Background
Scammon was born in Pittston, Maine, on May 28, 1825.
Scammon was born in Pittston, Maine, on May 28, 1825.
He was the first to hunt the gray whales of both Laguna Ojo de Liebre and San Ignacio Lagoon, the former once being called "Scammon"s Lagoon" after him. In 1874 he wrote the book The Marine Mammals of the North-western Coast of North America, which was a financial failure. lieutenant is now considered a classic.
In 1850 he sailed for California.
On April 1, 1852 he left San Francisco in command of the brig Mary Helen (160 tons) on a combined sealing and whaling voyage. He returned on August 26 with 350 barrels of oil obtained from elephant seals.
During the winter of 1855-1856 he was among the vessels hunting gray whales in Magdalena Bay, when he was commanding the ship Leonore. In December 1857, commanding the brig Boston, with the schooner-tender Marin, he first hunted the gray whales of Laguna Ojo de Liebre, catching twenty.
The following winter (1858-1859), commanding the bark Ocean Bird and accompanied by the schooner tenders Master of Arts Simpson and Kate, he returned to the lagoon, catching forty-seven cows.
In the winter of 1859-1860 he first exploited another lagoon to the south, San Ignacio. Within a few seasons it had been swept clean of whales. In 1860-1861 he returned to Laguna Ojo de Liebre in the bark Ocean Bird, taking a paltry 245 barrels of oil – about seven whales.
In the summer of 1862 he sailed to the Sea of Okhotsk in the San Francisco ship William C. Nye.
He cruised around Iony Island and Shantar Bay until September, catching only three bowhead whales. In the winter of 1862-1863 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).
lieutenant had been found dead on the shores of Admiralty Inlet by Italian fishermen, who towed it to Portuguese Townsend Bay, where they flensed lieutenant
He is the brother of J. Young Scammon and Eliakim P. Scammon.