Mass killer of whales Charles Melville Scammon had Sonoma County ties

Whaling captain Charles Melville Scammon, the first to hunt gray whales in the lagoons of Baja California, traveled widely, but Sonoma County can also claim him - at least for the period of time when he became a gentleman farmer just outside Sebastopol.

Scammon is a bit of an enigma in that he was among those who mass slaughtered gray whales in the mid-1800s, yet later became a naturalist and author who expertly chronicled the leviathans and even wrote sympathetically about his prey in a definitive work entitled “The Marine Mammals of the North-Western Coast of North America.”

Scammon, whose name is attached to a lagoon in Mexico where he cornered mother whales and their calves, later used the California gray to exemplify how whalers were disturbing the balance of nature - to the extent the entire species might not survive - according to Dick Russell, author of “Eye of the Whale.”

Scammon was already a ship’s captain when he sailed from his native Maine, arriving in San Francisco in 1850. He would skip the lure of the goldfields, and instead embark on whale and seal hunts from Alaska to the Galapagos.

In pre-industrial times whale oil was used primarily for lighting. Whalebone went into making things like umbrella ribs and corset stays.

A career in the U.S. Revenue Marine Service, a precursor to the Coast Guard, would follow for Scammon. During the Civil War, he was commander of the lone U.S. guard ship patrolling the West Coast against Confederate raiders.

But the exposure and hardships of his profession apparently took a toll. After more than three decades commanding 20 ships, it “had so undermined his naturally strong constitution that he became an invalid and was advised by the physicians to abandon sea-faring for a time at least,” according to the “Illustrated History of Sonoma County, 1889.”

Scammon was granted a leave of absence from his job in the Revenue Marine Service.

While in search of a desirable location to recover, he visited Sonoma County, becoming so pleased with its attractions - essentially the soil and climate -- that by 1874 he bought 35 acres a mile north of Sebastopol and took up residence in what was then known as Analy Township.

Scammon’s home overlooking the Laguna de Santa Rosa, off what is now High School Road, was described as “a beautiful and convenient cottage residence and suitable out buildings. His residence is finely located upon high ground, which is approached by a beautiful drive way, and his grounds are highly improved, shade trees, flowers, etc. surrounding his home,” according to the historical account of Sonoma County.

The book went on in the flowery fashion of the day to extol the beautiful view from Scammon’s study window, the Laguna’s placid waters and picturesque meadows on its lower plateau.

Capt. Scammon, the publication said, had a family orchard and vineyard, “in which he has some of the most valuable and improved varieties of fruit and table grapes grown in Sonoma County.”

Scammon’s livestock was said to be the best, including Holstein and Jersey cows, as well as horses with thoroughbred blood.

A next-door neighbor in 1876 was another former whaler, Jared Poole, originally from Martha’s Vineyard and married to the sister of Scammon’s wife, according to Russell’s book.

Poole was said to be among the first to equip a whaling ship for the Arctic and the man who first led Scammon to the whale-rich San Ignacio Lagoon.

Scammon had three sons. Charles, the eldest, helped out on the apple farm before heading to the Yukon during the Klondike Gold Rush. He became a gambler and died in a shack in Alaska.

A second son, Alexander, bought another farm near Sebastopol and at one point worked on horticultural projects with Luther Burbank.

Scammon the seafarer returned to active maritime service after recovering his health. Finally retired in the late 1890s, he moved to Oakland, where he and his wife died in 1911.