Log of the Whale Ship Equator, 1831 - 1832. by Manuscript

Small folio, unpaginated. 47 pages of manuscript entries. 12 whale stamps

The "Equator" was a venerable 262 ton bark built in New Bedford in 1818. On this, her sixth voyage, she was commanded by Benjamin Riddell. She departed New Bedford on July 10, 1831 and returned home from the Pacific with 1500 barrels of sperm oil on April 23, 1833. They made the Azores in August and struck their first whale shortly thereafter. The "Equator" rounded Cape Horn with difficulty, but she was in the Pacific by October, and catching whales off the coast of Peru by November, 1831. They put in at Paita on December 1, then headed west along The Line, with good results. They were in the Society Islands in March 1832, which is where this journal ends. The journal keeper records weather conditions, sails set, ships spoken, and whales sighted, taken and lost, with concise descriptions of captures. There are 17 whale stamps, from four different blocks. On the last page of this journal (another 50 - 75 pages have been cut out) the journal keeper goes on a rant about all the oil lost by the waist boat and the captain's boat owing to a bad line and bad conduct. The front and rear pastedowns contain lengthy lists of whale ships spoken and and amount of oil each carried at the time. Bound in quarter calf over marbled boards. The pages are clean and the entries are legible, though the keeper's spelling is atrocious. According to Sherman's "Whaling Logbooks and Journals" there are no journals of this voyage on record. It's only half a log of a classic Pacific whaling voyage, but it's only half the price.