… Butler (AM0795)

This Mr. Butler, about whom no definitive information could be found, is listed as replacement master on one ship:

JOHN E. SMITH (AS1711): (schooner, home port New London, 119 tons, built in Brookhaven, NY in 1845, withdrawn in 1858). Departed on August 5, 1851 for Desolation Island, returned on June 26,1854. The agent was E.V. Stoddard. AV07729.

The original master when the ship sailed in 1851 was Daniel S. Babcock (AM0215). Under circumstances not known, he left the ship and was replaced by Capt. Babcock who in turn left the ship, to be replaced by William A. Niles (AM3604). Dennis Wood Abstract 2-374 does not mention the changes in command of the ship. The crew list for this voyage does not show Capt. Babcock as a member of the original crew.

Starbuck shows the master of this voyage only by the last name “Babcock”. Decker, on the other hand, shows only the last name “Butler”. Colby does not mentioneither name.

In other respects, absent new information, this Capt. Butler must remain a mystery.

Sources used: see sidebar and sources cited in text.

George Shaw (Mystic Seaport Museum) August 2024

... Butler, 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.