The Alert made two more voyages to the coast of California,
successful, and without a mishap, as usual, and was sold by Messrs.
Bryant and Sturgis, in 1843, to Mr. Thomas W. Williams, a merchant
of New London, Connecticut, who employed her in the whaletrade in
the Pacific. She was as lucky and prosperous there as in the
merchant service. When I was at the Sandwich Islands in 1860, a man
was introduced to me as having commanded the Alert on two cruises, and
his friends told me that he was as proud of it as if he had
commanded a frigate.
I am permitted to publish the following letter from the owner of the
Alert, giving her later record and her historic end,- captured and
burned by the rebel Alabama:
NEW LONDON, MARCH 17, 1868.
RICHARD H. DANA, ESQ.:
Dear Sir,- I am happy to acknowledge the receipt of your favor of
the 14th inst., and to answer your inquiries about the good ship
Alert. I bought her of Messrs. Bryant and Sturgis in the year 1843,
for my firm of Williams and Haven, for a whaler, in which business she
was successful until captured by the rebel steamer Alabama, September,
1862, making a period of more than nineteen years, during which she
took and delivered at New London upwards of twenty-five thousand
barrels of whale and sperm oil.
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