Post by UKarchaeology on Jan 24, 2016 23:34:52 GMT
Nearly 150 years after they were trapped and sheared in half by packs of Arctic ice, the ships from a long-lost whaling fleet have finally returned to human view.
A total of 33 ships were shredded by ice off the shore of Alaska‘s North Slope in September 1871, stranding more than 1,200 crew members and their families in small, open whaleboats in the Chukchi Sea.
Although the passengers were eventually saved, all of the expedition’s cargo of whale blubber, oil, and bones was lost, after the few surviving ships were forced to jettison their goods in order to make room for the stranded.
The loss of the fleet made national headlines, totaling more than $25 million in today’s dollars — a debacle of such proportions that it’s said to have spelled the beginning of the end of commercial whaling in the United States.
Full story: westerndigs.org/wrecks-of-long-lost-19th-century-whaling-fleet-discovered-off-alaska-coast/
A total of 33 ships were shredded by ice off the shore of Alaska‘s North Slope in September 1871, stranding more than 1,200 crew members and their families in small, open whaleboats in the Chukchi Sea.
Although the passengers were eventually saved, all of the expedition’s cargo of whale blubber, oil, and bones was lost, after the few surviving ships were forced to jettison their goods in order to make room for the stranded.
The loss of the fleet made national headlines, totaling more than $25 million in today’s dollars — a debacle of such proportions that it’s said to have spelled the beginning of the end of commercial whaling in the United States.
Full story: westerndigs.org/wrecks-of-long-lost-19th-century-whaling-fleet-discovered-off-alaska-coast/