Henry Astor: 1835-1893

A Boat Stoving & A Lot of Gamming

The Henry Astor was built in New York around 1820 and was a large whale ship of 375 tons. The whaling captain for this voyage was Charles Rawson of Nantucket. He was born in 1794 and died in Nantucket in 1862. In addition to this voyage, he mastered four other whaling voyages, three out of New Bedford and a fourth out of Hudson.

The Henry Astor left Hudson on July 30, 1835 and returned August 5, 1839 on a four year whaling voyage to the Pacific Ocean. She would return with 1,000 barrels of sperm oil and 700 barrels of whale oil. Although this was her last voyage from Hudson, the Henry Astor’s sailed three more whaling voyages from Nantucket. The author of this logbook was Obed Swain who served as one of the mates on this voyage.

The first entry in this log book states: “Thursday July the 30th, first part of this 24 hours commences with light wind at 2PM and got underway from the North River (Hudson River). At 6PM anchored off Staten Island.”

On August 14, 1835 the Henry Astor got its first large sperm whale of 75 barrels, but it wasn’t without incident. The log reads: “Saw a large whale toward the bow boat, struck and it got bad, boat stove. Secured to boats fast.”

On Saturday October 31, the Henry Astor spoke with her sister ship, the whaler Edward, also out of Hudson somewhere in the vicinity of Cape Horn. The Edward had been out a little over 4 months and would return from her voyage in 1836 with just shy of 900 barrels of oil. On this date however, the log indicates that the vessel already had 150 barrels of oil in storage.

The Henry Astor approaches Cape Horn around November 8 and is off the coast of Cape Horn by November 14. The Horn was notorious for its weather conditions and was often a three week passage with strong wind, hard squalls and rain. From the logbook: “November 13 first part strong gales from the southwest, took in foresail and main topsail.” By December 6, Swain notes in his logbook that she is off the coast of Chile.

During the length of this voyage the Henry Astor gammed with many other whale ships and vessels. On this voyage, the Henry Astor gammed with thirteen ships out of Nantucket, ten out of New Bedford, one out of Poughkeepsie and one from Hudson. The remainder were from other ports.

As whaling progressed into the 19th century, voyages were longer, in some cases like this voyage of the Henry Astor up to four years in length.

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Additional Resources: 

A Copy of the Log of the Bark Ship “Henry Astor” of Hudson, N.Y. 1831-1834 (PDF)

Logbook of the Ship Henry Astor (links to archive.org)