The whaling disaster of 1871 was an incident off the northern Alaskan coast in which a fleet of 33 American whaling ships were trapped in the Arctic ice in September 1871 and subsequently abandoned. It dealt a serious blow to the American whaling industry, already in decline.
By the 1870s, In the waning years of the Whaling industry, fleet voyages to the Arctic in search of Bowhead were annual. The “Arctic grounds” from the Bearing Strait to Point Barrow had been hunted for 20 years since the Spring and Summer Bowhead whale population in the Arctic was discovered by Captain Thomas Welcome Roys, who sailed the New Beford Whaleship Superior past the Bearing Straight in late July 1848.[1] By the end of August, the Superior had caught 11 Bowheads yielding 1,600 barrels of oil. The equivalent catch of three years sailing in only two months was enabled by the population's large layer of insulating blubber from months feeding in the cold Arctic waters.