had taken only two whales so far that season "though they had scoured the waters of the bay for two months" (Browne, 1966:60-61, as cited by Nichols, 1983:33). Scammon (1874:33) described the large bays and lagoons "where these animals once congregated, brought forth and nurtured their young" as "nearly deserted" by the early 1870's.

Gray whaling in the eastern North Pacific nearly ceased after the mid 1870's and until the early 20th century, except for aboriginal whaling (Mitchell, 1979; O'Leary, 1984; Mitchell and Reeves, 1990), small and sporadic catches by California shore whalers (Reeves and Smith, 2010), and occasional ship-based whaling on the feeding grounds (Bockstoce, 1986). Even if the eastern gray whale population was as depleted as suggested by first-hand observers in the late 1860's and 1870's, the lower intensity of whaling in subsequent decades should have allowed it to recover to some degree in the latter 19th and early 20th centuries. The extent of such recovery has not been revealed by assessment models that incorporate previous estimates of 19th century removals (as discussed above), which appear to be inconsistent with the population increases observed in the latter half of the 20th century.

Modern factory-ship whaling on gray whales began in 1914, and, by 1946, Norway, the United States, the Soviet Union, and Japan had taken a total of about 940 eastern gray whales in various parts of the population's range (Reeves, 1984). In addition, an uncertain number of gray whales (possibly several hundred) were taken in the 1930's off southern California by the U.S. factory ship California (Brownell and Swartz, 2007). The biological or population-level significance of these removals would have been considerable if the population was near extinction in the early 20th century as assumed by some contemporary observers (Andrews, 1916; Starks, 1922). The degree of depletion of eastern gray whales caused by 19th and early 20th century commercial whaling remains uncertain, but a recent assessment model, which incorporates 20th century population increases but uses only the record of removals since 1930, suggests that the population was on the order of a few thousand in 1930 (Brandon and Punt, 2009).

Implications for Population Assessment

We have no doubt that this effort of ours to build upon the legacy of David Henderson has provided a more complete and accurate picture than was previously available of the numbers of whales removed by ship whalers in the 19th century. The total estimates presented here for 19th century ship-based whaling in Mexico, along with those in our recent reanalysis of 19th century California shore-based gray whaling (Reeves and Smith, 2010), are not, however, substantially different from previously available estimates of removals by these two components of the overall commercial fishery.

Further, we are not aware of any substantial improvements on the earlier estimates for aboriginal gray whaling (IWC, 1993) and ship-based gray whaling north of Mexico (Henderson, 1984). The only significant improvement on estimates of 20th century landings is the previously overlooked 20th century removals by California (see above). Therefore, judging by the sensitivity analyses of Butterworth et al. (2002) and Wade (2002), there is no reason to expect that uncertainties about population status associated with previous population modeling approaches would be resolved by incorporating our new estimates of removals.

It is relevant to consider the possibility that lagoon whaling had a more severe effect than would be evident solely from the record of removals. As indicated above, our logbook data confirm that lagoon whaling in Mexico focused on adult females with calves. Further, although calves apparently were seldom tried out (i.e. secured and processed), many were wounded if not killed outright as the whalers attempted to secure their mothers, and many more were orphaned when their mothers were killed. Given that logbooks do not consistently record the presence and fate of calves, it is unlikely that data needed for rigorous quantitative estimates of calf "removal" levels can be obtained.

Although we currently have no way of apportioning the aggregate catch data by area, i.e. inner lagoons vs. lagoon entrances vs. outer coasts (alongshore whaling), it is possible that, with closer scrutiny of logbooks and other sources, this could be done. For example, in the early years of exploitation of a given lagoon, the hardest hit group may have been the cows with calves in the inner reaches. Only after a few years, as that component became depleted, would the whalers have spent substantial time pursuing the more difficult-to-catch and individually lower-yield quarry (bulls, juveniles, and resting females) that congregated in the outer parts of the lagoons and along the outer coasts (Norris et al., 1983; Swartz, 1986). Thus, the composition of catches (specifically the proportion of calving/nursing cows and, in turn, the numbers of killed, mortally wounded, or orphaned calves) could be estimated, based on the pattern of discovery and exploitation of each lagoon.

In any event, the lagoon fishery for gray whales must have had a greater effect on the population than either an unbiased removal regime or a regime biased toward an age or sex class other than adult females (Cooke, 1986). Friday and Smith (2003) showed that the harvest pattern associated with lagoon whaling would have the highest per capita impacts of any pattern considered. A complete assessment of the status of the population will require accounting in some way not only for the sex ratio of the adults removed, but also for the calves that were killed or orphaned, and presumably died, as a consequence of whaling operations.

Further Research

As noted above, our new estimates of the commercial catch history do not come anywhere near to the 60% increase needed to fit existing population models of the eastern gray whale population (Butterworth et al., 2002; Wade, 2002). Also, our numbers, when combined with the relatively well-documented catch levels of the 20th century and the best available estimates of aboriginal catches, do not appear consistent with the genetically derived estimate of average long-term abundance of about 96,000 by Alter et al. (2007), which refers to the entire North Pacific basin and thus encompasses both eastern and western populations.

Thus, two major problems remain. One is the difficulty of obtaining reasonable estimates of historical carrying capacity from catch-based population models. The other is that estimates of historical abundance derived from analyses of genetic variability seem far too high, given what is known about total removals by whaling and recent or current estimated population size.

At least four avenues of investigation to address these problems come to mind: 1) further reconstruction of the catch history, 2) reassessment of the demographic and social effects of lagoon whaling, especially in regard to calving, nursing, and breeding, 3) searching for a better understanding of environmental or ecological factors that determine carrying capacity for gray whales, and 4) reevaluation of the underlying assumptions and methods of genetic variability-based estimates of abundance.

With regard to the first of these, catch history, we suggest that future effort should focus on the poorly documented but long history of whaling for gray whales by aboriginal people throughout the North Pacific, including the Bering and Chukchi Sea coasts (Mitchell, 1979; O'Leary, 1984; Krupnik, 1984; Mitchell and Reeves, 1990) and on the better documented but incomplete history of gray whaling in the western North Pacific. Although there are reasonably good records from Japan (Omura, 1984; Kato and Kasuya, 2002), this is not the case for Korea and China (e.g. Reeves et al., 2008).

In addition, improvements could be made in our present estimates for the eastern North Pacific by sampling additional logbooks to determine landings per vessel-season. Linking the vessel-season data in the Appendix to information in the American Offshore Whaling Voyage database (Lund et al., 2008) reveals that we have sampled about 25% of the extant relevant logbooks. Sampling more logbooks would address uncertainties in our estimation procedures in two ways: 1) by reducing the numbers of Maybe and Unknown vessel-seasons (Table 3) and 2) by reducing the standard errors of the average numbers of whales taken in vessel-seasons that we know involved gray whaling (Table 1).

The resources available for this study were not sufficient to allow additional logbook sampling, but with the information provided here concerning the uncertainties, together with the information in the Appendix and the AOWV database on logbook availability, it should be possible to design an efficient sampling scheme to improve our estimates in a number of ways. Such a scheme would allow greater statistical precision and, with more emphasis on catch locations (e.g. deep inside the lagoons, in the lagoon entrances, or along the outer coast) than was possible in this study, allow us to partition removals by area and hence age/sex class, at least to some extent. It is also worth noting that the estimate of ship-based landings north of Mexico (Henderson, 1984) is not well documented, and further examination of the data on which it is based could be useful.

With regard to the second avenue of investigation, the effects of lagoon whaling, it may be useful to explore population models that would better account for the effects of whaling on a population's breeding grounds. This issue was raised previously by Cooke (1986) and subsumed by Butterworth et al. (2002:66) under the rubric of depensation, which they defined as "the phenomenon of a decrease in the per capita growth rate of a resource when population size is reduced below a certain level." However, the issue deserves further exploration and should explicitly include consideration of the differential sex ratio of the catches, the deaths of calves, and the disruptive effects of whaling at the point in the life cycle when females give birth, nurse their young, and conceive (Friday and Smith, 2003).

With regard to the third avenue, carrying capacity, there has been considerable speculation in the literature on how and to what extent the environmental carrying capacity for gray whales has changed over time. For this species, with its long-distance migration and the sharp geographical separation between its feeding and breeding habitat, population size could be limited either by the size and condition of Mexican lagoons or by the extent and productivity of boreal and Arctic shelf waters. Half a century ago, there was lively debate concerning how much gray whale breeding habitat had been lost in southern California and Mexico, whether due to inshore vessel traffic (Gilmore and Ewing, 1954), cooling sea temperatures (Hubbs, 1959), or sea level fluctuations and other geophysical processes (Gilmore, 1976).

More recently, the emphasis has been on food limitation. A large-scale die-off along the west coast of North America in 1999 fueled speculation that foraging conditions for gray whales in the Bering and Chukchi Seas had deteriorated, leading to poor survival and low calf production (Le Boeuf et al., 2000). The die-off continued in 2000, with a relatively high proportion of the mortality consisting of subadult and adult whales and with some but not all of the dead animals exhibiting signs of nutritional stress (Gulland et al., 2005). Annual strandings returned to background levels from 2001 through 2006 (Brownell et al., 2007), and Moore et al. (2001) concluded, "The causes of the recent spate of gray whale deaths may never be discovered." The factors determining carrying capacity for gray whales are not clearly known, and alternative model formulations may be useful for exploring this issue further.

Finally, with regard to the fourth avenue, the reliability of genetic variability-based estimates of average long-term abundance, concerns have been raised about such things as the mutation rate attributed to gray whales, the relationship of effective and census population size, the demographic and social characteristics assumed, and the applicability of genetic variability-based estimates of abundance to contemporary (or recent historic) populations (Palsboll et al., 2007; Alter and Palumbi, 2007; Palsboll, 2009). Although such concerns were addressed to some degree by Alter et al. (2007) and Alter and Palumbi (2007), further testing is needed of both the methodology and the assumptions leading to those authors' seemingly very high estimate of average long-term abundance compared to estimates of pre-whaling abundance derived from other methods.

Appendix

Identity of vessels whaling in Mexico during the gray whaling
winter season from 1846 to 1874 showing the vessel name (Vessel).
the nationality of registry (Nat). the vessel number (Ves). and
the voyage number (Voy). Also shown are the source of information
on each vessel-season (VS) and the likelihood that each vessel-
season involved gray whaling (GW). For vessel-seasons where we had
information on landings. the estimated number of gray whales taken
during that season (EGW) and the nature of the source of those
landings (LS) is indicated. Voyage and vessel numbers for American
vessels are from the American Offshore Whaling Voyage database
(Lund et al., 2008) and the voyage numbers for the French vessels
are from Annex 7 of du Pasquier (1982:242-9. as 30.000 plus the
numerical sequence). Details of the American vessels and voyages
can be obtained by tracing the Ves and Voy values given here into
the National Maritime Data Library (www.nmdl.org).

Coded Fields:

VS (Vessel Source): H = Henderson (1972, 1984, and unpublished
notes and files), O = Other, primarily Hawaii port records
GW (Gray Whaling): Y = Yes, M = Maybe, N = No, U = Unknown

LS (Landings Source): L = logbook we read, T = logbook read by
Townsend (1935), N = newspaper.

Vessel                 Season   Nationality      Ves     Voy    VS

A. M. Simpson           1860    American         809      35    H
Addison                 1859    American           3     229    H
Adeline                 1854    American           2     257    O
Adeline                 1863    American           2     259    H
Adeline                 1864    American           2     259    H

Agate                   1857    American         795     341    O
Agate                   1858    American         795     341    H
Agate                   1859    American         795     341    H
Alexander               1854    American           5     465    H
Alexander Coffin        1854    American          13     517    O

Alice                   1859    Hawaiian                        H
Alice                   1861    American         842     550    H
Almira                  1861    American         806     672    O
Almira                  1866    American         806     763    O
Almira                  1867    American         806     673    H

Aloha                   1860    Hawaiian                        O
Alpha                   1865    American          36     693    H
Alpha                   1866    American          36     694    H
Alpha                   1867    American          36     694    O
America                 1847    American           6     818    H

America                 1853    American           6     825    H
America                 1854    American           6     825    H
Antilla                 1859    Hawaiian                        H
Antilla                 1860    Hawaiian                        O

Aquetnet                1852    American         898    1146    O
Aquetnet                1853    American         898    1146    H
Arab                    1856    American         899    1166    H
Arab                    1864    American          39    1173    O
Architect               1857    American         902            O

Arnolda                 1854    American          18    1254    O
Arnolda                 1865    American          18    1257    H
Arnolda                 1866    American          18    1257    H
Aurora                  1868    American          37    1438    H
Baltic                  1854    American          73    1526    O

Barnstable              1858    American         718    1592    H
Barnstable              1863    American         718    1593    H
Bartholomew Gosnold     1858    American          72    1600    O
Bartholomew Gosnold     1861    American          72    1602    O
Bartholomew Gosnold     1864    American          72    1603    H

Bartholomew Gosnold     1865    American          72    1603    H
Bay State               1854    Undetermined                    H
Belle                   1855    American         963    1645    O
Belle                   1855    American         964    1647    O
Bengal                  1854    American         968    1735    H

Bengal                  1855    American         968    1735    H
Benjamin Morgan         1858    American         970    1765    O
Benjamin Morgan         1859    American         970    1765    H
Benjamin Rush           1858    American         971    1776    O
Benjamin Rush           1859    American         971    1776    H

Benjamin Rush           1865    Undetermined                    O
Benjamin Tucker         1858    American          63    1786    H
Bingham                 1848    American         986    1871    H
Black Eagle             1853    American          78    1880    O
Black Eagle             1858    American          78    1881    O

Black Prince            1863    Undetermined                    H
Black Warrior           1857    Hawaiian                        O
Black Warrior           1858    Hawaiian                        O
Black Warrior           1859    Hawaiian                        H
Boston                  1857    American        1000    1945    H

Boston                  1858    American        1000    1946    H
Bowditch                1848    American        1001    1976    H
Braganza                1858    American          69    2004    H
Brookline               1847    American        1011    2060    H
Brunswick               1863    American          71    2107    H

Brunswick               1864    American          71    2107    H
Brunswick               1865    American          71    2107    H
Cabinet                 1847    American        1016    2132    H
California              1854    American          93    2193    O
California              1861    American          93    2195    H

California              1863    American          93    2196    H
California              1864    American          93    2196    H
California              1865    American          93    2196    H
California              1868    American          93    2197    O
Callao                  1857    American          80    2227    H

Callao                  1861    American          80    2228    H
Cambria                 1861    American          82    2243    H
Camilla                 1864    American         132    2255    H
Camilla                 1865    American         132    2255    H
Camilla                 1866    American         132    2255    H

Camilla                 1867    American         132    2255    H
Candace                 1855    American        1029    2284    H
Canton Packet           1865    American          88    2334    H
Carib                   1858    American        1034    2364    H
Carib                   1859    American        1034    2365    H

Carib                   1860    American        1034    2365    H
Carib                   1862    American        1034   16805    H
Carlotta                1871    American        1035    2373    H
Caroline E. Foote       1864    American        1038    2401    H
Caroline E. Foote       1865    American        1038   16783    H

Caroline E. Foote       1866    American        1038    2402    H
Caroline E. Foote       1871    American        1038    2403    H
Catharine               1847    American        1055    2470    H
Catharine               1863    American        1054    2468    H
Catharine               1864    American        1054    2468    H

Catharine               1865    American        1054    2468    H
Cavalier                1853    American         125    2497    H
Champion                1858    American        1064    2526    H
Champion                1867    American        1064    2528    O
Chandler Price          1861    American         116    2556    H

Chariot                 1854    American        1068   16947    O
Charles Carroll         1856    American                        H
Charles Frederick       1853    American          90    2676    H
Charles Phelps          1846    American        1085    2696    H
Charles Phelps          1852    American        1085    2698    O

Charles W. Morgan       1858    American          89    2716    O
Charles W. Morgan       1859    American          89    2716    O
Charles W. Morgan       1861    American          89    2717    H
Charles W. Morgan       1862    American          89    2717    H
Cherokee                1853    American         101    2811    H

Cherokee                1854    American         101    2811    O
Citizen                 1848    American         115    2902    H
Citizen                 1853    American        1104    2898    O
Citizen                 1854    American        1104    2898    O
Clematis                1855    American        1112    2967    H

Clement                 1853    American        1113    2974    H
Clementine              1848    German                          O
Cleone                  1861    American         121    2977    H
Cleopatra               1859    Columbia                        H
Columbia                1852    American        1121    3021    H

Columbia                1853    American        1121    3021    H
Columbus                1858    American         110    3092    H
Comet                   1861    German                          H
Comet                   1862    German                          H
Comet                   1863    German                          H

Comet                   1864    German                          H
Congress                1865    American         112    3254    O
Congress                1866    American         112    3254    H
Congress                1867    American         112    3254    H

Congress II             1861    American         113    3258    H
Congress II             1862    American         113    3258    O
Coral                   1861    American         109    3323    H
Corinthian              1859    American          97    3357    O
Corinthian              1861    American          97    3357    O
Corinthian              1867    American          97    3359    O

Corinthian              1868    American          97    3359    H
Cornelius Howland       1865    American         103    3405    H
Cornelius Howland       1866    American         103    3405    H
Cornelius Howland       1867    American         103    3405    H
Cornelius Howland       1870    American         103    3407    O

Cosmopolite             1848    French                  30511   H
Cowper                  1854    American         117    3476    O
Cynthia                 1859    Hawaiian                        H
Cynthia                 1860    Hawaiian                        O
Cynthia                 1861    Hawaiian                        H

Dartmouth               1857    American         145    3599    H
Delaware                1855    American        1198    3659    H
Delaware                1860    American        1198    3663    H
Delaware                1861    American        1198   16809    H
Delaware                1862    American        1198   16809    H

Draper                  1857    American         147    3858    H
Draper                  1858    American         147    3858    O
Dromo                   1846    American        1232    3864    H
Dromo                   1852    American        1232    3866    H
Dromo                   1859    American        1232    3869    H

Eagle                   1857    American        1244    3988    H
Eagle                   1858    American         177    3982    H
Eagle                   1867    American         177    3984    O
Eagle                   1868    American         177    3984    H
Eagle                   1868    American        2811   16952    H

Eagle                   1869    American        2811   16953    H
Eagle                   1869    American         177    3984    H
Edward                  1848    American         180    4020    H
Edward L. Frost         1852    American        2813   17047    H
Edward L. Frost         1855    American        2813   16957    O

Edward L. Frost         1857    American        2813   16957    H
Edward L. Frost         1858    American        2813   16958    H
Electra                 1861    American        1261    4119    H
Eliza                   1858    American         193    4141    H
Eliza Adams             1853    American         199    4171    H

Eliza Adams             1854    American         199    4171    O
Eliza Adams             1860    American         199    4173    H
Eliza Adams             1865    American         199    4174    H
Eliza Adams             1866    American         199    4174    H
Elizabeth Swift         1865    American         190    4268    H

Ellen                   1859    American        1283    4271    H
Emeline                 1855    American        1288    4349    H
Emerald                 1858    American         178    4371    O
Emerald                 1859    American         178    4371    H
Emerald                 1860    American         178    4371    H

Emerald                 1861    American         178    4371    H
Emily Morgan            1868    American         170    4407    H
Emily Morgan            1871    American         170    4409    H
Emma Rooke              1862    Hawaiian                        O
Emperor                 1852    American        1299            H

Emperor                 1853    American        1299            H
Endeavor                1866    American         173    4492    H
Endeavor                1867    American         173    4492    H
Erie                    1851    American        2753    4583    H
Erie                    1860    American        2753    4585    H

Espadon                 1854    French                 30554    O
Eugenia                 1867    American         198    4656    H
Euphrates               1859    American         175    4688    H
Euphrates               1860    American         175    4688    O
Euphrates               1864    American         175    4689    H

Euphrates               1865    American         175    4689    H
Europa                  1861    American        1328    4692    H
Europa                  1864    American        1328    4693    H
Europa                  1865    American        1328    4693    H
Europa                  1868    American        1328    4694    H

Fabius                  1860    American         222    4784    H
Fabius                  1861    American         222    4784    H
Fabius                  1863    American         222    4785    H
Fabius                  1864    American         222    4785    H
Fabius                  1865    American         222    4785    H

Faith                   1859    British                         H
Fame                    1852    Undetermined                    H
Fanny                   1858    American        1361    4887    O
Fanny                   1860    American        1361    4887    O
Fanny                   1866    American        1361    4889    H

Fanny                   1867    American        1361    4889    H
Fanny                   1868    American        1361    4889    H
Fanny                   1871    American        1361    4890    H
Favorite                1856    American        2817   16992    H
Florence                1864    Hawaiian                        H

Florida                 1861    American         213    5004    H
Florida                 1862    American         213    5004    H
Florida                 1866    American         213    5005    H
Florida                 1867    American         213    5005    H
Florida II              1861    American        1376    5009    H

Fortune                 1858    American         224    5041    O
Fortune                 1859    American         224    5041    H
Fortune                 1860    American         224    5041    H
Frances Henrietta       1854    American         217    5133    H
Frances Palmer          1858    American        1392   16996    H

Francis                 1856    American        1399    5163    H
Francis                 1857    American        1399    5165    O
Francis                 1858    American        1399    5165    H
Franklin                1858    American        1411    5300    H
Franklin                1860    American        1411    5300    O

Gay Head                1867    American         253    5405    H
Gay Head                1868    American         253    5405    H
General Pike            1860    American         235    5499    O
General Scott           1858    American                        O
General Scott           1861    American         263    5511    H

General Scott           1867    American        1441    5513    O
General Scott           1868    American        1441    5513    H
General Teste           1852    French                 30529    O
General Teste           1854    French                 30555    O
General Williams        1860    American        1445    5534    H

General Williams        1861    American        1445    5534    H
George                  1853    American        1464    5594    H
George                  1856    American        2820   16999    O
George                  1867    American         234    5578    H
George                  1871    American         234    5579    O
George Howland          1855    American         236    5694    O

George Howland          1860    American         236    5695    H
George Howland          1861    American         236    5695    H
George Howland          1864    American         236    5696    H
George Howland          1868    American         236    5697    H

George Howland          1869    American         236    5697    H
George Washington       1860    American        2735    5747    O
George and Mary         1860    American        1450    5633    H
George and Mary         1860    American         259    5645    H
Good Return II          1854    American         218    5903    O

Good Return II          1860    American         218    5905    O
Governor Troup          1860    American         247    5952    O
Governor Troup          1864    American         247    5955    H
Governor Troup          1865    American         247    5955    H
Governor Troup          1866    American         247    5955    H

Gratitude               1864    American         248    6011    O
Gustave                 1861    French                 30582    O
Hae Hawaii              1868    Hawaiian                        O
Hansa                   1848    German                          O
Harmony                 1860    Hawaiian                        H

Harmony                 1861    Hawaiian                        H
Harmony                 1862    Hawaiian                        O
Harrison                1867    American         279   17049    O
Harvest                 1862    American         282    6256    H
Helen Mar               1867    American         290    6337    H

Helen Mar               1868    American         290    6337    H
Helen Snow              1874    American         284            O
Henry                   1855    American        1581    6394    O
Henry                   1857    American        1584    6414    H
Henry Kneeland          1860    American         280    6438    H

Henry Kneeland          1861    American         280    6438    H
Hercules                1856    American         271    6542    O
Hercules                1859    American         271    6543    H
Hercules                1865    American         271    6544    H
Hercules                1869    American         271    6545    O

Hercules                1870    American         271    6545    H
Heroine                 1854    American                        O
Hibernia                1855    American         273    6667    H
Hibernia                1856    American         273    6667    H
Hibernia                1857    American         273    6667    O

Hibernia                1859    American         273    6668    H
Hibernia II             1846    American         285    6678    H
Hibernia II             1847    American         285    6678    H
Hibernia II             1870    American         285    6676    O
Hillman                 1859    American         287    6704    H

Hillman                 1864    American         287    6705    O
Hillman                 1865    American         287    6705    H
Hope                    1848    American         210    6771    H
Hopewell                1856    American        1622    6792    H
Huntsville              1853    American        1633    6901    O

Iris                    1867    American                        O
Isabella                1861    American         311    7167    H
Isabella                1862    American         311    7167    H
Isabella                1864    American         311    7168    H
Isabella                1865    American         311    7168    H

Islander                1858    American         312    7184    O
J. D. Thompson          1860    American         345    7208    O
J. D. Thompson          1865    American         345    7211    H
J. D. Thompson          1866    American         345    7211    H
J. D. Thompson          1867    American         345    7211    H

J. E. Donnell           1847    American         331    7216    H
James Allen             1867    American         329    7260    H
James Allen             1868    American         329    7260    O
James Andrews           1856    American         335    7278    H
James Andrews           1857    American         335    7278    H

James Loper             1853    American        1675    7303    O
James Loper             1854    American        1675    7303    O
James Maury             1853    American         330    7308    H
James Maury             1854    American         330    7308    H
James Maury             1855    American         330    7308    H

James Maury             1858    American         330    7309    O
James Trosser           1857    Undetermined                    H
Jane                    1859    Undetermined                    O
Janus II                1857    American         324    7379    O
Janus II                1861    American         324    7380    H

Janus II                1867    American         324    7382    O
Janus II                1868    American         324    7382    O
Jeannette               1860    American         328    7497    H
Jeannette               1861    American         328    7497    H
Jesse D. Carr           1858    American        2873   17012    O

Jireh Perry             1867    American         337    7530    H
John Howland            1860    American         321    7745    H
John Howland            1861    American         321    7745    H
John Howland            1862    American         321    7745    H
John Howland            1863    American         321    7745    H

John Howland            1866    American         321    7747    H
John Howland            1867    American         321    7747    H
John Howland            1868    American         321    7747    O
John Howland            1869    American         321    7747    H
John P. West            1861    American         350    7772    H

John P. West            1864    American         350    7774    H
John P. West            1865    American         350    7774    H
John P. West            1866    American         350    7774    H
John P. West            1867    American         350    7774    H
John and Edward         1853    American         325    7639    H

John and Edward         1854    American         325    7639    H
John and Elizabeth      1846    American        1707    7654    H
John and Elizabeth      1853    American        1707    7656    O
John and Elizabeth      1858    American        1707    7659    O
Joseph Haydn            1854    German                          H

Josephine               1861    American         346    7886    H
Josephine               1865    American         346    7887    O
Josephine               1866    American         346    7887    O
Judson                  1852    Undetermined                    H
Julian                  1858    American         323    7936    O

Jupiter                 1852    American        1744            H
Jupiter                 1853    American        1744    8011    H
Kalama                  1862    Hawaiian                        H
Kamchatka               1865    Undetermined                    H
Kamehameha V            1864    Hawaiian                        O

Kamehameha V            1865    Hawaiian                        O
Kate                    1860    American        1749    8030    H
Kate                    1862    American        1749            H
Kate Darling            1857    Undetermined                    H
Kathleen                1863    American         357    8042    H

Kauai                   1860    German                          O
Kohola                  1862    Hawaiian                        H
Kutusoff                1854    American         356    8094    O
L. C. Richmond          1856    American         377    8103    H
L. C. Richmond          1859    American         377    8104    H

L. C. Richmond          1860    American         377    8104    H
L. C. Richmond          1861    American         377    8104    H
L. P. Foster            1866    American        1758   17050    H
L. P. Foster            1867    American        1758   17051    H
Lagoda                  1848    American         381    8156    O

Lagoda                  1858    American         381    8161    O
Lark                    1856    American        1770    8236    H
Lark                    1859    American        1770    8238    H
Lark                    1860    American        1770    8238    H
Leonore                 1852    American        1790            H

Leonore                 1856    American        1790    8369    H
Leverett                1857    American        1795   16834    O
Levi Starbuck           1852    American         385    8385    O
Levi Starbuck           1859    American         385    8387    H
Levi Starbuck           1861    American         385    8387    H

Lewis                   1860    American         380    8400    O
Liverpool               1856    American         373    8497    H
Liverpool               1865    Undetermined                    O
Louisa                  1854    American         388    8578    O
Louisa                  1873    American         388    8583    H

Louisa                  1874    American         388    8583    H
Lydia                   1867    American         397    8715    H
Lydia                   1868    American         397    8715    H
Magnolia                1847    American         419    8768    H
Magnolia                1848    American         419    8768    H

Majestic                1859    American         453    8795    H
Majestic                1860    American         453    8795    H
Manuella                1866    American        1837    8826    H
Manuella                1867    American        1837    8827    H
Marengo                 1853    American         461    8916    H

Marengo                 1858    American         461    8917    H
Maria                   1861    Hawaiian                        H
Maria                   1862    Chilean                         O
Martha                  1859    American        1869    9096    O
Martha                  1861    American        1869    9096    H

Martha                  1861    American         401    9141    H
Martha                  1865    American         401    9143    H
Martha                  1867    American         401    9143    H
Martha II               1861    American        2852    9163    O
Mary and Martha         1854    American         469    9232    O

Mary and Susan          1853    American        1875    9261    O
Mary and Susan          1871    American         481    9241    H
Massachusetts           1853    American         444    9420    H
Massachusetts           1858    American         444    9422    H
Massachusetts           1859    American        1906    9413    H

Massachusetts           1859    American         444    9422    H
Massachusetts           1867    American         444    9424    H
Massachusetts           1868    American         444    9424    O
Massachusetts           1870    American         444    9427    H
Massachusetts           1871    American         444    9426    H

Massasoit               1859    American        1907    9433    O
Massasoit               1860    American        1907    9433    O
Massasoit               1861    American        1907    9433    H
Maunaloa                1871    Hawaiian                        O
Mechanic                1853    American        1915    9506    H

Mechanic                1854    American        1915    9506    H
Menschikoff             1871    American        1922    9533    H
Mercator                1855    American         408    9569    O
Meteor                  1853    American        1937    9689    H
Metropolis              1859    American        2821   17002    H

Milo                    1861    American         400    9774    H
Milo                    1863    American         400    9774    H
Milo                    1865    American         400    9775    H
Milo                    1866    American         400    9775    H
Milo                    1867    American         400    9775    H

Milton                  1860    American         420    9784    O
Milton                  1864    American         420    9785    H
Minerva                 1853    American         407    9871    O
Minerva II              1850    American         424    9896    H
Mogul                   1854    American        1958    9946    H

Mogul                   1855    American        1958    9946    H
Mogul                   1856    American        1958    9946    H
Monmouth                1861    American        1962    9966    H
Montauk                 1858    American        1966    9976    H
Montezuma               1860    American        1970   10002    H

Montezuma               1861    American        1970   10002    H
Montezuma               1862    American                        H
Montgomery              1850    American         472            O
Monticello              1867    American        1978   10047    O
Montreal                1859    American         467   10062    H

Montreal                1861    American         467   10062    O
Morea                   1846    American         458   10063    H
Mount Wollaston         1865    American         465   10131    H
Nassau                  1865    American         492   10284    H
Nathaniel S. Perkins    1866    American        2021   17052    H

Nathaniel S. Perkins    1867    American        2021   17052    O
Navigator               1857    American        2023   10325    H
Neptune                 1856    American        2032   10376    H
Nevada                  1860    American        2038   10410    H
New England             1860    American         488   10422    H

New England             1861    American         488   10422    H
Nile                    1854    American        2046   10485    O
Nile                    1859    American         491   10491    O
Nile                    1861    American         491   10491    H
Nile                    1863    American         491   10491    H

Nile                    1864    American         491   10491    H
Nile                    1865    American         491   10491    H
Nile                    1866    American         491   10491    H
Nile                    1867    American         491   10491    H
Nimrod                  1855    American                        O

Nimrod                  1865    American         494   10513    H
Norman                  1868    American         505   10576    O
Norman                  1871    American         505   10576    O
North Star              1853    American        2059   10615    H
North Star              1854    American        2059   10615    H

Northern Light          1860    American         503   10622    H
Nye                     1863    American         477   10666    H
Oahu                    1858    Hawaiian                        H
Oahu                    1859    Hawaiian                        H
Oahu                    1860    Hawaiian                        O

Ocean                   1860    American        2073   10698    H
Ocean                   1861    American        2073   10698    H
Ocean                   1862    American        2073   10698    O
Ocean                   1863    American        2073   10698    H
Ocean                   1867    American         515   10692    H

Ocean Bird              1859    American        2065   10718    H
Ocean Bird              1860    American        2065   10718    H
Ocean Bird              1861    American        2065   17053    H
Ocmulgee                1859    American        2076   10730    O
Ocmulgee                1860    American        2076   10730    H

Ohio                    1859    American         516   10781    H
Ohio                    1860    American         516   10781    H
Olive                   1860    American        2091   10825    H
Oliver Crocker          1859    American         519   10844    O
Oliver Crocker          1860    American         519   10844    O

Oliver Crocker          1861    American         519   10844    H
Oliver Crocker          1864    American         519   10845    O
Oliver Crocker          1867    American         519   10847    H
Olivia                  1861    American        2093   10852    H
Omega                   1853    American        2095   10863    H

Ontario                 1861    American        2104   10914    H
Onward                  1860    American         730   10920    H
Onward                  1861    American         730   10920    H
Onward                  1864    American         730   10921    H
Onward                  1865    American         730   10921    H

Onward                  1866    American         730   10921    H
Onward                  1867    American         730   10921    H
Onward                  1870    American         730   10923    H
Oriole                  1865    American         735   10971    H
Oriole                  1868    American         735   10972    H

Orion                   1853    French                 30552    H
Oscar                   1853    American        2118   11025    H
Oscar                   1854    American        2118   11025    H
Pacific                 1860    American         530   11147    O
Pacific                 1861    American         530   11147    H

Page                    1865    American        2134   17056    H
Page                    1866    American        2134   17057    H
Paulina                 1859    American         543   11321    H
Paulina                 1860    American         543   11321    H
Paulina                 1861    American         543            O

Pearl                   1864    American        2158   11341    H
Pfeil                   1857    Hawaiian                        O
Phenix                  1853    American         526   11538    O
Phenix                  1858    American         526   11539    O
Philip                  1861    American        2183   11567    H

Phoenix                 1853    American                        H
Phoenix                 1860    American        2188   11631    H
Phoenix                 1861    American        2188   11631    H
President               1867    American         548   11927    H
Prince de Joinville     1856    American        2241   11986    H

Progress                1868    American         554   11989    O
Progress                1873    American         554   11990    O
Rajah                   1853    American         576   12111    H
Rajah                   1854    American         576   12111    H
Rambler                 1857    American         588   12125    H

Rambler                 1859    American         588   12125    H
Rebecca Sims            1858    American         574   12204    H
Rebecca Sims            1859    American         574   12204    O
Reindeer                1858    American         574   12219    O
Reindeer                1859    American         589   12219    H

Reindeer                1862    American         589   12220    H
Reindeer                1863    American         589   12220    H
Reindeer                1866    American         589   12221    H
Reindeer                1867    American         589   12221    H
Reindeer                1868    American         589   12221    H

Revello                 1854    Chilean                         O
Richard Mitchell        1854    American        2288   12296    H
Richmond                1864    American         573   16962    H
Richmond                1866    American         573   16966    H
Ripple                  1860    American        2295   12348    H

Robert Edwards          1856    American         575   12424    O
Robert Edwards          1861    American         575   12425    H
Robert Morrison         1853    American         586   12430    H
Robin Hood              1861    American        2305   12445    H
Roman                   1853    American         579   12469    H

Roman                   1857    American         579   12470    H
Roman                   1858    American         579   12470    H
Roman II                1853    American         580   12482    H
Roscoe                  1867    American         564   12571    O
Rousseau                1855    American         578   12623    H

Rousseau                1858    American         578   12624    O
Rousseau                1867    American         578   12626    O
S. F. Constantin        1860    Russian                         O
S. H. Waterman          1853    American        2327   12689    H
Sarah                   1846    American        2358   12867    H

Sarah                   1861    American        2359   12858    H
Sarah McFarland         1856    American        2351   17043    H
Sarah McFarland         1861    American        2351   17043    H
Sarah Sheafe            1858    American         617   12947    O
Sarah Warren            1858    American        2354   12957    H

Sarah Warren            1859    American        2354   12958    H
Sarah Warren            1860    American        2354   12958    H
Sarah Warren            1861    American        2354   12959    H
Sarah Warren            1862    American        2354   12960    H
Sarah Warren            1863    American        2354   12961    H

Sarah Warren            1864    American        2354   12961    H
Saratoga                1854    American         614   12964    H
Saratoga                1855    American         614   12964    H
Saratoga                1858    American         614   12965    O
Scotland                1859    American         618   12979    H

Scotland                1861    American         618            O
Sea Breeze              1867    American         628   12991    H
Sea Breeze              1868    American         628   12991    H
Sea Breeze              1869    American         628   12991    H
Sea Breeze              1870    American         628   12991    O

Sea Breeze              1871    American         628   12991    H
Seine                   1860    American         610   13102    O
Seine                   1868    American         610   13105    O
Sharon                  1860    American        2382   13146    H
Sharon                  1861    American        2382   13146    H

Sheffield               1850    American        2384   13152    O
Sheffield               1856    American        2384   13153    H
Sheffield               1858    American        2384   13153    H
Sophie                  1860    Undetermined                    H
South America           1858    American         620   13265    O

Speedwell               1858    American        2414   13328    O
Speedwell               1861    American        2414   13328    H
Splendid                1857    American        2420   13348    H
Splendid                1858    American        2420   13350    O
Splendid                1867    American        2420   13350    O

St. George              1854    American         591   13366    O
St. George              1866    American         591   13368    H
St. George              1867    American         591   13368    H
Superior                1855    American         616   13550    H
Susan Abigail           1864    American       13601            H

Susan Abigail           1865    American        2451            H
Tamerlane               1861    American         656   13695    O
Tamerlane               1864    American         656   13696    H
Tempest                 1860    American        2480   13747    H
Tenedos                 1854    American        2481   13755    H

Tenedos                 1855    American        2481   13755    H
Thomas Dickason         1858    American         657   13797    H
Thomas Dickason         1863    American         657   13798    H
Thomas Dickason         1864    American         657   13798    H
Thomas Dickason         1865    American         657   13798    H

Thomas Dickason         1866    American         657   13799    H
Thomas Dickason         1870    American         657   13801    H
Three Brothers          1867    American         662   13948    H
Tiger                   1847    American        2501   13970    H
Trader                  1869    Undetermined                    H

Trescott                1847    American        2505   14013    H
Trescott                1848    American        2505   14013    H
Trident                 1869    American         651   14044    O
Trident                 1870    American         651   14044    O
Two Brothers            1853    American         648   14200    H

Tybee                   1858    American        2521   14213    O
Uncas                   1853    American         665   14237    H
Union                   1854    Undetermined                    O
United States           1846    American                        H
United States           1847    American                        H

Valparaiso              1854    American         671   15089    O
Venezuela               1853    American        2552   17038    H
Vesper                  1854    American        2557   15129    H
Vesper                  1861    American        2557   15133    H
Victoria                1858    Hawaiian                        H

Victoria                1859    Hawaiian                        H
Victoria                1860    Hawaiian                        H
Victoria                1862    Hawaiian                        H
Victoria                1863    Hawaiian                        H
Victoria                1864    Hawaiian                        O

Vigilant                1858    American         672   15162    H
Vineyard                1868    American        2564   15180    O
Walter Clayton          1853    American                        H
Warren                  1858    American         691   15326    O
Warsaw                  1846    American        2583   15346    H

Waverly                 1865    American         688   15471    H
Whampoa                 1859    Undetermined                    H
William C. Nye          1853    American         684   15626    H
William C. Nye          1863    American         684   15633    H
William C. Nye          1865    American         684   15633    H

William Gifford         1866    American         693   15636    H
William Gifford         1867    American         693   15636    H
William T. Wheaton      1852    American        2621   15717    O
William T. Wheaton      1853    American        2621   15717    H
William T. Wheaton      1855    American        2621   15717    H

William Tell            1856    American        2622   15725    H
Winslow                 1854    French                 30557    H
Winslow                 1865    French                 30597    O
Winslow                 1866    French                 30594    H
Winslow                 1867    French                 30594    H

Zone                    1865    American                        H
Zoroaster               1853    American         700   15934    O
Zuid Pool               1848    Dutch                           O

Vessel                 Season   GW    EGW   LS

A. M. Simpson           1860    N
Addison                 1859    Y
Adeline                 1854    U
Adeline                 1863    Y      16   L
Adeline                 1864    Y      21   L

Agate                   1857    U
Agate                   1858    Y
Agate                   1859    Y
Alexander               1854    M
Alexander Coffin        1854    U

Alice                   1859    Y       9   N
Alice                   1861    Y
Almira                  1861    U
Almira                  1866    Y       4   T
Almira                  1867    Y

Aloha                   1860    Y
Alpha                   1865    M
Alpha                   1866    Y      14   N
Alpha                   1867    M
America                 1847    M

America                 1853    U
America                 1854    U
Antilla                 1859    Y
Antilla                 1860    Y

Aquetnet                1852    U
Aquetnet                1853    Y       5   L
Arab                    1856    N
Arab                    1864    U
Architect               1857    U

Arnolda                 1854    M
Arnolda                 1865    Y
Arnolda                 1866    Y
Aurora                  1868    N
Baltic                  1854    N

Barnstable              1858    Y
Barnstable              1863    Y       2   L
Bartholomew Gosnold     1858    U
Bartholomew Gosnold     1861    N
Bartholomew Gosnold     1864    Y

Bartholomew Gosnold     1865    Y
Bay State               1854    N
Belle                   1855    N
Belle                   1855    N
Bengal                  1854    N

Bengal                  1855    N
Benjamin Morgan         1858    Y
Benjamin Morgan         1859    Y
Benjamin Rush           1858    Y
Benjamin Rush           1859    M

Benjamin Rush           1865    U
Benjamin Tucker         1858    Y
Bingham                 1848    Y
Black Eagle             1853    N       0   T
Black Eagle             1858    Y

Black Prince            1863    U
Black Warrior           1857    M
Black Warrior           1858    Y
Black Warrior           1859    N
Boston                  1857    Y

Boston                  1858    Y
Bowditch                1848    N
Braganza                1858    Y
Brookline               1847    Y      29   N
Brunswick               1863    Y      12   T

Brunswick               1864    Y
Brunswick               1865    U
Cabinet                 1847    M
California              1854    U
California              1861    Y

California              1863    Y
California              1864    Y       4   L
California              1865    Y       9   T
California              1868    M
Callao                  1857    N

Callao                  1861    U
Cambria                 1861    Y      11   T
Camilla                 1864    N
Camilla                 1865    N
Camilla                 1866    Y

Camilla                 1867    N
Candace                 1855    Y
Canton Packet           1865    Y
Carib                   1858    Y
Carib                   1859    Y

Carib                   1860    Y
Carib                   1862    Y
Carlotta                1871    Y
Caroline E. Foote       1864    Y
Caroline E. Foote       1865    Y

Caroline E. Foote       1866    Y
Caroline E. Foote       1871    Y
Catharine               1847    M
Catharine               1863    Y
Catharine               1864    Y

Catharine               1865    M
Cavalier                1853    M
Champion                1858    U
Champion                1867    N
Chandler Price          1861    Y

Chariot                 1854    U
Charles Carroll         1856    N
Charles Frederick       1853    N
Charles Phelps          1846    N       0   L
Charles Phelps          1852    N       0   T

Charles W. Morgan       1858    N
Charles W. Morgan       1859    U
Charles W. Morgan       1861    Y
Charles W. Morgan       1862    Y      13   N
Cherokee                1853    N

Cherokee                1854    N
Citizen                 1848    N
Citizen                 1853    N
Citizen                 1854    Y
Clematis                1855    N

Clement                 1853    Y
Clementine              1848    Y
Cleone                  1861    Y      14   T
Cleopatra               1859    Y
Columbia                1852    N

Columbia                1853    M
Columbus                1858    Y
Comet                   1861    Y    11.5   N
Comet                   1862    Y
Comet                   1863    Y

Comet                   1864    Y
Congress                1865    Y
Congress                1866    N       0   L
Congress                1867    Y       3   L

Congress II             1861    Y
Congress II             1862    Y
Coral                   1861    Y    17.5   N
Corinthian              1859    U
Corinthian              1861    Y
Corinthian              1867    N

Corinthian              1868    N
Cornelius Howland       1865    Y       5   L
Cornelius Howland       1866    Y      19   L
Cornelius Howland       1867    Y
Cornelius Howland       1870    Y       2   L

Cosmopolite             1848    M
Cowper                  1854    N
Cynthia                 1859    Y
Cynthia                 1860    Y
Cynthia                 1861    Y

Dartmouth               1857    Y      27   L
Delaware                1855    Y       6   L
Delaware                1860    Y
Delaware                1861    Y
Delaware                1862    N

Draper                  1857    Y
Draper                  1858    Y
Dromo                   1846    N
Dromo                   1852    Y
Dromo                   1859    Y

Eagle                   1857    U
Eagle                   1858    Y
Eagle                   1867    M
Eagle                   1868    Y       9   T
Eagle                   1868    Y

Eagle                   1869    Y      14   N
Eagle                   1869    Y       9   T
Edward                  1848    M
Edward L. Frost         1852    U
Edward L. Frost         1855    Y

Edward L. Frost         1857    Y
Edward L. Frost         1858    Y
Electra                 1861    Y
Eliza                   1858    Y
Eliza Adams             1853    N       0   L

Eliza Adams             1854    N
Eliza Adams             1860    Y
Eliza Adams             1865    N
Eliza Adams             1866    N
Elizabeth Swift         1865    N

Ellen                   1859    U
Emeline                 1855    U
Emerald                 1858    M
Emerald                 1859    Y
Emerald                 1860    Y

Emerald                 1861    Y
Emily Morgan            1868    N
Emily Morgan            1871    N
Emma Rooke              1862    Y
Emperor                 1852    N

Emperor                 1853    N
Endeavor                1866    M
Endeavor                1867    M
Erie                    1851    U
Erie                    1860    Y

Espadon                 1854    N
Eugenia                 1867    U
Euphrates               1859    N       0   T
Euphrates               1860    Y       1   T
Euphrates               1864    Y

Euphrates               1865    M
Europa                  1861    Y
Europa                  1864    Y
Europa                  1865    U
Europa                  1868    Y       2   L

Fabius                  1860    Y      20   L
Fabius                  1861    Y      13   L
Fabius                  1863    Y
Fabius                  1864    Y       3   L
Fabius                  1865    Y       3   T

Faith                   1859    Y
Fame                    1852    N
Fanny                   1858    U
Fanny                   1860    U
Fanny                   1866    Y       1   T

Fanny                   1867    N       0   T
Fanny                   1868    N
Fanny                   1871    N
Favorite                1856    Y
Florence                1864    Y

Florida                 1861    Y       3   L
Florida                 1862    U
Florida                 1866    Y
Florida                 1867    M
Florida II              1861    U

Fortune                 1858    M
Fortune                 1859    Y
Fortune                 1860    Y
Frances Henrietta       1854    Y
Frances Palmer          1858    Y

Francis                 1856    Y
Francis                 1857    Y
Francis                 1858    N
Franklin                1858    N
Franklin                1860    N

Gay Head                1867    Y
Gay Head                1868    M
General Pike            1860    N
General Scott           1858    N
General Scott           1861    Y

General Scott           1867    M
General Scott           1868    Y
General Teste           1852    U
General Teste           1854    N
General Williams        1860    Y

General Williams        1861    Y
George                  1853    U
George                  1856    U
George                  1867    M
George                  1871    M
George Howland          1855    N

George Howland          1860    Y      16   T
George Howland          1861    Y       8   T
George Howland          1864    Y      14   T
George Howland          1868    Y      10   L

George Howland          1869    N       0   L
George Washington       1860    U
George and Mary         1860    Y
George and Mary         1860    U
Good Return II          1854    N       0   L

Good Return II          1860    M
Governor Troup          1860    N       0   L
Governor Troup          1864    Y       5   T
Governor Troup          1865    Y       2   L
Governor Troup          1866    Y      12   L

Gratitude               1864    Y
Gustave                 1861    Y
Hae Hawaii              1868    Y
Hansa                   1848    Y
Harmony                 1860    Y

Harmony                 1861    Y    18.5   N
Harmony                 1862    Y
Harrison                1867    M
Harvest                 1862    Y
Helen Mar               1867    N

Helen Mar               1868    N
Helen Snow              1874    U
Henry                   1855    Y
Henry                   1857    Y      19   N
Henry Kneeland          1860    Y

Henry Kneeland          1861    Y
Hercules                1856    N
Hercules                1859    Y
Hercules                1865    Y
Hercules                1869    M

Hercules                1870    Y      13   N
Heroine                 1854    M
Hibernia                1855    Y       5   L
Hibernia                1856    N       0   L
Hibernia                1857    N       0   L

Hibernia                1859    Y
Hibernia II             1846    Y      22   N
Hibernia II             1847    Y
Hibernia II             1870    M
Hillman                 1859    Y

Hillman                 1864    Y
Hillman                 1865    Y
Hope                    1848    N
Hopewell                1856    Y
Huntsville              1853    N

Iris                    1867    U
Isabella                1861    Y       2   L
Isabella                1862    Y
Isabella                1864    N
Isabella                1865    Y       2   N

Islander                1858    N
J. D. Thompson          1860    Y
J. D. Thompson          1865    N
J. D. Thompson          1866    Y
J. D. Thompson          1867    Y

J. E. Donnell           1847    M
James Allen             1867    Y
James Allen             1868    M
James Andrews           1856    Y
James Andrews           1857    Y

James Loper             1853    N
James Loper             1854    N
James Maury             1853    Y       9   L
James Maury             1854    Y       7   L
James Maury             1855    Y      15   L

James Maury             1858    N
James Trosser           1857    Y
Jane                    1859    Y      22   N
Janus II                1857    U
Janus II                1861    M

Janus II                1867    M
Janus II                1868    M
Jeannette               1860    Y
Jeannette               1861    Y
Jesse D. Carr           1858    Y

Jireh Perry             1867    Y
John Howland            1860    Y
John Howland            1861    Y
John Howland            1862    Y      20   L
John Howland            1863    Y      14   L

John Howland            1866    Y
John Howland            1867    M
John Howland            1868    Y
John Howland            1869    Y
John P. West            1861    Y

John P. West            1864    M
John P. West            1865    Y
John P. West            1866    Y
John P. West            1867    Y
John and Edward         1853    N

John and Edward         1854    Y
John and Elizabeth      1846    N
John and Elizabeth      1853    N
John and Elizabeth      1858    Y
Joseph Haydn            1854    Y

Josephine               1861    Y
Josephine               1865    Y       6   L
Josephine               1866    Y       1   L
Judson                  1852    N
Julian                  1858    N

Jupiter                 1852    N
Jupiter                 1853    N
Kalama                  1862    Y
Kamchatka               1865    M
Kamehameha V            1864    Y

Kamehameha V            1865    M
Kate                    1860    N
Kate                    1862    N
Kate Darling            1857    Y
Kathleen                1863    M

Kauai                   1860    Y
Kohola                  1862    Y
Kutusoff                1854    M
L. C. Richmond          1856    Y      17   L
L. C. Richmond          1859    Y

L. C. Richmond          1860    Y
L. C. Richmond          1861    Y
L. P. Foster            1866    Y
L. P. Foster            1867    Y
Lagoda                  1848    N

Lagoda                  1858    Y
Lark                    1856    Y
Lark                    1859    Y
Lark                    1860    Y
Leonore                 1852    Y

Leonore                 1856    Y
Leverett                1857    M
Levi Starbuck           1852    M
Levi Starbuck           1859    Y
Levi Starbuck           1861    Y

Lewis                   1860    Y
Liverpool               1856    Y
Liverpool               1865    U
Louisa                  1854    N
Louisa                  1873    Y       2   N

Louisa                  1874    U
Lydia                   1867    Y       2   L
Lydia                   1868    M
Magnolia                1847    M
Magnolia                1848    M

Majestic                1859    Y       5   L
Majestic                1860    Y       1   L
Manuella                1866    N
Manuella                1867    Y
Marengo                 1853    N       0   L

Marengo                 1858    Y
Maria                   1861    Y      20   N
Maria                   1862    Y
Martha                  1859    U
Martha                  1861    Y

Martha                  1861    Y
Martha                  1865    Y
Martha                  1867    M
Martha II               1861    U
Mary and Martha         1854    N       0   L

Mary and Susan          1853    M
Mary and Susan          1871    Y
Massachusetts           1853    M
Massachusetts           1858    N
Massachusetts           1859    Y

Massachusetts           1859    Y
Massachusetts           1867    Y
Massachusetts           1868    N
Massachusetts           1870    N
Massachusetts           1871    Y

Massasoit               1859    Y
Massasoit               1860    Y
Massasoit               1861    Y      16   N
Maunaloa                1871    U
Mechanic                1853    U

Mechanic                1854    Y
Menschikoff             1871    U
Mercator                1855    N
Meteor                  1853    U
Metropolis              1859    Y

Milo                    1861    Y
Milo                    1863    U
Milo                    1865    Y
Milo                    1866    Y
Milo                    1867    Y

Milton                  1860    U
Milton                  1864    Y
Minerva                 1853    N
Minerva II              1850    N
Mogul                   1854    Y

Mogul                   1855    Y
Mogul                   1856    Y
Monmouth                1861    Y
Montauk                 1858    Y
Montezuma               1860    Y

Montezuma               1861    Y
Montezuma               1862    Y
Montgomery              1850    U
Monticello              1867    Y
Montreal                1859    Y      14   L

Montreal                1861    U
Morea                   1846    N
Mount Wollaston         1865    M
Nassau                  1865    M
Nathaniel S. Perkins    1866    Y

Nathaniel S. Perkins    1867    M
Navigator               1857    Y
Neptune                 1856    M
Nevada                  1860    Y
New England             1860    Y

New England             1861    Y
Nile                    1854    M
Nile                    1859    U
Nile                    1861    Y
Nile                    1863    Y

Nile                    1864    Y
Nile                    1865    Y
Nile                    1866    Y
Nile                    1867    Y
Nimrod                  1855    Y

Nimrod                  1865    M
Norman                  1868    M
Norman                  1871    N
North Star              1853    Y
North Star              1854    Y

Northern Light          1860    U
Nye                     1863    U
Oahu                    1858    Y
Oahu                    1859    Y
Oahu                    1860    Y

Ocean                   1860    Y
Ocean                   1861    Y
Ocean                   1862    Y
Ocean                   1863    Y
Ocean                   1867    Y

Ocean Bird              1859    Y      46   L
Ocean Bird              1860    Y
Ocean Bird              1861    Y
Ocmulgee                1859    U
Ocmulgee                1860    Y

Ohio                    1859    Y
Ohio                    1860    Y
Olive                   1860    Y
Oliver Crocker          1859    U
Oliver Crocker          1860    Y      35   L

Oliver Crocker          1861    Y       5   L
Oliver Crocker          1864    U
Oliver Crocker          1867    Y
Olivia                  1861    Y
Omega                   1853    N

Ontario                 1861    Y
Onward                  1860    Y
Onward                  1861    Y
Onward                  1864    Y
Onward                  1865    Y

Onward                  1866    Y
Onward                  1867    U
Onward                  1870    N
Oriole                  1865    Y
Oriole                  1868    M

Orion                   1853    Y
Oscar                   1853    Y
Oscar                   1854    N
Pacific                 1860    U
Pacific                 1861    Y

Page                    1865    M
Page                    1866    Y
Paulina                 1859    Y      11   L
Paulina                 1860    Y       8   L
Paulina                 1861    U

Pearl                   1864    Y
Pfeil                   1857    N
Phenix                  1853    N
Phenix                  1858    N
Philip                  1861    Y

Phoenix                 1853    N
Phoenix                 1860    Y
Phoenix                 1861    Y
President               1867    Y
Prince de Joinville     1856    Y

Progress                1868    M
Progress                1873    N
Rajah                   1853    N       0   L
Rajah                   1854    N       0   L
Rambler                 1857    U

Rambler                 1859    Y
Rebecca Sims            1858    N
Rebecca Sims            1859    N
Reindeer                1858    Y
Reindeer                1859    Y

Reindeer                1862    Y
Reindeer                1863    Y
Reindeer                1866    Y
Reindeer                1867    Y
Reindeer                1868    Y

Revello                 1854    N
Richard Mitchell        1854    N
Richmond                1864    Y
Richmond                1866    Y
Ripple                  1860    Y

Robert Edwards          1856    M
Robert Edwards          1861    Y
Robert Morrison         1853    Y
Robin Hood              1861    Y
Roman                   1853    N

Roman                   1857    M
Roman                   1858    Y      10   L
Roman II                1853    Y
Roscoe                  1867    M
Rousseau                1855    N

Rousseau                1858    U
Rousseau                1867    U
S. F. Constantin        1860    Y
S. H. Waterman          1853    Y
Sarah                   1846    N

Sarah                   1861    M
Sarah McFarland         1856    Y
Sarah McFarland         1861    M
Sarah Sheafe            1858    Y
Sarah Warren            1858    Y

Sarah Warren            1859    Y
Sarah Warren            1860    Y
Sarah Warren            1861    Y
Sarah Warren            1862    Y
Sarah Warren            1863    Y

Sarah Warren            1864    M
Saratoga                1854    N
Saratoga                1855    N
Saratoga                1858    Y      14   L
Scotland                1859    Y       6   L

Scotland                1861    U
Sea Breeze              1867    Y      11   L
Sea Breeze              1868    Y      14   L
Sea Breeze              1869    N
Sea Breeze              1870    M

Sea Breeze              1871    U
Seine                   1860    U
Seine                   1868    N
Sharon                  1860    Y
Sharon                  1861    Y

Sheffield               1850    U
Sheffield               1856    Y
Sheffield               1858    U
Sophie                  1860    M
South America           1858    Y       2   L

Speedwell               1858    N
Speedwell               1861    Y
Splendid                1857    Y      14   L
Splendid                1858    Y
Splendid                1867    U

St. George              1854    N
St. George              1866    Y
St. George              1867    Y
Superior                1855    N
Susan Abigail           1864    Y

Susan Abigail           1865    Y
Tamerlane               1861    N
Tamerlane               1864    Y
Tempest                 1860    Y
Tenedos                 1854    Y

Tenedos                 1855    Y
Thomas Dickason         1858    Y
Thomas Dickason         1863    Y      13   L
Thomas Dickason         1864    Y
Thomas Dickason         1865    N

Thomas Dickason         1866    N
Thomas Dickason         1870    Y
Three Brothers          1867    Y
Tiger                   1847    Y      16   L
Trader                  1869    M

Trescott                1847    Y
Trescott                1848    Y
Trident                 1869    M
Trident                 1870    U
Two Brothers            1853    N       0   L

Tybee                   1858    N
Uncas                   1853    Y
Union                   1854    N
United States           1846    Y      10   N
United States           1847    Y

Valparaiso              1854    N
Venezuela               1853    Y
Vesper                  1854    Y
Vesper                  1861    Y
Victoria                1858    Y

Victoria                1859    Y
Victoria                1860    Y
Victoria                1862    Y
Victoria                1863    Y
Victoria                1864    Y

Vigilant                1858    Y
Vineyard                1868    N
Walter Clayton          1853    N
Warren                  1858    Y
Warsaw                  1846    N

Waverly                 1865    M
Whampoa                 1859    Y
William C. Nye          1853    N       0   L
William C. Nye          1863    Y
William C. Nye          1865    Y

William Gifford         1866    Y
William Gifford         1867    Y
William T. Wheaton      1852    M
William T. Wheaton      1853    N
William T. Wheaton      1855    M

William Tell            1856    N
Winslow                 1854    M
Winslow                 1865    M
Winslow                 1866    M
Winslow                 1867    N

Zone                    1865    M
Zoroaster               1853    N
Zuid Pool               1848    Y

Acknowledgments

This study was funded by the Lenfest Oceans Program of the Pew Charitable Trust through Stanford University. We thank Steve Palumbi for his pivotal role in securing the grant. Both he and Liz Alter provided constructive prodding, which forced us to look harder and deeper at the historical records than we otherwise might have. We appreciate the New Bedford Whaling Museum for allowing and facilitating our access to the Henderson material in their collection, and for permitting the use of Figure 1. Figure 3 is used courtesy of the Hawaiian Mission Children's Society Library. Thank you to Richard Donnelly for his assistance in reproducing the logbook images used in Figures 4, 5, and 6. We also acknowledge the generosity of the reviewers, whose thoughtful critical comments helped us refine our approach and correct deficiencies. Finally, we appreciate the support of Willis Hobart and Jacki Strader in helping us illustrate the article.

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(1) Throughout this paper, a vessel-season is understood to encompass the period from late autumn one year to spring the next. Thus, 1846-47 would mean approximately November 1846 through April 1847. In some of the tabular material where vessel-seasons are identified by only one year, this refers to the latter part of the season and thus, in this example, it would be 1847 not 1846.

(2) As an example, Cynosure of San Francisco visited grounds between Cedros Island and Cape San Lucas, including Magdalena Bay, in the season 1855-56. The logbook makes no mention of gray whales but records the capture of one humpback whale (another struck/lost), 36 blackfish (pilot whales, Globicephala sp.), 22 elephant seals, and 20 turtles. In addition, the crew chased killer whales, Orcinus orca, unsuccessfully and struck but lost a blue whale. After a stopover in San Francisco from early February to late March, Cynosure returned to the Baja California and mainland grounds south to Central America, chasing right whales and humpback whales in April, and then only sperm whales and blackfish through the summer and autumn before returning to San Francisco in November 1856.

(3) In the 3 years from 1846 to 1848, 32 American, 4 French, and 2 Dutch vessels reportedly took 338 whales in Magdalena Bay (Henderson, 1972:83).

(4) Slush was the fatty residue left from boiling salt horse (dried beef and/or pork). It was allotted to the cook in his contract and he was able to sell it for added profits to himself. Later, that term was used for the grease that was used to grease the mast and spars.

Randall R. Reeves is with Okapi Wildlife Associates, 27 Chandler Lane, Hudson, Quebec J0P 1H0, Canada (email: rrreeves@okapis.ca). Tim D. Smith is with the World Whaling History Project, 1562 Purple Way, Redding, CA 96003. Judith N. Lund is at 7 Middle Street, Dartmouth, MA 02748. Susan A. Lebo is with Applied Research in Environmental Science, 1031 Nuuanu Avenue, #2104, Honolulu, HI 96817. Elizabeth E. Josephson is with Integrated Statistics, 16 Sumner Street, Woods Hole, MA 02543.

Table 1.--Mean numbers of gray whales landed per
vessel-season (WPV). their standard errors (SE). and
numbers of vessel-seasons sampled (N) from logbooks
(directly or via Townsend worksheets) and newspapers.

Period      WPV     SE     N

1846-1854   14.0   3.32    7
1855-1860   14.0   2.28   23
1861-1865   10.1   1.14   30
1866-1874    7.9   1.36   18

Table 2.--Proportions (P) of 408 struck gray whales that
were reported lost under different conditions: when the
harpoon drew or the line parted (Drew-Parted). when the
animal sank or escaped spouting blood (Sank-Bleeding),
and combining those two conditions. Also shown
are the standard errors of the proportions (SE(P)). the
ratios of the number struck to the number landed (loss
rate factor. LRF). and their standard errors (SE(LRF)).

Conditions       P     SE(P)   LRF    SE(LRF)

Drew-Parted     0.24   0.021   1.32    0.037
Sank-Bleeding   0.05   0.011   1.06    0.012
Combined        0.29   0.023   1.42    0.050

Table 3.--Numbers of vessel-seasons according to the
original sources of information and our judgments on
the likelihood that they involved gray whaling.

Source      Yes   Maybe   No    Unknown   Total

Henderson   323    45      82      28      478
Hawaiian     54    32      52      41      179
Total       377    77     134      69      657

Table 4.--Estimated gray whale landings (whales) in Mexico from
1846 to 1874. with the three vessel-season cases (Low. Medium.
High) to account for uncertainty regarding whether vessels were
gray whaling. SE = standard errors of the estimates.

           Low Case         Medium Case      High Case

Season   Whales    SE     Whales    SE     Whales    SE

1846        28      6.6       28     6.6       28     6.6
1847       105     24.9      105    24.9      140    33.2
1848        91     21.6       91    21.6      112    26.6
1849         0      0.0        0     0.0        0     0.0
1850         0      0.0        0     0.0        0     0.0
1851         0      0.0        0     0.0        0     0.0
1852        42     10.0       55    13.5       60    14.3
1853       182     43.2      207    49.4      232    55.3
1854       182     43.2      200    48.2      235    56.4
1855       133     21.7      141    22.9      147    23.9
1856       183     29.6      186    30.2      197    31.9
1857       176     28.5      217    37.0      228    38.6
1858       477     77.5      527    86.0      539    88.0
1859       499     80.9      568    92.6      575    93.7
1860       632    102.6      712   116.8      723   118.5
1861       561     63.5      606    69.7      621    71.4
1862       172     19.4      181    20.4      181    20.4
1863       157     17.7      186    21.4      190    21.8
1864       263     29.7      283    32.0      293    33.2
1865       273     30.9      303    34.8      355    40.6
1866       189     32.7      189    32.7      197    34.1
1867       229     39.5      252    43.7      290    50.1
1868       103     17.7      103    17.7      134    23.2
1869        36      6.1       36     6.1       47     8.2
1870        32      5.4       37     6.7       42     7.5
1871        36      6.1       48     8.5       50     8.7
1872         0      0.0        0     0.0        0     0.0
1873         8      1.4        8     1.4        8     1.4
1874         0      0.0        0     0.0        0     0.0

Total    4,789    199.5    5,269   223.4    5,624   234.7

Table 5.--Estimated numbers of gray whales removed
by ship-based whalers in Mexican whaling grounds
from 1846 to 1874 for the Low. Medium. and High cases
for numbers of vessel-seasons and using the "Sank-
Bleeding" or "combined" loss rate factor (LRF) (see
Table 2). with standard errors (SE) accounting for the
standard errors of both the landings and the LRF. See
text for details.

          Low            Medium         High
Case
LRF     N      SE      N      SE      N       SE

1.06   5076   219.2   5585   245.1   5961    257.8
1.42   6800   371.1   7482   412.5   7986    436.2