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The Last Whale-Chase Off Nantucket by Edouard A. Stackpole THE APPEARANCE OF a number of pilot whales, beached on the south shore of the Island in December, brought about a number of questions, among which was that of when the last whale was actually taken by Nantucketers off these shores. While it is known that a dead right whale was found out in the sound and towed into Nantucket harbor, where it was "cut in" alongside a schooner at Straight Wharf in April, 1871, and that schools of blackfish came up on the north shore and the bathing beach in 1878 and 1918, the last whale to be chased and taken by a whaleboat and crew was in April of 1887 — ninety-five years ago this year. It was on a Monday morning, April 12, 1887, that the brick store of Joseph B. Macy, on Straight Wharf, was the scene of considerable activity. A whaleboat, rowed by five experienced men at the oars, came around Brant Point from the west'ard, with Captain Timothy Clisby at the steering oar. They pulled up in the dock between Old South and Straight Wharf and began loading from the Macy Store the gear necessary to cut-in and boil out the blubber of the whale they had killed off Tuckernuck some twenty-four hours before. While his crew got the whale line and spades together, and others roll ed six 7-barrel casks down the wharf, Captain Clisby gave the answers to the usual questions being asked. "We first sighted the whale last Tuesday morning," he said, "when I was visiting my mate, George Coffin, on Tuckernuck. A year ago we had been together on the topsail schooner Era, whaling in Hudson Bay. Coffin had sighted a school of whales just off the Island and we got a boat's crew together in a hurry. We had to put to sea without a compass and with no grub, but we had to work fast." As he continued his story, his crew kept busy collecting the gear now needed from Macy's. The catboat Vesta, Captain Jernegan, with Horace Cash (both ex-whalemen), was used to hold a 600-lb. try-pot and several cutting-in spades. The group was anxious for Captain Clisby to resume his story, and he soon complied. "After leaving the beach at Tuckernuck we came up to where the school was slowly moving, and we singled out a big fellow. Coffin got into his usual position in the bow, with a harpoon in hand, while I was at the steering oar. As we drew up to him we saw he was a 60-barrel fellow — a good-sized whale. Ap proaching him carefully, the time came for Coffin to sink his harpoon well in to his body, and we pulled 'starn-all' as the whale reacted as expected. Soon we were off on a Nantucket sleigh-ride, as the critter shot forward like a rocket. He tired, and then shot forward again, as strongly as before." One of the boat's crew, who recalled the incident, was Captain Everett Coffin, for many years a steamboat skipper between Seattle and Tacoma,
