Seven years before the wonderful catch of 1852, disasters and other reverses had caused many serious failures, and from that date really begins the decline in whaling, which was rapid after 1860. But meantime San Francisco had worked into the business. For years vessels had fitted out from the Sandwich Islands, returning home only about once in five years. But there were many abuses and disadvantages in this; hence San Francisco as it grew in importance became the head-quarters for fitting, and one ship after another was transferred from the New Bedford fleet to that of San Francisco, until now she is next to New Bedford in the whaling business. It is doubtful if the fleet sailing from Buzzard's Bay twenty-five years hence is half the size of the fleet of to-day; for vessels that are lost, sold, or broken up are seldom replaced. The astonishing decline in this industry is shown by the fact that three hundred and eleven whaling vessels were owned in New Bedford in 1855. Thirty years later, in 1885, only one hundred and thirty-five such vessels were owned in the whole United States, eighty-six of which hailed from New Bedford, twenty from San Francisco, and the rest from Provincetown, New London, Edgartown, Boston, Stonington, and Marion. The disasters which have befallen the whaling industry are many and fearful. During the late war rebel cruisers captured fifty vessels, forty-six of them, with their cargoes and outfits, being burned. Twenty-eight of them were New Bedford vessels. These, with other losses, show what New Bedford had at stake before the Court of Commissioners of Alabama Claims. Her slice of the Geneva Award will approximate, when all paid, three millions of dollars. The "stone fleets," sunk off Charleston and Savannah harbors in 1861, drew heavily on whaling vessels; for more money would be paid by the Government for vessels than they could earn in whaling. In the first stone fleet were twelve New Bedford whalers, and in the second, eight. Then there were the horrible calamities of 1871 and 1876. In the former year thirty-three vessels were crushed or abandoned in the Arctic, twenty-two belonging in New Bedford. The direct loss from this was one million, one hundred thousand dollars. Twelve hundred and nineteen men were thrust out on the ice to perish from cold and hunger. Nothing but the bravery of Capt. Frazier, of one of the abandoned vessels, in journeying seventy miles over the ice-fields to the fleet outside for rescue, prevented untold suffering and death. In the calamity of 1876 twelve vessels were abandoned, causing a loss to New Bedford merchants of about six hundred and sixty thousand dollars. But a greater horror was added to this calamity, some fifty lives being lost.