Welcome Aboard!
We’ll be joining the Thames on May 1st 1844, about 10 months into the voyage. This is at the very peak of the whaling industry in Sag Harbor; the village was the largest whaling port in all of New York State with some 65 ships in the fleet sailing all over the world.
This log was kept by the cooper, George E. Smith. A cooper is someone who makes barrels and, as you might imagine, for a whaleship that might bring home 2,500 barrels of oil, that is an important job! The barrel staves and hoops needed to make all the barrels were stowed aboard at the start of the journey, and the cooper would work them up into completed barrels as they were needed.
By the way, “Thames” rhymes with “James.” She was likely named after the river in Connecticut of the name rather than the river in London with the same spelling (but that rhymes with “hems.”) At 414 tons, she was about 25% larger than the average whaling vessel of her day. There are about 30-35 other crewmen on board. We’ll learn a bit about some of them, but there is no extant crew list for this voyage, so we don’t know all their names.
The Thames departed Sag Harbor on July 7th 1843 under the command of Captain Jeremiah B. Hedges, bound for the Pacific Ocean. By the end of the month she reached the Azores where some provisions were bought, and then continued on down the coast of Africa and making port at Simons Town, South Africa. Unfortunately, Captain Hedges had become too ill to continue and he left the ship here to return home. Command of the ship was given to the First Mate, James R. Bishop. It was Friday, October the 13th. The Thames sailed on into the Pacific, often seeing whales and lowering boats to chase, but meeting with failure far more often than success.
By January of 1844 she was off the coast of New Zealand; in mid-February she was off Pitcairn’s Island (of “The Mutiny on the Bounty” fame), then worked her way up to the Hawaiian Islands, where anchored at Maui on March 20th 1844. Maui was one of the great whaling ports in the Pacific, the harbor often crowded with American vessels. While the Thames was there, the Sag Harbor ships Ontario, Illinois, Huron, Washington, Alexander and Neptune also visited the port. You can imagine, after 10 months at sea, the joy of seeing so many friends, neighbors and even other family members who were on the other ships.
After a few days of shore leave for the crew, buying provisions and repairing the ship, the Thames departed Maui on April 3rd and headed north of the whaling grounds off the coast of Kamchatka (Russia)…