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Whales Plentiful Here Fifty Years Ago. Captain Justus Bickford, a native of Gouldsboro, probably has killed more whales than any man living in Maine. When he was but 1: years old he went on a whaling voyage with his father, and when 22 years of age, he commanded a whaling schooner, and followed the oc cupation for 25 years. Capt. Bickford says that the best hunting grounds in those days were between Cape Cod and Grand Menan, extending up the Maine coast to Monhegan. “I killed a whale once from which I took 500 barrels of “ile” when I was a young man,” said Captain Bickford the other day. “That was the biggest whale lever killed He measured 78 feet in length. His fins were 18 feet, and from one fluke to the other, 18 feet. Oil at that time, 1846, was worth $15 per barrel, so the whale fetched about $1500. “It was in the month of October, 1846. We found the whale early in the morning and about 10 o'clock we harpooned and fastened him. He took us about 15 miles out beyond Monhegan in a sour westerly course before he made a die of it. He loomed up on the water as big as Mt. Katahdin. A big storm came up. The sea became violent, and thunder and lightning added to the wildness of the tempest. We were in a small boat and had to anchor the leviathan just off the islands. When the storm abated we found it drifted two miles out to sea.
Newspaper Details
Bar Harbor Record
Bar Harbor, Maine, US
Wed, Nov 09, 1898
Page 5
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
USA 14 Aug 2026
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