Ann Alexander (ship)

History
United States
Name:	Ann Alexander
Fate:	Struck by a sperm whale and sunk, 1851
General characteristics

The Ann Alexander was a whaling ship from New Bedford, Massachusetts, notable for being rammed and sunk by a wounded sperm whale in the South Pacific on August 20, 1851, some 30 years after the famous incident in which the Essex was stove in and sunk by a whale in the same area.

The Ann Alexander was a ship-rigged wood-hulled trading vessel, built in 1805 by Joel Packard and Deliverance Smith at Russells Mills Village in Dartmouth, Massachusetts and registered at New Bedford on 29 January 1806. Her first documented voyages were with American export goods from New York to Leghorn, Italy and to Liverpool, England after her registratrion.

It is claimed that the Ann Alexander, with Capt. Loammi (Loum) Snow of Rochester, Massachusetts in command, encountered the British fleet a few days after its victory at the battle of Trafalgar in October 1805. This first appears in print 87 years later, in a history of New Bedford, based on an interview with a 96-year-old former crew member of the ship. According to a later account of 1912, the ship was on a voyage from New York to Leghorn with a cargo of general merchandise, and a deck cargo of lumber that was Snow's personal property, when themet the warships off Spain. Informed that Lord Nelson had died aboard HMS Victory and that the new commander, Admiral Collingwood, was attempting to repair the damage done to numerous ships during the naval action, Snow sold lumber, flour and apples on the spot to the British Navy. Ruth Ekstrom of New Bedford Whaling Museum Research Library considers that there was no 1805 voyage, which would have taken place before the Ann Alexander was registered and without the knowledge of the principal owner, but that the ship may have come across remnants of the British fleet repairing at Gibraltar on the voyage to Leghorn in early 1806 and sold goods and timber on that occasion.

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