Charles W. Morgan sails again

摘要

When shipbuilders Jethro and Zachariah Hillman of New Bedford, Massachusetts sent the new whaling ship Charles W. Morgan into the water for the first time in 1841, they had no way of knowing the distant future and varied life fate had planned for it. The Hillmans' main concern was turning out a good product, the worry of any craftsman of any age. The ship's namesake and owner, Charles Waln Morgan, had big plans for the ship. Whaling, though headed for rocky shoals as an industry, was still a moneymaker. More than 300 whaling ships sailed from 38 American ports in 1841, with 75, nearly a quarter, sailing from New Bedford alone. As John Hayward wrote in The New England Gazeteer just two years before the launch of the Morgan, 'Although Massachusetts cannot boast of her navigable rivers and canals, to facilitate the commerce of her capital; yet she can boast of the most beautiful bay on the map of the western world; of her noble streams for water power; of her luxuriant vales, of her granite hills, of her ships, and the material for building them; and of her gallant sailors who traverse every sea, and who well understand the uses of the hook, harpoon and cannon.' Though the whales were running out - East Coast whalers had already begun searching for them in the waters on the other side of the continent - whaling was still a going concern in 1841.