LET us return briefly to the second half of the 1800s, about one hundred fifty years ago, to the Whaling Disaster of 1871. The United States had recently concluded its Civil War and would push ahead as a modern, industrialized nation of immigrants free from the institution of slavery. Japan had recently opened to the outside world, ending centuries of isolation and stagnation, and would make fast with its plans to modernize into a Pacific power.
The world of energy was also in great flux, as one source of light and heat, whale oil, was being replaced by another, petroleum. It is amid this energy revolution that we place our story.
Whale oil had been the primary source, not only for light and heat, but also for lubricants to grease the industrial revolution. The modern world could never have come about without oil, and the most plentiful, if difficult to obtain, source of oil were the massive creatures that roamed the seas. Right whales, so named because they were the right whales to catch for their oil, and later the Bowhead and Sperm, were hunted nearly to extinction. It was a good thing for the whales that mankind located and exploited petroleum as a better alternative. It saved the whales from oblivion.
By 1871, the great fleets traveled further and further in search of whales, and they altered their methods in response to a declining harvest. That year, a fleet of forty whaling ships sailed near Alaska in search of prey, only to run into a wall of ice.
The ice pushed hard and fast down from the Arctic and the fleet knew they were trouble. Seven ships turned around and made for warmer climates, but 33 ships found themselves incased in ice. They were spread over and area fifty miles long and the best-off of them sat fifty miles from open water.
The captains held a meeting and agreed that the voyage was lost. They would salvage what they could and walk out to join the seven freed vessels who waited to rescue them. Alternating between dragging the lifeboats full of supplies and riding in them, the sailors managed to reach the end of the ice pack and found salvation in the ships that came to their rescue.
Only one of the trapped vessels ever sailed again, the Minerva, which was salvaged and taken south the following year. The rest were lost to the sea or to the local Inuit villagers, who salvaged what they could and burned the rest.
In 2015, researchers from NOAA located two of the wrecks in shallow water which were remarkably intact. While that organization will not likely return, it is hoped that someone will take up the effort and map out more of the area, perhaps finding more wrecks.
The Whaling Disaster of 1871 broke the back of the whaling industry, already struggling with fierce competition from the fledgling petroleum companies. One whaling enterprise lost a third of its entire fleet in the incident and the ships were not insured. Most whaling companies simply closed their doors. By the end of the century, whale oil had become a relic of the past.
It is interesting that we find ourselves in a similar situation, struggling to replace one form of energy with another. Will the petroleum industry suffer a devastating blow like that which befell the whaling industry?
BC Cook, PhD lived on Saipan and has taught history for 20 years. He currently resides on the mainland U.S.
BC Cook
