The first whaler to sail from San Francisco was the “Popmunnett” in the year 1850, and for thirty years after there were a few whaleships registered in this port. Steam whalers were introduced into the American fleet in 1880, when New Bedford sent out one, but it was the adoption of steam and the proximity to the Arctic that made San Francisco a whaling port at the time other places were giving up the pursuit. In 1893 there were thirty-three vessels enrolled there, many of which had been transferred from the Eastern cities. Since 1895 Boston, New Bedford, Provincetown, and San Francisco have been the only places from which whalers have been regularly registered, and in 1903 Boston recorded her last whaleship.

There are a number of reasons for the decline of the whale fishery, but the chief factor was undoubtedly the introduction of kerosene. The opening of the first oil well in Pennsylvania sealed the fate of whaling. Henceforth sperm candles were used for ornament, and whale oil lamps soon became interesting relics. Other causes doubtless contributed to this rapid decline; for instance, the financial crisis of 1857; the uncertainty of the business, especially since Arctic whaling was begun in 1848; the increased cost of fitting out the ships for longer voyages; and the California gold craze in 1849, when many crews and officers deserted. Also the rise of the cotton industry from about 1850 to 1875 in New Bedford drew a great deal of capital from the uncertain whale fishery to the more conservative investments in cotton mills, which were successful from the very start. As whaling died out the mills were built up, and it is owing to these same mills that the city was saved from becoming a deserted fishing village. Then later even the lubricating oils began to be made from the residuum of kerosene, and about the same time wax was invented for candles, which again robbed the whaling industry of another market for oil. Soon came the Civil War, in which many vessels were captured or destroyed, then followed the sinking of forty or more vessels of the Charleston Stone Fleet described elsewhere, and finally came the Arctic disasters of 1871 and 1876, all of which hastened the end of the industry.