SECTION III.—_Further Successes, with their comparative Relations, in the Ship Henrietta._
Future results clearly indicated the source, under a favouring Providence, of my Father’s prosperity. These first fruits of adventure were justified by the subsequent harvest, as the legitimate proceeds of superior management. Merely accidental circumstances may yield, for an occasion or two, or for several occasions, felicitous results; but where adventures involving mind and talent for their conduct, prove, through a long series of repetitions, under all the diversities of times and seasons, unusually successful, they give evidence of a master-mind directing the operations.
During the subsequent five years of my Father’s enterprises in the same ship—from 1793 to 1797 inclusive,—the Henrietta’s cargo stood generally, I believe, at the head of the list of successful voyages amongst the whole fleet of Greenland whalers. The least successful voyage was liberally remunerating to the owner—the most successful, unprecedentedly so. The total captures in whales, during the six successful years, including that of 1792, was no less than eighty; and the produce in oil, (considered as wonderful for that day,) 729 tuns.
Before the introduction of this species of energetic enterprise, the adventurers, as a class, were content with small things. We have the commendatory record concerning Captain Banks, of the Jenny, of Whitby, who was esteemed a talented and successful fisherman, that he brought home sixty-five whales in ten years, or six and a half per year; whereas the average captures by my Father, during the period referred to, was thirteen and one-third whales, or more than double the number of this successful predecessor.
The catch in his fifth year of command reached the then extraordinary amount of twenty-five whales; and in his last year, the proceeds in oil were greater, being 152 tuns, than had before entered the port of Whitby in any one ship.
Whilst giving the first detailed and authentic records of a Father’s life and enterprises, it may be permitted, I trust, in the son, to dwell still further on these comparisons, whereby the enterprises referred to may obtain their just estimation in their bearing on the commercial prosperity of the nation.