Welcome to the second booklet in the series on Dan Harris, founder of Fairhaven,WA. Dan made two whaling voyages before arriving at Bellingham Bay in May of 1854 at the age of twenty-one. They took him from the Atlantic to the Pacific and then to the Artic and Antarctic. The first voyage began in 1848, when he was just fifteen years old, and the second in 1851, when he was eighteen. So far the name of the vessel on which he first sailed has not been discovered. Happily, Dan's brother, George Harris, disclosed in a newspaper interview shortly after Dan's death that the name of the Captain on Dan's second voyage was Mercator Cooper. That fact led to identifying the vessel involved as the ship Levant and discovering a microfilm of the log of the voyage at the New Bedford Whaling Museum. While the search for records on the first voyage continues, three excerpts from the log of the Levant that mention Dan Harris by name are reproduced on the following pages.

    The ship Levant, a 382 ton square-rigged vessel, left Sag Harbor, New York for a whaling voyage to the Pacific, Arctic and Antarctic on August 7, 1851. Mercator Cooper was captain and Dan Harris was one of the boatsteerers (harpooners). After crossing the Atlantic, rounding Africa and crossing the Indian Ocean, the ship's first port of call was Hobart, Tasmania, where Dan Harris spent his nineteenth birthday (February 16, 1852) in jail for quarreling with his crew mates after staying ashore eight hours beyond his liberty. The Levant spent the summer of 1852 in the North Pacific and Arctic Oceans, reaching as far as Latitude 70:45. The ship headed south in late August, stopping at Hawaii in November and Chatham Island in December. The Levant then headed straight south doing little whaling.

    A note in the margin of the log book in mid-January 1853 describing this section of the voyage as "a cruise in the Antarctic regions" may indicate Captain Cooper's intent to establish a record for a vessel of United States registry sailing closest to the South Pole. As noted in the log entries cited above, this goal was actually achieved. Only the English Captain James Cook had previously sailed further south. Mercator Cooper is credited for taking his ship to a latitude higher than 70 Degrees South. However, it was Dan Harris who actually stepped out on to the ice near the point of the "Levant's" southernmost position.

    When the identity of the first ship on which Dan sailed has been established, this section of the website will be expanded to become the third booklet in the series on Dan Harris. In the meantime, I hope that you will enjoy reading these excerpts from the log of his second voyage and that you will consider how well Dan's experiences on two whaling voyages prepared him for the challenges of his ensuing years.