Confederate Legacy...End of Whaling!

Here's my thread on one whaler that got away and survives to this day: http://civilwartalk.com/threads/whaler-charles-w-morgan-and-mystic-seaport-conn.111002/

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And if anyone hasn't seen it, there was just out this fall an excellent film about the voyage of the Essex that Andy mentioned.
I spent two days dragging my poor long-suffering wife through Mystic Seaport a couple years ago. It was just incredible.
 

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I like most of Ron Howard's work - was it up to standard for him? :D Chris Hemsworth is the most wooden actor since Steven Seagal, but after dissing Russell Crowe I've learned my lesson!

I can't claim to be a movie critic, but it's well done. Most of my issues are with the script; there are a number of Hollywoodish additions to the history, I guess to provide conflict and make it a 'better' story. I don't know enough about moviemaking to say whether that's on Howard or the writers or someone else.

This probably isn't too much of a spoiler - when the ship is rammed by the whale, it manages to burst into orange flames, like everything does in the movies :wink: In fact she sank rather slowly; the crew were able to spend some time aboard, fixing and stocking the whaleboats as best they could.

Whalers were about the only ships at that time which routinely carried enough boats for the entire crew. There were no such things as lifeboats as we think of them. A whaleship's crew was based on six men per boat (3-5 boats) plus a few 'idlers'. Essex carried twenty men, manned three boats, and left IIRC the cook and cabin boy to tend the ship while the hunt was on. So when she sank, two of the boats had to carry one extra man.

The 'ship' is actually a brig, but they may have had to use what they could get. It would be interesting to see a 'making of' video to see the mix of real ship, sets, water tank, and CGI they used.
 
I can't claim to be a movie critic, but it's well done. Most of my issues are with the script; there are a number of Hollywoodish additions to the history, I guess to provide conflict and make it a 'better' story. I don't know enough about moviemaking to say whether that's on Howard or the writers or someone else.

This probably isn't too much of a spoiler - when the ship is rammed by the whale, it manages to burst into orange flames, like everything does in the movies :wink: In fact she sank rather slowly; the crew were able to spend some time aboard, fixing and stocking the whaleboats as best they could.

Whalers were about the only ships at that time which routinely carried enough boats for the entire crew. There were no such things as lifeboats as we think of them. A whaleship's crew was based on six men per boat (3-5 boats) plus a few 'idlers'. Essex carried twenty men, manned three boats, and left IIRC the cook and cabin boy to tend the ship while the hunt was on. So when she sank, two of the boats had to carry one extra man.

The 'ship' is actually a brig, but they may have had to use what they could get. It would be interesting to see a 'making of' video to see the mix of real ship, sets, water tank, and CGI they used.

Yes, that would be a really fun thing to do! The Essex went down by the bow and did take a bit - Capt Pollard had been with the boats and looked back, wondering where the ship was! But he came aboard and said, "My God, Mr Chase, what has happened?" "We've been stove by a whale," replied Mr Chase. They started off and one sad thing was they could have stopped at some nearer islands - Marquesas? - but thought they were inhabited by cannibals and so made for Chile or Ecuador. Now there's irony! The missionaries had stopped the people of the islands from that custom. And, they were attacked again by whales in their little boats!
 
...The 'ship' is actually a brig, but they may have had to use what they could get. It would be interesting to see a 'making of' video to see the mix of real ship, sets, water tank, and CGI they used.

I stayed until the bitter end of the credit roll just to see if there were any thanks to Mystic Seaport - there were none, but it did indicate where the filming was done - Portugal! So the vessels were European ships of some sort.
 
Okay, on the subject of whaling, just had the chance to look at some original share certificates for a couple of whalers from the 1840s or 50s... very neat part of my day

Here is my question were whalers finance by selling shares for one ship going to sea or were there whaling companies that owned more than one ship and sold shares to finance their fleets.

t
 
Here is my question were whalers finance by selling shares for one ship going to sea or were there whaling companies that owned more than one ship and sold shares to finance their fleets.

t
Usually ships were owned by a group of persons... no real organized companies, but shared owners.. kinda like they had stock in the ship... so when the oil came back, the owners had their shares, then the Captain, the officers, and then the whalermen... the sailors usually ended up with a very small profit for there services. and they signed for so much of a share.. Now, were these sailors contracts, or owners percentages, I am not sure, having never seen these kind of documents before.
 
Here are some more details about the Yankee whaling fleet ... http://fighting-the-earth.leadr.msu.edu/whaling-industry/

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Whale oil and baleen were commonly used products derived from whaling throughout the 1800s. Whaling was the United State’s first venture of natural resource extraction and began the immense American demand for fuel that to this day shapes U.S. energy, economics and environmental policy. Prior to the war, the American whaling industry included over 700 ships and harvested about 10,000 whales each year (26). Whales are unable to sustain healthy populations while experiencing such high harvest rates because they have low reproductive rates and take many years to reach sexual maturity. Women’s fashion began demanding the use of more baleen from bowhead whales because it was used to make hoop skirts and corsets, causing market prices to increase notably for these products. The expansion westward allowed for dual coast whaling on both the Atlantic and the Pacific, increasing the rate of harvest. The discovery of petroleum in 1859 in Pennsylvania greatly reduced the need for sperm whale oil in lamps, but bowhead whale product demands continued to supply women’s fashion (1). The war was overall detrimental to the whaling business, Confederate cruisers destroyed over 50 Yankee whaling ships. The whaling company, New Bedford, gave up 37 whaling ships to create the “Stone Fleet.” The Stone Fleet was a Union attempt to block shipping of Southern harbors by sinking the whaling ships just outside the mouth of the harbor, making the entrance impassable (1)(pictured above).
 
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