Transcriber Note
Text emphasis denoted as _Italics_.
A YEAR WITH A WHALER
[Illustration: "Cutting Out" A Whale]
A YEAR WITH A
WHALER
BY
WALTER NOBLE BURNS
_Illustrated with Photographs_
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
OUTING PUBLISHING COMPANY
MCMXIII
Copyright, 1913, BY
OUTING PUBLISHING COMPANY
All rights reserved
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. The Lure of the Outfitter 11
II. The Men of the "Alexander" 21
III. Why We Don't Desert 33
IV. Turtles and Porpoises 46
V. The A, B, C of Whales 59
VI. The Night King 71
VII. Dreams of Liberty 83
VIII. Gabriel's Little Drama 95
IX. Through the Roaring Forties 107
X. In the Ice 118
XI. Cross Country Whaling 128
XII. Cutting In and Trying Out 137
XIII. Shaking Hands with Siberia 149
XIV. Moonshine and Hygiene 162
XV. News From Home 171
XVI. Slim Goes on Strike 182
XVII. Into the Arctic 191
XVIII. Blubber and Song 198
XIX. A Narrow Pinch 210
XX. A Race and a Race Horse 219
XXI. Bears for a Change 230
XXII. The Stranded Whale 239
XXIII. And So--Home 247
ILLUSTRATIONS
"Cutting Out" a Whale _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
In Bowhead Waters 16
When Whaling is an Easy Job 40
Waiting for the Whale to Breach 72
Unalaska 112
Waiting for the Floes to Open 120
"Trying Out" 144
Callers From Asia 152
Peter's Sweetheart 160
Eskimos Summer Hut at St. Lawrence Bay 168
At the Gateway to the Arctic 176
Hoisting the Blubber Aboard 184
Our Guests Coming Aboard in St. Lawrence Bay 192
The Lip of a Bowhead Whale 208
A Close Call Off Herald Island 216
Skin Boat of the Siberian Eskimos 240
A YEAR WITH A WHALER
A Year With A Whaler
CHAPTER I
THE LURE OF THE OUTFITTER
When the brig _Alexander_ sailed out of San Francisco on a whaling voyage
a few years ago, I was a member of her forecastle crew. Once outside the
Golden Gate, I felt the swing of blue water under me for the first time in
my life. I was not shanghaied. Let's have that settled at the start. I had
shipped as a green hand before the mast for the adventure of the thing,
because I wanted to go, for the glamor of the sea was upon me.
I was taking breakfast in a San Francisco restaurant when, in glancing
over the morning paper, I chanced across this advertisement:
Wanted--Men for a whaling voyage; able seamen, ordinary seamen, and
green hands. No experience necessary. Big money for a lucky voyage.
Apply at Levy's, No. 12 Washington Street.
Until that moment I had never dreamed of going to sea, but that small
"ad." laid its spell upon my imagination. It was big with the lure of
strange lands and climes, romance and fresh experiences. What did it
matter that I had passed all my humdrum days on dry land? "No experience
necessary!" There were the magic words staring me in the face. I gulped
down my eggs and coffee and was off for the street called Washington.
Levy's was a ship's outfitting store. A "runner" for the house--a
hulking man with crafty eyes and a face almost as red as his hair and
mustache--met me as I stepped in the door. He looked me over critically.
His visual inventory must have been satisfactory. I was young.
"Ever been a sailor?" he asked.
"No."
"Makes no difference. Can you pull an oar?"
"Yes."
"You'll do. Hang around the store to-day and I'll see what vessels are
shipping crews."
That was all. I was a potential whaler from that minute.
A young working man in overalls and flannel shirt came in later in the
day and applied to go on the voyage. He qualified as a green hand. But no
spirit of adventure had brought him to Levy's. A whaling voyage appealed
to his canny mind as a business proposition.
"What can we make?" he asked the runner.
"If your ship is lucky," replied the runner, "you ought to clean up a pile
of money. You'll ship on the 190th lay. Know what a lay is? It's your per
cent. of the profits of the voyage. Say your ship catches four whales. She
ought to catch a dozen if she has good luck. But say she catches four. Her
cargo in oil and bone will be worth about $50,000. Your share will amount
to something like $200, and you'll get it in a lump sum when you get back."
This was "bunk talk"--a "springe to catch woodcock"--but we did not know
it. That fluent and plausible man took pencil and paper and showed us just
how it would all work out. It was reserved for us poor greenhorns to learn
later on that sailors of whaling ships usually are paid off at the end of
a voyage with "one big iron dollar." This fact being discreetly withheld
from us, our illusions were not disturbed.
The fact is the "lay" means nothing to sailors on a whaler. It is merely
a lure for the unsophisticated. It might as well be the 1000th lay as the
190th, for all the poor devil of a sailor gets. The explanation is simple.
The men start the voyage with an insufficient supply of clothing. By the
time the vessel strikes cold weather their clothes are worn out and it
is a case of buy clothes from the ship's slop-chest at the captain's own
prices or freeze. As a consequence, the men come back to port with expense
accounts standing against them which wipe out all possible profits. This
has become so definitely a part of whaling custom that no sailor ever
thinks of fighting against it, and it probably would do him no good if
he did. As a forecastle hand's pay the "big iron dollar" is a whaling
tradition and as fixed and inevitable as fate.
The outfitter who owned the store did not conduct a sailor's boarding
house, so we were put up at a cheap hotel on Pacific street. After
supper, my new friend took me for a visit to the home of his uncle in the
Tar Flats region. A rough, kindly old laboring man was this uncle who
sat in his snug parlor in his shirt sleeves during our stay, sent one of
the children to the corner for a growler of beer, and told us bluntly we
were idiots to think of shipping on a whaling voyage. We laughed at his
warning--we were going and that's all there was to it. The old fellow's
pretty daughters played the piano and sang for us, and my last evening on
shore passed pleasantly enough. When it came time to say good-bye, the
uncle prevailed on my friend to stay all night on the plea that he had
some urgent matters to talk over, and I went back alone to my dingy hotel
on the Barbary Coast.
I was awakened suddenly out of a sound sleep in the middle of the night.
My friend stood beside my bed with a lighted candle in his hand.
"Get up and come with me," he said. "Don't go whaling. My uncle has told
me all about it. He knows. You'll be treated like a dog aboard, fed on
rotten grub, and if you don't die under the hard knocks or freeze to
death in the Arctic Ocean, you won't get a penny when you get back. Don't
be a fool. Take my advice and give that runner the slip. If you go, you'll
regret it to the last day of your life."
In the yellow glare of the candle, the young man seemed not unlike
an apparition and he delivered his message of warning with prophetic
solemnity and impressiveness. But my mind was made up.
"I guess I'll go," I said.
He argued and pleaded with me, all to no purpose. He set the candle on the
table and blew it out.
"You won't come?" he said out of the darkness.
"No."
"You're a fool."
He slammed the door. I never saw him again. But many a time on the
long voyage I recalled his wise counsel, prompted as it was by pure
friendliness, and wished from my heart I had taken his advice.
[Illustration: In Bowhead Waters]
Next day the runner for Levy's tried to ship me aboard the steam whaler
_William Lewis_. When we arrived at the shipping office on the water
front, it was crowded with sailors and rough fellows, many of them half
drunk, and all eager for a chance to land a berth. A bronzed and bearded
man stood beside a desk and surveyed them. He was the skipper of the
steamer. The men were pushing and elbowing in an effort to get to the
front and catch his eye.
"I've been north before, captain," "I'm an able seaman, sir," "I know
the ropes," "Give me a chance, captain," "Take me, sir; I'll make a good
hand,"--so they clamored their virtues noisily. The captain chose this man
and that. In twenty minutes his crew was signed. It was not a question of
getting enough men; it was a mere matter of selection. In such a crowd of
sailormen, I stood no show. In looking back on it all, I wonder how such
shipping office scenes are possible, how men of ordinary intelligence are
herded aboard whale ships like sheep, how they even fight for a chance to
go.
It was just as well I failed to ship aboard the _William Lewis_. The
vessel went to pieces in the ice on the north Alaskan coast the following
spring. Four men lost their lives and only after a bitter experience as
castaways on the floes were the others rescued.
That afternoon Captain Shorey of the brig _Alexander_ visited Levy's. I
was called to his attention as a likely young hand and he shipped me as a
member of his crew. I signed articles for a year's voyage. It was provided
that I was to receive a $50 advance with which to outfit myself for the
voyage; of course, any money left over after all necessary articles had
been purchased was to be mine--at least, in my innocence, I imagined it
was.
The brig was lying in the stream off Goat Island and the runner set about
the work of outfitting me at once. He and I and a clerk went about the
store from shelf to shelf, selecting articles. The runner carried a pad
of paper on which he marked down the cost. I was given a sailor's canvas
bag, a mattress, a pair of blankets, woolen trousers, dungaree trousers,
a coat, a pair of brogans, a pair of rubber sea boots, underwear, socks,
two flannel shirts, a cap, a belt and sheath knife, a suit of oil-skins
and sou'wester, a tin cup, tin pan, knife, fork and spoon. That was all.
It struck me as a rather slender equipment for a year's voyage. The runner
footed up the cost.
"Why," he said with an air of great surprise, "this foots up to $53 and
your advance is only $50."
He added up the column of figures again. But he had made no mistake. He
seemed perplexed.
"I don't see how it is possible to scratch off anything," he said. "You'll
need every one of these articles."
He puckered his brow, bit the end of his pencil, and studied the figures.
It was evidently a puzzling problem.
"Well," he said at last, "I'll tell you what I'll do. Bring me down a few
curios from the Arctic and I'll call it square."
I suppose my outfit was really worth about $6--not over $10. As soon as my
bag had been packed, I was escorted to the wharf by the runner and rowed
out to the brig. As I prepared to climb over the ship's rail, the runner
shook me by the hand and clapped me on the back with a great show of
cordial goodfellowship.
"Don't forget my curios," he said.