Josiah Nickerson Knowles
Josiah Knowles was born in Cape Cod and was a successful merchant skipper and later a whaling agent before he became manager of the Pacific Steam Whaling Company and its associated Arctic Oil Works. Knowles was an innovating force in the company and established shore-based whaling and trading stations on the Arctic coast.1)
George Leavitt was the manager of the Pacific Steam Whaling Company's shore station at Point Barrow [Nuvuk] in 1889. He believed reports of whales in the Beaufort Sea and boarded the Grampus for San Francisco before he heard a substantiating story from the captains of the Orca and Thrasher. His goal was to convince Knowles, the company's managing agent, to send him back with a ship to winter at Herschel Island.2)
Leavitt was given a ship in 1893. After the Mary D. Hume and the Grampus returned with record whale catches, Knowles and his partners outfitted four steamers, the Balaena, Grampus, Narwhal and the Newport, for wintering at Herschel. Knowles ordered other steamers to cruise to Cape Bathurst and planned to use Herschel Island as an Arctic advance base. The whaleships would meet the company tenders there with food, supplies and fresh crews and send back whalebone and crew on furlough.3)
As early as 1892 Knowles was searching for another winter harbour closer to Cape Bathurst. The Mary D. Hume and the Newport stayed in the Arctic for six consecutive seasons. In 1893, 286 whales were taken east of Herschel and the Narwhal and the Balaena took more than fifty each - a seasonal record. During the winter of 1893 Knowles had five ships in Herschel Island’s Pauline Cove: Balaena, Grampus, Narwhal, Newport and Mary D. Hume. The Roth Blum Company, meat packers from San Francisco, sent up the Jeanette and the Karluk.4)
This was the last refuge of the bowhead whales and 1893 was the peak catch for the whalers. In 1894, fifteen ships arrived to winter at Herschel Island. Herschel's heyday as a whaling station was from 1890 to approximately 1908.5)