Why Hawaii?
Old Weather Whaling has been set up to record the weather and ice information from whalers' log books. Often the start of the journey is from San Francisco, around the middle of December, down to the South Pacific and the whaling grounds off the coast of Chile, thereby making the use of the Austral Summer. With a cargo to sell they return to their agents in Hawaii to empty the ship before spending the Boreal Summer in the Bering and Arctic Seas. They return to San Francisco by about the first/second week in November ready for a short stop-over to prepare for the next journey.
The run home during October is pretty quick and is usually included in the last section of the log book to be transcribed. However the first section of the journey, if to the South Pacific, is being left for transcription after the ice sections of the journey have been completed. To hold those sections over, the relevant Shipyards are stored here in 'Wintering in Hawaii'.
Some ships start from New Bedford. After working the Falkland Grounds they rounded The Horn and head up to Hawaii via Chile's coast.
One word of warning if you're thinking that Hawaii sounds like it must have been an idyllic stopover. Some ships were still 'boiling' when they got there. It must have smelt horrid. If I'm right, those ships were often taken to Kealakekua Bay before being allowed into port.
San Francisco with whalers, Arctic Oil Works T-shaped pier extending into the Bay.
Kaʻawaloa in 1779 by John Webber, artist aboard Cook's ship. A village at the north end of Kealakekua Bay, Hawaii
