A picturesque offshoot of the whaling fleet was the fleet of seal-hunters that came into existence at the end of the eighteenth century. When Captains Gamaliel Collins and David Smith, of Cape Cod, went to the Falklands (1774) in search of whales, they found there thousands of seals, both hair and fur, and sea-lions without end. The oil of these animals being of good quality, the whalers carried some of it home, together with the skins, which were found to serve well for covering trunks. The fur-seals as well as the hair sealskins were used for this purpose. Soon after the War of the Revolution a Mrs. Haley, of Boston, sent a large ship to the Falklands especially for seals. The number taken was 13,000, and the skins sold for fifty cents each in New York. This voyage, like that of the _Columbia_ to the Northwest coast, shows well the extraordinary enterprise of the ship-owners of the day. In 1790 Elijah Austin, of New Haven, sent two vessels to the Falklands for seals, and when they were filled, Captain Daniel Greene, who commanded one of them, took his cargo direct to Canton for sale, because the skins Mrs. Haley's ship had taken had been exported from New York to Canton with profit. The work of the brig _Betsey_, of Stonington, Connecticut, is perhaps the most memorable of any of the ships that entered the early trade. Though of but 100 tons' measurement, she made two voyages to the southern seal islands, beginning in 1790, both of which were remarkably profitable--the better voyage paid $52,300 net. The outfit, vessel included, probably cost little more than a tenth of this sum. The _Betsey's_ success naturally increased the number of vessels in the hunt very rapidly. Mas-a-Fuera, Juan Fernandez, the South Shetlands, the Prince Edward and Crozet islands, Desolation and Heard's islands, all soon became as well known to the sealers as Long Island Sound was to the coasters. Captain Henry Fanning, of the ship _Catharine_, obtained a manuscript copy of the notes made by the original discoverer of Crozet's Island, and with that as a guide went to the islands and obtained a full cargo.