As explorers the whalemen rambled into every nook and corner of the Pacific before merchant vessels had found their way thither.

They discovered uncharted islands and cheerfully fought savages or suffered direful shipwreck.

The chase led them into Arctic regions where their stout barks were nipped like eggshells among the grinding floes, or else far to the southward where they broiled in tropic calms.
The New Bedford lad was as keen to go a-whaling as was his counterpart in Boston or New York to be the dandy mate of a California clipper, and true was the song: I asked a maiden by my side, Who sighed and looked to me forlorn, "Where is your heart ?" She quick replied, "Round Cape Horn." Yankee whaling reached its high tide in 1857 when the New Bedford fleet alone numbered 329 sail and those owned in other ports of Buzzard's Bay swelled the total to 426 vessels, besides thirty more hailing from New London and Sag Harbor.

In this year the value of the catch was more than ten million dollars.

The old custom of sailing on shares or "lays" instead of wages was never changed.