This document summarizes the discovery of two whaling ships that were lost in the Arctic 144 years ago. An archaeological team led by NOAA used advanced mapping technology to discover the wrecks of the whaleships Monticello and J.D. Thompson, which were part of a larger fleet of 33 ships trapped by ice off Alaska in 1871. This discovery sheds new light on Connecticut's historical whaling industry and the largest whaling disaster in U.S. history. The document provides historical context on whaling and details William Williams' first-hand account of the events as a 12-year old crew member aboard the Monticello.

1. Written by Erik Ofgang
Of Ice & MenDramatic discovery of two whaleships
lost in the Arctic for 144 years sheds light
on Connecticut’s whaling history
“Oh how many of this ship’s company
will live to see the last days of next August?
God only knows. I will trust to his wise hand.”

2. | march 2016 CONNECTICUT 51 |
Previous page:
Abandonment of the
whalers in the Arctic
Ocean in September
1871, including the
George, Gayhead and
Concordia. Scanned from
the original Harper’s
Weekly 1871.
Courtesy of Robert Schwemmer
Maritime Library
Right: Brad Barr, NOAA
archaeologist and
project co-director.
Image courtesy of NOAA/ONMS/
Hans Van Tilburg
Far right:
Vitad Pradith,
of Guilford.
Photo by Brad Barr
Below: Abandonment of the Whalers
In The Arctic Ocean September 1871.
Ships depicted: Monticello, of New
London, Kohola, Eugenia, Julian,
Awashonks, Thomas Dickason, Minerva,
William Rotch, Victoria and Mary.
Courtesy of Theodore G. and Eleanor S. Congdon
Maritime Collection, Huntington Library
Right: Whale chart prepared
in 1851 by Lieut. Matthew F.
Maury, U.S.N., 20 years before
the Alaska disaster.
© Mystic Seaport
Hunting for these relics of the past was
not easy. The waters off Arctic Alaska are
among the most unexplored on the globe. It
is difficult and expensive to charter ships for
scientific surveys, and to this day, Barr only
knows of two that operate in the region. In
addition, the cold, salty, rough conditions of
the region wreak havoc on equipment.
For almost a decade, Barr and colleagues
at the Maritime Heritage Program in
NOAA’s Office of National Marine
Sanctuaries worked to get funding
for a survey of the area. They
began planning the expedition a
few years ago, and last summer,
with technology partners Hypack
and Edgetech, NOAA launched a
scientific survey of the region. (Their
dramatic findings were announced
in January.)
The team of experts assembled
for the mission included Vitad
Pradith of Guilford. Pradith
was a physical scientist with the
NOAA Office of Coast Survey and
currently works for Hypack in
Middletown. Pradith’s job was to
conduct acoustic mapping of the
survey area. He was searching for
anomalies on the seafloor, a sudden
protrusion or another unexpected
landscape feature that could signal
the presence of a shipwreck. He was
hopeful, but far from certain, that
wrecks would be located. “Most of
the times you do a project like this,
you don’t find things,” he says. “My
goal was to maximize the value of
why we were there; in this case, it
was to collect data.”
More optimistic was James
Delgado, who works out of NOAA
headquarters in Silver Spring,
Maryland, and is maritime heritage
director for NOAA’s Office of
National Marine Sanctuaries and
served with Barr as the survey’s co-
director.Heknewfrompastsurveys
that the Arctic does not always destroy
ships if there is a natural obstacle like a
sand bar, large rocks or a sheltered cove to
partially divert the force of tons of ice. In
old accounts of the disaster, the whaleship
captains had mentioned a sandbar-like
obstruction. This gave Delgado a glimmer
of hope that some physical remnants had
survived in more than just memory.
‘A power which
cannot be expressed’
William Fish Williams of Wethersfield
was just 12 when the voyage that would
change the fates of so many began. He was
rad Barr had studied the disaster for years.
Hehadreadthefirst-handaccountsinoldnewspapers
and memoirs, heard the stories and legends passed
down in maritime circles for generations and visited
some of the gravestones in Connecticut, and elsewhere, that attempted
to sum up, in a few short words, the extraordinary lives of those buried
beneath. It was a story of women, children, men and memories forever
linked by one awful month in the Arctic.
In 1871, 33 whaling ships, including
two from Connecticut and a third with
a Connecticut captain and owner, were
trapped and crushed by pack ice off
Alaska’s Arctic coast. They were only
yards, and in some cases feet, away from
shore. The whalers had counted on a
wind shift driving the ice out to sea as it
had done in the past, but the ice didn’t
clear and they were forced to abandon
their boats. More than 1,200 whalers,
and in many cases their wives and family
members, were stranded in unforgiving
conditions, on a desolate section of beach
stretching from Wainwright to Point
Franklin in northern Alaska.
It was a disaster of epic proportions,
costing the whaleship owners and their
crews millions in today’s dollars. It
was also a critical factor in the whaling
industry’s decline. The story of the
disaster has become part of whaling lore,
the ships thought to be destroyed and
lost for 144 years.
A Hanover, Massachusetts-based
archaeologist with the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration,
Barr believed there could be physical
remains of that disaster hiding under
the icy waters at the top of the globe.
“Earlier research by a number of scholars
suggested that some of the ships that
were crushed and sunk might still be on
the seabed,” Barr says. “But no one had
found definitive proof of any of the lost
fleet beneath the water.”
B

3. other whaleships in the area. It was
the first whaleship to be claimed by
the ice that year, but it wouldn’t be
the last.
The Monticello crew also learned
that during the previous season,
advancing ice had destroyed the
bark Japan. Eight people in the
Japan’s crew died, and the
rest survived the winter
by seeking shelter with
the native Inuit. The ship’s
provisions had been lost and
they lived on blubber and
walrus meat cooked with the
hair on it. “Like everything
connected with the sea, you
pass so quickly from comedy
to tragedy,” William said.
Though none of
the whalemen expected
the disaster that was
approaching, William was
not unaware of the danger
of the Arctic. Looking at
the pack ice, he was awed by
its beauty. “The pack is not,
therefore, in its individual parts imposing, grand
or beautiful, but as a whole under all the varying
conditions of an Arctic sky, from brilliant sunshine
to a leaden gloom, it is a magnificent spectacle.”
But he also recognized its terrible power. “When
you stop to consider that it represents ages of
accumulation and that there is beneath the surface
nearly ten times more bulk than what you can see,
you realize that there is something to be considered
beside beautiful effects that there is within it a
power which cannot be expressed and can only be
partially comprehended.”
‘No amount of technology
can ever defeat Mother Nature’
More than a century later, that ice can still be a
bane to vessels in the region. “The biggest challenge
is just how quickly things change,” says Mike
Fleming, captain of the R/V Ukpik, a research vessel
(RV) chartered by NOAA for its survey last summer.
“I’ve seen islands pop up over a winter storm cycle;
there’s a place where the boat can go one year and
the next year there’s dirt in the same spot.”
The NOAA team arrived in August. Like the
whalers whose long-lost vessels they were searching
for, they went during the summer to avoid the ice.
Based on old accounts, they narrowed the search
area down to 17 square miles, along about 37 miles
of coastline. They worked close to shore in shallow
waters that were almost always less than 40 feet
deep, with an average depth of around 28. Like the
sailors who had brought them to the area, they had
to be aware of the shifting pack ice, and there were
a few times when the search almost had to be called
off because they were worried they’d get stuck
behind it.
accompanying his father, Thomas,
captain of the bark Monticello, which
left port in New London on Nov.
24, 1870. It was not unusual for the
familiesofshipcaptainstoaccompany
them on voyages. His mother, Eliza
Azelia Williams, regularly traveled
with her husband, and several of his
siblings were born at sea.
The ship sailed to
the South Pacific and
Japan. On April 10,
1871, it left Yokohama
for the Bering Sea to
hunt bowhead whales.
As it approached the
Arctic, it became part
of an unofficial fleet of
40 whaling ships spread
out in a 60-mile line.
The Monticello was
one of two New London-
based ships in the “fleet.”
The other, the J.D. Thompson, had
left New London in June 1868 under
the command of Captain Charles E.
Allen. Another ship, the bark Paiea
of Honolulu, was owned by the New
London-based firm Williams & Haven
and captained by Horace M. Newbury
of Groton.
New London was one of the world’s
whaling centers in the 1800s. In
terms of whaling voyages launched,
it trailed only San Francisco
and the Massachusetts ports of
Provincetown, Nantucket and New
Bedford. In 1850, more than $1
million in whale oil and bone had
passed through New London — over
$31 million in today’s dollars.
Thewhalingindustryasawholewas
one of the biggest in the nation, with
more than 2,700 whaleships prowling
the ocean at its height. Though it was
whale oil that lit the world’s lamps,
the industry had a dark side. The
unceasing consumer appetite for oil
had led the mighty leviathans to be
hunted to such an extent that, even by
the end of the 1800s, their numbers
were diminishing. In fact, it was the
declining numbers that led to the
first Arctic whaling expeditions.
“The whales had been so heavily
hunted for so long that it became so
much harder for the ships to find
them,” says Fred Calabretta, curator of
collections and oral historian at Mystic
Seaport. He adds that when Arctic
whaling was opened in the 1840s,
“the discovery of this new population
of whales in the Arctic really gave the
industry a shot in the arm.”
Young William’s ill-fated 1870s
voyage began as a pleasant one. “I do
not recall ever having any lonesome
or long days in my experience as a
whaler,” he would later recall in an
address to the Brooks Club, of New
Bedford, in 1902 (reprinted in the
book One Whaling Family).
However, danger was a constant,
even in the best of times. Ships getting
trapped by the shifting ice was not
uncommon; more than 30 ships had
been lost in the region between 1850
and 1871. In whaler lingo, getting
wrecked by the ice was called being
nipped. “This is something of an
understatement; the power of the
ice would just crush these massive
ships,” Calabretta says.
Even still, by 1871 whalers had
established a routine in the Arctic.
They would arrive in the late spring or
earlysummer,huntforwhalesforafew
months, then wait for the ice to break
in August or September and leave.
But early on in the season of 1871,
there were signs that something was
different. As they arrived in the region,
William and the rest of the Monticello
crew learned that the bark Oriole had
beenwreckedafterrunningintoapiece
of ice, and the crew was picked up by
Top left: Captain Thomas W. Williams
of the New London Monticello.
Photo courtesy of Williams, H., 1964.
One Whaling Family, Houghton Mifflin
Company, Boston
Left: Area surveyed in 2015.
M. Lawrence/NOAA
Above and inset: This map of Connecticut was
published in the early 1800s by Amos Doolittle of
New Haven. Detail shows New London, the origin
point for two of the doomed whalers.
© Mystic Seaport
Below: The title of this
lithograph, Nipped in the Ice,
understates the power of tons
of shifting Arctic ice, a hazard
that was a constant threat to
Connecticut’s Arctic whalers in
the 1800s. © Mystic Seaport
| march 2016 CONNECTICUT 53 |

4. | march 2016 CONNECTICUT 55 |
“Working in the North Slope of
Alaska can be very unforgiving,
not only on the people, but also on
the technology,” Pradith recalls.
“It is a harsh environment and no
amount of technology can ever defeat
Mother Nature. So you learn to make
contingency plans, adapt and mitigate
the risk in any way that you can.
But in the end, it is an environment
that you must be comfortable being
uncomfortable.”
The most uncomfortable moment
for Pradith came when there was an
equipment failure with the sonar. To
fix it, the R/V Ukpik had to find cover
in a cove and Pradith had to get off the
main boat and into a small inflatable
rubber boat. “We’re in a cove in the
Arctic and it’s cold and the wind’s
howling and I’m sitting underneath
the front of the [main] boat trying
to fix this sensor barehanded. [I was]
like, ‘this is not fun at all, but it’s part
of the game.’”
‘How many of this ship’s
company will live to see
the last days of next August?’
In June 1871, the ice broke up, and
manyofthewhaleshipsintheAlaskan
Arctic moved farther into the region
hunting whales. The ice surrounded
many of the ships in July, but in early
August, it broke up again and most of
the ships resumed whaling. However,
the local Inuit warned some captains
that the ice was behaving differently
this year and they should get out
while they could.
That warning went unheeded.
In the logbook of Captain
Newbury of the Paiea, reprinted in
Oil and Buggy Whips by Barnard L.
Colby, it is clear that in the beginning
of August the primary concern was
still finding whales. But as the month
progressed, the danger posed by the
ice became more apparent. On Aug.
17, Newbury wrote, “Sent off four
boats. They returned having heard
of several whales in the ice but saw
none. Ship still tied up to the ice.”
Two days later, the situation had
grown more dire. “Boats all on board.
Ice crowding inshore, the whole fleet
beinginanarrowstripofwaterbetween
the ice and land in shoal water.”
On Aug. 29, strong winds and snow
from the southwest began to push
the ice more quickly toward shore,
hemming the boats closer together.
Captain Williams of the Monticello
decided he had had enough and
attempted to leave the whaling waters,
but struck ice and was grounded.
The next day, other whaling ships
sent their crews to help the Monticello
escape. Captain Williams’ son seemed
unconcerned by the danger and
remembered fondly the camaraderie of
the whale crews who worked together
to aid his father’s ship. “To me it was a
gala day, the decks fairly swarmed with
men, orders were executed with a snap
and vigor that only a sailor can put into
his work when he is pleased to.”
But adults among the whaleships
had begun to realize that failing to
find whales might soon be the least
of their problems. Newbury’s mood
had clearly darkened. That same day,
Aug. 30, he wrote, “Snowing hard; ice
packed in close. Boats not returned. I
have seen enough of Arctic whaling if
this is a specimen.”
Newbury was far from the most
pessimistic captain. By Aug. 31,
Timothy Packard of the Henry Taber
had begun to fear the worst, writing,
“Oh how many of this ship’s company
will live to see the last days of next
August? God only knows. I will trust
to his wise hand.”
The ships were hemmed in near
Wainwright, in a strip of water less
than a half-mile wide between the
ice and shore. As September began,
the ice began to crush some of the
trapped vessels. Their crews survived,
however, and were split among the
remaining ships.
Seven other ships that had been
sailing in the area were unaccounted
for, and it was unclear if they were
inside or outside of the ice.
On Sept. 9, the captains of the fleet
met. They realized it was likely their
ships would not escape and they
needed to move quickly in order to
survive. Going to shore and enduring
the winter in the barren region was a
grim prospect, as they only had a few
months’ provisions and no shelter.
The ships sent a scouting party via
whaleboat, the much smaller and
more maneuverable satellite vessels
sent out to get whales within harpoon
range. By a mixture of sailing, rowing
and carrying these boats over bigger
patches of ice, the scouting party
reached largely open water and was
able to find the other seven ships in the
whale fleet, which were relatively safe
from the ice. The scouts asked these
ships to stay and assist with a rescue.
The captains and crews agreed to
stand by in the hopes of saving the
more than 1,200 people who would
soon be shipwrecked. Though it was
risky for them to wait, and would
certainly cost them money, helping
fellow sailors was part of the unwritten
code of the sea.
“Tell them all,” said Captain James
Dowden of the bark Progress, one of
the ships, “I will wait for them as long
as I have an anchor left or a spar to
carry a sail.”
‘This very clear image’
In August, R/V Ukpik team
members took turns watching various
instrumentation. Delgado was on the
midnight-to-8 a.m. shift with another
researcher. It was the season of the
midnight sun, and instead of a true
darkness, a twilight had descended as
the ship moved over the survey area.
“We were watching the sonar screens
when, all of a sudden, we had a very
strong magnetometer hit and we had
this very clear image on the sonar of
sections of hull,” Delgado recalls. “It’s
very tempting to want to go right back
and look, but we continued the survey,
because an awful lot of this is just a
meticulous, careful, systematic survey.
Mapping by mowing the lawn is what
we call it.” Later, they would return
and examine the area more closely.
‘… the leave-taking of our ship’
On Sept. 12, the captains of
the trapped ships held their last
conference and decided to abandon
their ships on the 14th and make for
the waiting vessels. They drew up a
document of abandonment, which
was signed by all of the captains
and began, “Know all men by these
presents, that we, the undersigned,
masters of whale-ships now lying at
Point Belcher, after holding a meeting
concerning our dreadful situation,
have came to the conclusion that our
ships cannot be got out this year…”
Even the generally upbeat William
grew solemn when recounting the
moment of abandonment. “I doubt if
I can adequately describe the leave-
taking of our ship,” he wrote. “The
usual abandonment of a ship is the
result of some irreparable injury
and is executed in great haste; but
here we were leaving a ship that was
absolutely sound, that had been our
home for nearly ten months and
had taken us safely through many a
trying time.”
In the small whaleboats and
by foot, 1,219 men, women and
children embarked on a 70-mile trip
to the waiting whaleships-turned-
makeshift-rescue ships. Miraculously,
everyone survived.
To accommodate the shipwrecked
whalers, the waiting whaleships had
to empty their holds, giving up the
precious cargo they had spent months
or, in some cases, years accruing.
Even still, the survivors were packed
in. “Pushed together shoulder
to shoulder as bad as any Irish
immigrants,” wrote one survivor,
according to John R. Bockstoce,
author of Whales, Ice & Men, which
recounts the disaster in great detail.
Top: Crabs resting between the ribs of one of the
recently discovered whaleships. Above: A small
anchor, a chain plate, which held rigging used to
tighten masts, and a iron knee, which was likely
part of the ship’s frame. NOAA Below: The pack ice
the NOAA team had to navigate through to get to
the mapping area is the same type of ice that likely
trapped the whaling fleets. Photo by Brad BarrFrom left, Evan Martizal, Vitad Pradith and
Matthew Lawrence ready sonar sensor equipment.
courtesy of NOAA/ONMS/Brad Barr
The whaling schooner A.T. Gifford, ca. 1907-1912. The Gifford, registered in Stamford and commanded
by Captain George Comer, appears here in winter quarters in Hudson Bay, with caribou antlers mounted
on her bowsprit. Icy conditions were a constant challenge for Arctic whalers. © Mystic Seaport, George Comer Collection
Ice and whaleships dominate this photo, taken in
May 1895. It shows the American Arctic whaling
fleet at Herschel Island, near Alaska’s North Slope,
east of the location of the 1871 whalers.
© Mystic Seaport
| 54 MARCH 2016 connecticutmag.com |

5. The disaster cost, in total of lost
ships and cargo, more than $1.6
million in the currency of the day
(nearly $48 million today). New
Bedford, Massachusetts, was hit
hardest, losing 22 ships. Few of the
ships were replaced, as owners used
the insurance money to get out of the
already declining whale industry and
invest in textile mills or other less
speculative industries.
Less fortunate were the vessels
that had abandoned their cargo to
save the lives of their fellow seamen.
It was 19 years before the U.S.
government reimbursed them, but
at that point it is doubtful the crews
— who were normally paid a share of
each voyage’s profits — were tracked
down and given their share.
‘The ice not only can destroy
but it can preserve’
Barr and Delgado’s team ultimately
determined what Delgado had
observed on the sonar screen was
two battered, but remarkably well-
preserved, hulls of 1800s whaling
ships. Despite their good condition,
the survey team was not able to
positively ID them. The wreck site also
contained anchors, fasteners, ballast
and brick-lined pots, which were used
to render whale blubber into oil.
The ships are believed to be two of
the more than 30 trapped in the ice in
1871, though there is a chance they are
from another ice wreck from a similar
time. Might the two be the ships
with Connecticut ties? It’s possible.
What’s certain, however, is neither is
the Monticello. It was confirmed as
destroyed shortly after the disaster.
In the years following the calamity,
wooden timbers, metal pieces and
other items from the once-mighty
whaling vessels washed ashore.
Nearby villagers used some of these
items in buildings.
Itislikelythetworecentlydiscovered
ships are not alone in their icy grave.
During the survey, the team
searched for signs of magnetic
signals. “Throughout the entire area
that was surveyed, there were these
concentrations of magnetic anomalies
that suggest there are buried wrecks
or portions of wrecks very much like
what we surveyed,” Barr says.
Delgado believes the ships were
flattened and preserved by the
topography of the region. “Captains
talked about an offshore ledge, or a
bar that they tried to get their ships
over in hopes that the ice would snag
on that offshore obstruction and not
crush their ships. Of course they
didn’t make it; the ships were caught
and rammed up against the bar by the
ice and sunk, but what happened was
that the ice that tore off their upper
works, their decks and their masts,
the bottom parts of the ship stayed
on the bottom and that’s what we’re
seeing in this case with the two ships
that we found.” He adds, “The ice not
only can destroy, but it can preserve.”
Life after whaling
The three Connecticut captains
went in different directions after
1871. It was the last whaling voyage
for Captain Allen, who skippered the
New London-based J.D. Thompson.
For a time, he tried to run a ferry
between New London and Groton,
but a competitor had the leg up on
him, so he returned to ocean work,
this time as a merchant marine. He
died at sea on what was to be his last
voyage when his ship got caught in a
gale while en route from Philadelphia
to Cuba, and all aboard were lost.
Captain Newbury, of the Paiea,
also retired from whaling and spent
the last years of his life in Groton,
where he gained some notoriety as an
amateur doctor. He died in 1906.
In 1872, Captain Williams of the
Monticello returned to the Arctic
to salvage what he could from the
abandoned ships. He found the bow
and stern of his ship a half-mile apart
and was able to recover the Minerva
from what had became a graveyard of
whaling vessels.
Williams continued to command
whaleships and take his son William
on voyages with him. He died in 1885
and is buried in Wethersfield at the
Ancient Burial Grounds and Village
Cemetery. His son sailed on later
whaling voyages and relocated to New
Bedford for a time, where he served as
an engineer with the Massachusetts
StateHighwayCommission,according
to the History of New Bedford, edited
by Zephaniah W. Pease. He died in
1923 and is buried near his father and
other family members in Wethersfield.
‘There remain so many things
to be found’
Now that the area has been
surveyed and evidence of ships
found, it is unlikely the NOAA will
organize any future expeditions.
But Barr and Delgado believe that
other organizations will eventually
build on their groundwork. “I think
there are other folks, in Alaska in
particular, that have an interest, and
I would hope that there is more work.
I think more work could be done in
terms of physically mapping the site,”
Delgado says. He also hopes others
will study the two wrecks in greater
detail. “There’s an ability to do a level
of archaeological work, that’s not unlike
forensic work, that I think could even help
pinpoint which ship is which.”
Either way, the ships will remain hidden,
as the NOAA team is not releasing the
precise location of the wrecks to the general
public. This is to protect the ships against
looters, though the potential for looting is
relatively low, as the ships do not contain
anything of value that would draw the
interest of treasure hunters. The site is also
protected by historic preservation laws, as
well as its extreme remoteness.
Barr says it is important that the ships
remain untouched. “While they have
obviously been disturbed by the ice
movement over 144 years, there is no
compelling reason to further alter the
archaeological integrity of the site by
doing more than perhaps documenting the
wreckage[by]takingdetailedmeasurements
and further photo-documenting the site by
trainedmaritimearchaeologists,usingscuba
or some other remote imaging technology,
and cataloging any artifacts observed,” he
says. “Unlike many shipwrecks, which are
the final resting place for the people who
died when that ship was lost and therefore
deserve to be respected and preserved as a
gravesite, this is not a consideration here,
as all stranded in the 1871 abandonment
were ultimately rescued. However, the best
approach to preservation is to leave the place
as you found it.”
Delgado hopes the find will inspire future
generations of explorers. “You can read
about a city like Troy, but then when the
archaeologists excavate it and you see those
walls, then the ancient story comes to life,”
he says. “In this case, this Arctic whaling
disaster, unphotographed but captured in
memory and in writing and in lithographs,
suddenly is very real. It’s important for the
next generation to realize we live in a world
where not everything has been done, where
not everything has been found. The oceans
are 95 percent unexplored. There remain so
many things to be found.”
The 33
The American whaling ships trapped in the Arctic ice north of
Alaska in 1871:
*Bark Oriole, of New Bedford, damaged
by ice in summer 1871, abandoned and
parts salvaged
Bark Roman, of New Bedford,
crushed in the ice Sept. 7, 1871
Bark Concordia, of New Bedford,
abandoned and lost, wreck burned by
local Inuit
Ship Gay Head, of New Bedford,
abandoned and lost, wreck burned by
local Inuit
Bark George, of New Bedford, abandoned
and lost
Ship John Wells, of New Bedford,
abandoned and lost
Bark Massachusetts, of New Bedford, abandoned and wrecked,
one sailor remained with the wreck through the winter
Bark J.D. Thompson, of New London, abandoned and lost
Ship Contest, of New Bedford, abandoned and lost
Bark Emily Morgan, of New Bedford,
abandoned and lost, wreck later found ashore
Ship Champion, of Edgartown, Mass.,
abandoned and lost, wreck later found ashore
Bark Henry Taber, of New Bedford,
abandoned and lost
Bark Elizabeth Swift, of New Bedford,
abandoned and lost
Ship Florida, of New Bedford, abandoned
and lost, wreck burned by local Inuit
Bark Oliver Crocker, of New Bedford,
abandoned and lost
Bark Navy, of New Bedford, abandoned and lost
Ship Reindeer, of New Bedford, abandoned and lost, sunken
wreck found in 1872
Bark Seneca, of New Bedford, abandoned and lost, beached
wreck found in 1872
Bark George Howland, of New Bedford, abandoned and lost
Bark Fanny, of New Bedford, abandoned and lost
Bark Carlotta, of San Francisco, abandoned and lost
Bark Paiea, of Honolulu, owned by a New London firm, captain
from Groton, abandoned and lost
Bark Monticello, of New London, abandoned and lost
•Brig Kohola, of Honolulu, abandoned and lost, wreck later found
ashore
Bark Eugenia, of New Bedford, abandoned and lost
Ship Julian, of Honolulu, abandoned and lost
Bark Awashonks, of New Bedford, crushed in the ice Sept. 8, 1871
Bark Thomas Dickason, of New Bedford, abandoned and lost,
wreck found in 1872
Bark Minerva, of New Bedford, abandoned, found intact in 1872,
manned and taken south
Ship William Rotch, of New Bedford, abandoned and lost
Brig Victoria, of San Francisco, abandoned and lost
Ship Mary, of Edgartown, abandoned and lost
Brig Comet, of Honolulu, crushed in the ice Sept. 2, 1871
*Bark: three-masted ship •Brig: two-masted ship
Top: Currier and Ives portrayed a scene of the 1871
disaster in this lithograph, entitled AMERICAN WHALERS
CRUSHED IN THE ICE. Below: Hand-colored lithograph
depicting the loss of the whaleship McLellan of New
London during an Arctic whaling voyage in 1852.
The McLellan is at far right. © Mystic Seaport
| march 2016 CONNECTICUT 57 |