from the Providence Institution for Savings "The Old Stone Bank" History of Rhode Island, Vol. III by John Williams Haley, "The Rhode Island Historian" published by Providence Institution for Savings, 1939. pp. 203 - 205. "THE VOYAGE OF THE BARK 'EMIGRANT' While the glory of leadership and success in the American whaling industry rightfully belongs to Nantucket and New Bedford, the little seaport towns of Warren and Bristol, Rhode Island, have been recorded in whaling history as centers of great activity during the second quarter of the last century. From these two ports a great number of crudely-built yet sturdy whaling vessels have weighed anchor, swung into a northeast wind, sailed down the sheltered waters of Narragansett Bay and headed for the open sea and ports unknown. Cruising to all parts of the world, being tossed about in raging seas, battling for hours with elusive leviathans of the deep, knowing that one false move would invite the throes of defeat and disaster, these hardy Rhode Island seamen risked their lives in the quest of a few precious barrels of sperm or whale oil that their loved ones at home might be spared poverty and privation. It is a common error of the present generation to look back on whaling as a bully sport, surrounded with glamor and romance, -- far from that; whale hunting was an endless round of danger, toil and horrible suffering. Sailing uncharted seas, encountering both arctic blizzards and scorching tropical heat, starving, thirsting, -- even the most humble of these hardy mariners could narrate truths that would put fiction to shame. Awkward scribblings on musty pages, splattered with whale oil, and loosely bound in a striped canvas cover cut from a discarded straw mattress, reveal a most fascinating story of the last successful voyage of the little bark 'Emigrant' owned by one Samuel Church. The earliest records of the 'Emigrant' appear in the year 1841 when we find her on a year's whaling cruise in the South Atlantic. On returning to Bristol she was again fitted out and departed the following year for the Pacific Ocean via the treacherous waters of Cape Horn. This was a short and most successful voyage, being gone but nine months and returning with 500 barrels of oil and some 2000 pounds of precious whale bone. Having exploited both the Atlantic and the Pacific, the bark 'Emigrant', carrying but 180 tons, turned to the new worlds to conquer and set out for the Indian Ocean November 10, 1844, and it is this thrilling voyage to the other side of the earth that we are able to trace from day to day by the recordings on the now fading pages of her original log." continued in part 2.