Charles Melville Scammon

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Capt. Charles M Scammon, Scientist Overland Monthly
Scammon's 1874 illustration of a gray whale.

Charles Melville Scammon (1825–1911) was a 19th-century

Laguna Ojo de Liebre and San Ignacio Lagoon, the former also known as "Scammon's Lagoon" after him. In 1874 he wrote the book The Marine Mammals of the North-western Coast of North America,[1] which was a financial failure. It is now considered a classic.[2]

Scammon was born in

brig Boston, with the schooner-tender Marin, he first hunted the gray whales of Laguna Ojo de Liebre, catching twenty.[3] The following winter (1858–59), commanding the bark Ocean Bird and accompanied by the schooner tenders A.M. Simpson and Kate, he returned to the lagoon, catching forty-seven cows.[4] In the winter of 1859–60 he first exploited another lagoon to the south, San Ignacio. Within a few seasons it had been swept clean of whales.[3]

In 1860–61 he returned to Laguna Ojo de Liebre in the bark Ocean Bird, taking a paltry 245 barrels of oil: about seven whales.

Shantar Bay until September, catching only three bowhead whales.[5] In the winter of 1862-63 he hunted gray whales in Magdalena Bay, his last whaling cruise. He spent the following three decades in the Revenue Service
, before retiring from disability in 1895.

In October 1870, Scammon collected the 27-foot-long type specimen of the Davidson piked whale (Balaenoptera davidsoni, Scammon, 1872); it had been found dead on the shores of Admiralty Inlet by Italian fishermen, who towed it to Port Townsend Bay, where they flensed it.[2]

He is the brother of J. Young Scammon and Eliakim P. Scammon.[citation needed]

The village of Scammon Bay, Alaska is named after Scammon, as is a popular salmon dish in the town.

References

  1. ^ Scammon, Charles Melville (1874). The marine mammals of the north-western coast of North America, described and illustrated; together with an account of the American whale-fishery. Smithsonian Libraries. San Francisco, J.H. Carmany; New York, Putnam.
  2. ^
    ISBN 978-0-486-21976-9
    .
  3. ^ a b c Henderson, David A. (1972). Men & Whales at Scammon's Lagoon. Los Angeles: Dawson's Book Shop.
  4. ^ Scammon, Charles Melville, and David A. Henderson (1970). Journal aboard the bark Ocean Bird on a whaling voyage to Scammon's Lagoon, winter of 1858–59. Los Angeles: Dawson's Book Shop.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  5. ISBN 978-1-55963-088-7
    .
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