… Bailey (AM0215)

This Mr. Bailey, about whom no definitive information could be found, is listed as replacement master on two ships:

PEARL (AS2158): (bark, 195 tons, built Medford, MA 1838, burned by SHENANDOAH in April 1865). Departed October 15, 1859, returned on September 1862. Destination not reported. The original master was Henry W. Bartlett (AM0375) who left the ship and died. Mr. Bailey replaced him as master. He does not appear on the crew list for this voyage. Agents: Williams & Haven. AV11339.

EMMA JANE (AS1297): (schooner, 86 tons, built Dorchester MD in 1854, condemned in 1865). Departed June 27, 1872 for Heard’s Island (a long distance southwest of Perth, Australia), returned May 5, 1877. The original master was William T. Swain. Mr. Bailey appears as replacement master but no indication was found of Swain’s departure. Note: The crew list for EMMA JANE shows a Charles Bailey as crew member listed below Swain’s name. Agents: Williams & Haven. AV04453.

Sources: See sidebar and sources mentioned in text.

George Shaw (Mystic Seaport Museum) December 6, 2021

... Bailey, in American Offshore Whaling Voyages on WhalingHistory.org
Return to New London Whaling Masters

Sources for New London Whaling Masters

For genealogical information: Ancestry.com, Family Search, Genealogybank.org, Find A Grave, and newspapers.com.

For whaling-related topics: The principal online sites are available at research.mysticseaport.org. It has numerous valuable drop-down menus including American Offshore Whaling Voyages (AOWV), Connecticut Ship Database and New London Crew Lists as well as others. AOWV is organized around identifier numbers for masters (AM….), for ships (AS….), and for voyages (AV….), all easily searchable. It can also be reached directly at wh alinghistory.org and Whalemen’s Shipping List. Three secondary sources that I used in almost every case were Alexander Starbuck’s History of the American Whale Fishery (Starbuck), Barnard Colby’s For Oil and Buggy Whips (Colby), and Robert Decker’s Whaling Industry of New London (Decker). Dennis Wood Abstracts, indexed in AOWV, contains useful abstracts of logbooks. Other sources are cited in the text in particular cases.

I had the good fortune to correspond and meet with Judith Lund, the person behind the massive American Offshore Whaling Voyages database, who provided useful guidance along the way and was a resource when I found possible errors or inconsistencies in the sources. I refer to AOWV’s Whaling Resource Identifiers for masters (AM…), vessels (AS…), and voyages (AV…) in the text. Number references in AOWV are to those identifiers. The dates of voyages are approximate as the records vary.