3-028-436 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Truelove, of Hull, the last of the sailing whalers, 1870. Engraving of a sketch by the surgeon of the whaler Ravenscraig, of '...probably one of the oldest vessels from a British port. Built for the merchant trade, she was launched at Philadelphia, in 1764...[She was] employed by the Americans, during their first war with this country, as a privateer...captured by a British cruiser...she was then employed in the wine trade, between Oporto and Hull...[She] carried six guns of a side, and was stoutly manned for defence, seeing that, France being at war with Britain...the wine trade was then carried on at great risk...[She was] transformed into a whaler, being strengthened to encounter the dangers of the icy north...she...returned in safety when several of her consorts were frozen up for the winter, and more than half their crews perished of cold and starvation...This wonderful vessel must have made not less than eighty voyages to Greenland and Davis's Strait, crossing the Atlantic and Polar Ocean no less than 160 times without a single mishap...[She] brought home not less than between 300 and 400 whales, besides seals and other products of the Arctic seas, representing a very large capital...She is now superseded by modern steam-whalers'. From "Illustrated London News", 1870.