This lot consists of three whaling books: a) Returns Of Whaling Vessels from American Ports, written by Reginald Hegarty in 1959, b) Panoramic Views of Whaling by Benjamin Russell, written by Elton Hall and published in 1981, and c) "A Captain of the Vanished Fleet" by Benjamin Sharp and published in 1915. The first book is titled "Returns Of Whaling Vessels From American Ports, A Continuation Of Alexander Starbuck's 'History Of The American Whale Fisher', 1876 - 1928", compiled by Reginald B. Hegarty, with Additions by Philip F. Purrington, and it was published in 1959 by The Old Dartmouth Historical Society and Whaling Museum of New Bedford, Massachusetts, with a date of 1959 on the copyright page as well, which makes this a first edition. (The dates on the title page and copyright page match, and there is just a single date with no other printings on either page, making this a first edition.) The book is bound in green cloth, with gilt lettering on the front cover, blank endpapers with the owner's bookplate, the title page, a Foreword and an Index, and 58 pages of text filled with charts and tables that would be a historian's delight. The first ship listed is the Helen F. out of New London in 1868 and the last ship listed is the Patterson out of San Francisco in 1928, with three pages of ships sailing to and from Honululu near the end. There's a five-page Index of American Whaling Vessels after that, followed by an Index of Hawaiian Whaleships on the last page, and it's amazing that one person could devote so much time and energy to writing a book like this. Starbuck's "History of the American Whale Fishery" seems like a staple for researchers and historians interested in whales and whaling history - it contained the names of nearly all the whaling voyages Starbucks could trace until 1876, including the name of the vessel, master agent, and the dates and results of each voyage, and this book by Hegarty seems to fill the void after 1868. Hegarty was the son of the last master of the Alice Knowles and a young whaler himself, and he devoted much time to finishing the research begun by Starbuck. Since the Sandwich Islands were a sovereign nation when Starbuck began his writing, the listing of Hawaiian whalers was not included, but since then, Hawaii has became part of the American scene and the Hawaiian whalers have been researched and added to the list by Mr. Purrington, and a note on the Index page says the voyage of the John R. Manta in 1925 was considered to be the last true whaling voyage out of the United States, so this book has covered a lot of ground. The book measures 8 3/4 x 11 1/4 in. wide and is in very good condition. The binding is tight and the pages are bright and clean, with a touch of brown spots on the endpapers and a few margins, and a couple of tiny dark spots near the crown of the spine, and an interesting book about the history of whaling in America and Hawaii. The second booklet is titled "Panoramic Views Of Whaling By Benjamin Russell", written by Elton W. Hall, and it's Old Dartmouth Historical Sketch Number 80, published in 1981 in New Bedford, Massachusetts and originally published by the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in 1978. It is 24 pages long, including two pages of notes at the end. Elton Hall was Curator of Collections at the Old Dartmouth Historical Society that was affiliated with the Whaling Museum in New Bedford, and Benjamin Russell (1804 - 1885) was an American artist best known for his watercolors of whaling ships in the New England area. He was born in New Bedford, where his family had interests in numerous whaling vessels at the time - thirty eight - and Benjamin himself owned shares in ten vessels between 1829 and 1833. He sailed around the world for three years on the whaling ship Kutusoff, where he gained first-hand knowledge of whaling and whale fisheries; he started drawing and painting in his late 30's, after working as a cooper aboard the ship. (A cooper made barrels and vats that could store whale oil until the ship made it to port.) His watercolors were considered very accurate and some of the better views of the mid-nineteenth century American whaling industry until photography became available in the 1850's. He began making lithographs in 1848 and taught art in Rhode Island after the American Civil War ended in 1865. In 1848, he and Caleb Purrington also created "The Grand Panorama of a Whaling Voyage 'Round the World", a maritime painting that was 8 1/2 feet tall and 1,275 feet in length, which was the longest painting in the United States, even longer than the Empire State Building is tall. The booklet measures 10 x 7 in. wide, with pale blue covers and black lettering on the front, and is in very good condition, with a tight binding, clear pages and plates, and just a bit of browning on the front cover. We believe that Caleb and Phillip Purrington were related, but we're not sure how. They both had ties to the whaling industry, but that's as much as we know. The third book is titled "A Captain of the Vanished Fleet", written by Benjamin Sharp and published by the Pilgrim Press in 1915. It was originally published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1907 and this is the first time it came out in book form. Benjamin Sharp (1858 - 1915) was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, studied at Swarthmore College, a private school in Pennsylvania, then he switched to the University of Pennsylvania, where he majored in zoology. He became a professor of invertebrate zoology at the university and participated in expeditions to Hawaii to collect archaeological and zoological specimens, and he traveled to Greenland with Robert Peary's expedition on its way to the north pole in 1893. The author also visited Nantucket when he was a boy, eventually it became his summer residence, he became the town's representative in 1910 and served three terms in the legislature representing the town, and the book is about the great whaling fleet at Nantucket that has seen its heyday and is in decline. The book is 1/4 bound, with gray paper-covered boards, black lettering and a ship's vignette on the front cover, blank endpapers with the bookplate of Charles Edwin Blake on the front paste-down, the half-title, then the title page, the copyright page is dated 1915 under the name of Mrs. Virginia Sharp, Benjamin's wife, probably because he died in January 1915 after catching pneumonia on a trip to Florida and the Dismal Swamp - Benjamin encountered a heavy storm in Florida and contracted pneumonia and died at the end of the month - and his wife published the book after he died, and there are 36 pages of text and four pages of biographical notes at the end. The book measures 7 3/8 x 5 in. wide and is in very good condition. The binding is tight, the text and pages are clean, there is light rubbing at the crown and a light bump and light rubbing at the heel of the spine, light wear at the tips, two tips are turned in, and a small dark spot and light soiling on the back cover, otherwise a very handsome book about Nantucket and the vanishing whale fleet at a town where whaling thrived in the 1800's. The three books together are in very good condition and provide different perspectives on the whaling industry. #145 #1531