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The Letters of a Young Whaleman -
1822-1824 During a Voyage to the Pacific Ocean THROUGH THE INTEREST of Captain C. G. Porter, of Duluth, Minnesota, we are able to publish the letters of Elihu Wright, of Saybrook, Connecticut, who was twenty-one years old when he shipped aboard the whaleship Enter prise, of Nantucket. The letters are an inheritance of Captain Porter, through his mother, Mrs. Sally (Lewis) Wright Porter, who copied them from the documents in her father's files in Rochester, New York, in 1949, and these first copies were made one hundred years after the originals had been written. Elihu Wright was born in Saybrook, Conn., April 12, 1801. The ship on which he sailed from Nantucket on Sept. 23, 1822, was a new vessel, having been built in Haddam, Conn., earlier that year for the firm of Zenas Coffin, a well-known Island whaling company, and named the Enterprise. She left Nan tucket on Sept. 23, 1822, and returned Jan. 27, 1826, having been gone three and one-half years. It was an excellent voyage as she returned with 2,495 bbls. of sperm oil and 95 bbls. of whale oil. Captain Reuben Weeks was her com mander on this voyage. It is possible that young Wright saw the Enterprise being built, as Saybrook was close to Haddam, on the Connecticut River. He found his way to Nantucket and shipped as a greenhorn, the usual designation for all newcomers to whaling. Upon the ship's return he signed on her again, for her next voyage, beginning August 1, 1826, and returning March 19, 1829, with 2,904 bbls. of sperm oil, one of the best voyages of a Nantucket ship to date. Captain Obed Swain was the successful master. However, it was on this voyage that young Wright was seriously injured by a whale and returned home a crip ple, which was to handicap him the rest of his life. He died Sept. 30, 1840. The first of these interesting letters was written from Bonavista, one of the Cape Verde Islands, on October 3, 1822, and describes the passage across the Atlantic from Nantucket — the maiden voyage for both the Enterprise and her young whaleman. Elihu was writing to his brother Samuel Wright, in Saybrook, and the letter reads as follows: "Dear Brother: With pleasure I snatch my pen in haste to inform you how and where I am. My health is almost perfectly recovered. I hope these few lines will find you with your little family well, likewise parents and brothers, with all inquiring friends enjoying the same invaluable bless ing. I don't think that I was ever more fleshy than I am now. Of a truth, I am growing too big for my clothes and I feel as if I could do a thing or two. We left Nantucket the 3rd of Sept. and made the Isle of Saul the 3rd of Oct., being 30 days out of sight of land.
