The Whaling Voyage
In 1857 there were 447 whaling ships at New Bedford and the ports around it — sixty-four per cent of American whaling tonnage, and something close to half the whaling in the world. What ran here was a business in ships and, at the same time, a business in money. A man called the agent raised funds from the wealthy of the town, fitted out a ship, chose a captain, and assembled one voyage as one venture. When it returned, he sold the cargo and split the proceeds at agreed shares. Pay was not a wage but a share, called a lay: a captain took between an eighth and a twelfth, an ordinary hand between a hundredth and a hundred-and-sixtieth, a boy a two-hundred-and-fiftieth. The owners and the agent took sixty to seventy per cent. The Benjamin Tucker returned a profit of $45,320 in 1851 — of which the hand on a hundred-and-sixtieth lay received $283, for several years of work. Most voyages lost money and a very few great ones carried the rest. Where that shape appears again, ninety years later, is the model next door.