Success of the Whaling Industry
1791
In 1791 a fishery for spermaceti whales on the coast of New South Wales was commenced by Captain Melville, commander of the Britannia, a ship belonging to Messrs. Enderby and Sons, the first British merchants who adventured in the southern whale fishery.
Having discovered in his passage to Port Jackson with a load of convicts, that the spermaceti whales were more abundant in the seas adjacent to that country than near the coasts of South America, he sailed from that port on a whaling expedition, and was followed by several other vessels...
But they were sufficiently encouraged to consider those seas as very favourable for the prosecution of the most valuable branch of the whale fishery.
........ A Treatise on the Laws of Commerce and Manufactures By Joseph Chitty
Nine years later...
A letter from Sydney Cove, Botany Bay, dated December 19 1799 says:
'You will be pleased to learn the success of the Whalers; those of any kind of perseverance or knowledge have done vastly well.
The Britannia, in less than six months ...
...By wild cows I mean those produced by the four cows and a young bull that strayed away from us about six weeks after our landing, and which now amount to nearly two hundred...
' - Portsmouth Telegraph or Mottley's Naval and Military Journal, Monday August 11 1800.
Notes and Links
1). Eber Bunker, sea captain and farmer, was born on 7 March 1761 at Plymouth, Massachusetts ... His daughter married Arnold Fisk.
2).
