The Alert Made Two More Voyages To The Coast Of California,
Successful, And Without A Mishap, As Usual, And Was Sold By
Messrs.
Bryant and Sturgis, in 1843, to Mr. Thomas W. Williams,
a merchant of New London, Connecticut, who employed her in the
whale-trade in the Pacific.
She was as lucky and prosperous
there as in the merchant service. When I was at the Sandwich
Islands in 1860, a man was introduced to me as having commanded
the Alert on two cruises, and his friends told me that he was as
proud of it as if he had commanded a frigate.
I am permitted to publish the following letter from the owner of
the Alert, giving her later record and her historic end, - captured
and burned by the rebel Alabama: -
New London, March 17, 1868.
Richard H. Dana, Esq.:
Dear Sir, - I am happy to acknowledge the receipt of your favor of
the 14th inst., and to answer your inquiries about the good ship
Alert. I bought her of Messrs. Bryant and Sturgis in the year
1843, for my firm of Williams and Haven, for a whaler, in which
business she was successful until captured by the rebel steamer
Alabama, September, 1862, making a period of more than nineteen
years, during which she took and delivered at New London upwards
of twenty-five thousand barrels of whale and sperm oil. She sailed
last from this port, August 30, 1862, for Hurd's Island (the newly
discovered land south of Kerguelen's), commanded by Edwin Church,
and was captured and burned on the 9th of September following,
only ten days out, near or close to the Azores, with thirty
barrels of sperm oil on board, and while her boats were off
in pursuit of whales.
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