ABOARD AN AMERICAN WHALER
Among the most important harbours in America from which the whalers of
the nineteenth century used to set forth must be mentioned New Bedford,
Nantucket, Fairhaven, Newport, especially. These names have become so
welded to whaling history that it is difficult to think of these ports
without conjuring up a mental vision of an old-fashioned ship with her
white-painted ribbon on a black hull cruising along the lonely ocean
under short sail ready to launch one of those conspicuous boats as soon
as the eager scanning look-out hailed the deck.
At these places there grew up whole families of whaling people
whose life interest was wrapped up in this subject, who married and
intermarried those who built or sailed or part-owned the ships. At the
beginning of the nineteenth century there were eight or nine thousand
people living at Nantucket all practically dependent on the whaling
industry. Herman Melville wrote of Nantucket as “more lonely than the
Eddystone Lighthouse,” and amusingly suggested that the people here
“are so shut up, belted about, every way enclosed, surrounded, and
made an utter island of by the ocean, that to their very chairs and
tables small clams will sometimes be found adhering, as to the backs of
turtles.” “What wonder, then, that these Nantucketers, born on a beach,
should take to the sea for a livelihood!”
And it is Melville who has enabled us to reconstruct for ourselves
those little mosaics, which, pieced together in their right places,
give us a true picture of what a Nantucket whaler looked like! “She
was a ship of the old school,” he says, “rather small if anything,
with an old-fashioned claw-footed look about her. Long seasoned and
weather-stained in the typhoons and calms of all four oceans, her old
hull’s complexion was darkened.... Her venerable bows looked bearded.
Her masts--cut somewhere on the coast of Japan, where her original
ones were lost overboard in a gale--her masts stood stiffly up like
the spines of the three old kings of Cologne. Her ancient decks were
worn and wrinkled.... She was a thing of trophies.... All round, her
unpanelled, open bulwarks were garnished like one continuous jaw, with
the long, sharp teeth of the sperm whale, inserted there for pins, to
fasten her old hempen thews and tendons to.”
And the pride of service was never more eloquently expressed than in
Captain Peleg’s remark in connection with the merchant service as
opposed to his own. “Marchant service be damned. Talk not that lingo
to me. Dost see that leg?--I’ll take that leg away from thy stern, if
ever thou talkest of the Marchant Service to me again. Marchant Service
indeed! I suppose now ye feel considerable proud of having served in
those marchant ships!” Could anything be more discriminating?
So we think of these veteran vessels as owned by well-to-do, retired
Quaker skippers of the most strict narrow-mindedness, yet possessed
of such a knowledge of ocean life as could hardly be surpassed by
any other seafarers in the world. Those lengthy voyages and their
Puritanical personality, and those long hours alone brooding and
entering up their journals, created a special type of humanity--strong,
independent, fanatically conservative, dominant, of an enclosed
kind of piety, yet most wonderfully wide-awake to the main chance
of remunerative whaling and a hard business bargain. The life of
such a part-owner could be divided into several well bulk-headed
chapters, each ending up one separate section of a full career. Cabin
boy, boatman, harpooner, mate, captain, ship-owner, sexagenarian,
retirement, capitalist. These nine would make chapter headings for the
biography of any of these whaler skippers. But right till the end they
were the keenest superintendents and the sternest critics of ships and
men. Taskmasters? Melville sums one of these old men up in a single
sentence. “They told me in Nantucket, though it certainly seems a
curious story, that when he sailed the old _Categut_ whaleman, his crew
upon arriving home were mostly all carried ashore to the hospital, sore
exhausted and worn out. For a pious man, especially for a Quaker, he
was certainly rather hard-hearted, to say the least. He never used to
swear, though, at his men, they said; but somehow he got an inordinate
quantity of cruel, unmitigated hard work out of them.”
But if the largest owner of an American whaler were a retired skipper,
the other shareholders would consist of widows, fatherless children
and chancery wards, each owning “about the value of a timber head, or
a foot of plank, or a nail or two in the ship. People in Nantucket
invest their money in whaling vessels, the same way that you do yours
in approved state stocks bringing in good interest.”
Whilst lying in her home port the whaler used to have a kind of wigwam
erected on deck abaft the mainmast, made of bone taken out of jaws
of the right whale. This tent was the last thing to be stowed before
heaving up the anchor; it was symbolical of the packing away of shore
authority. But when the vessel was about to leave Nantucket for her
three or four years’ voyage, and the last rigger had been sent ashore,
she was hauled out from the wharf and the skipper would tell the chief
mate to muster all the hands--“blast ’em”--whilst the pilot was busy
taking the ship out, his position being forward. Some profane chantey
would be presently heard reaching the shore as that mixed crew got
active to their work of walking round the capstan. The old man aft
would be stamping about in a rage, hating audibly with his Quaker
“thous” and “thees,” hurling at them insults and exerting his authority
from the very first.
Then at last the pilot would drop over the side into his little
sailing-boat, the last tie with the land would be separated and it
would be a long time before any of the crew ever was allowed to
use his legs on solid earth. We in these days of quick passages in
steamships with wireless conversation going on all day and all night
hardly realize the utter isolation of a four-year whaling voyage under
a tyrannous martinet for skipper. If any man had the least feelings
of sentiment, if the comfort of a home port and the heart-strings of
affection meant anything at all to him, the beginning of these long
trips was something unforgettable. We find this home-sickness, this
desperate deep-burning loneliness coming out even in the skippers’
journals, which would never be soiled by a glance from any of their
crews: but it is there right enough. The womenfolk would be there on
the wharf, tear-eyed, anxious, but hopeful that after a few years
the ship would come back full of a fortune. At last a shout from a
deep-throated retired captain, a warning to the harpooners not to
“stave the boats needlessly ... white cedar plank is raised full
three per cent. within the year. Don’t forget your prayers, either,
Mr. Starbuck, mind that cooper don’t waste the spare staves. Oh! the
sail-needles are in the green locker! Don’t whale it too much a’
Lord’s Day, men; but don’t miss a fair chance either, that’s rejecting
Heaven’s good gifts.” And with this last expression of his crowded,
mingled thoughts, the principal proprietor would have watched his old
ship gradually get smaller as she made her way to the open sea.
That night the long roll of the Atlantic would begin its game with
the ship, the blocks would whine and creak, the rigging would take up
its strains, the canvas would belly to the fresh breeze and the mast
heads swing backwards and forwards across the sky of stars as the
watch below was clewing up its harbour memories till they could be let
loose again after many months. Strangers began to size each other up,
enmities and friendships began to be formed: but both would be broken
and reconstituted long before the first man had deserted at the first
opportunity.
As a general rule you will always find that islanders take to the sea
in some sort of way: for ships and seafaring can never be allowed
out of their minds for long. It used to be the custom for British
Greenland whalers on the outward voyage to call at the Shetlands and
fill up with the rest of their crew, and on the return trip leave them
where they found them. In the Nantucket whalers it was frequently
the habit to call at the Azores, outward bound, and ship quite a
few natives. American whale-ships had been calling there for years,
so you would find in a Nantucket ship North Americans, Portuguese,
coal-black niggers, Dutchmen, Frenchmen, Manxmen, Maltese, natives from
the Pacific Islands, Spaniards, and Britons, too. The ship might be
American but the crew were international--or without a nation. If half
the failures in this world are caused by men not knowing what they want
and not being able to identify it when they see it, then you might say
that the fo’c’sle of a whaler was full of failures. The ship attracted
men from all parts of the world as sensitively as the magnet affects
the compass needle. Some of these hands were just drifting about the
globe without any aim other than to remain alive. A ship was synonymous
with a home: a whaling voyage was a sort of guarantee that for three
or four years any way there would be grub, somewhere to sleep, and
possibly a tolerable amount of money to draw at the end.
Bullen’s description of a New Bedford whaler bears out Melville
and the rest. “Truculent-looking men accompanied us to our several
boarding-houses, paid our debts for us, finally bringing us by boat to
a ship lying out in the bay. As we passed under her stern, I read the
name _Cachalot_, of New Bedford: but as soon as we ranged alongside,
I realized that I was booked for the sailor’s horror--a cruise in a
whaler. Badly as I wanted to get to sea, I had not bargained for this,
and would have run some risks to get ashore again; but they took no
chances, so we were all soon aboard.... A more perfect contrast to
the trim-built English clipper-ships that I had been accustomed to I
could hardly imagine. She was one of a class characterized by sailors
as built by the mile, and cut off in lengths as you want ’em, bow
and stern almost alike, masts standing straight as broomsticks, and
bowsprit soaring upwards at an angle of about forty-five degrees. She
was old-fashioned in her rig as in her hull.... I was rudely roused
from my meditations by the harsh voice of one of the officers, who
shouted, ‘Naow then, git below an’ stow yer dunnage, ’n look lively
up agin.’... Tumbling down the steep ladder, I entered the gloomy den
which was to be for so long my home, finding it fairly packed with my
shipmates. A motley crowd they were. I had been used in English ships
to considerable variety of nationality; but here were gathered, not
only the representatives of five or six nations, but ’long-shoremen of
all kinds, half of whom had hardly ever set eyes on a ship before! The
whole space was undivided by partition, but I saw at once that black
men and white had separated themselves, the blacks taking the port side
and the whites the starboard.”
You can imagine this motley crew on the first night out. The
greenhorns, prostrate with seasickness, were wondering why they had
been such fools as to come aboard for an adventure of this sort.
The officers, often enough bullying and sometimes of Portuguese
nationality, were trying to get the ship into full working order,
yet half the crew were just waking up to the fact that this was no
home after all. But after a few days Portuguese and nigger, American
and Briton, would settle down to the life and to the salt junk, hard
biscuit and hot drinks sweetened with molasses. Only one thing aboard
the ship was really satisfying: and that was the long sleep after the
trick at the helm. Steering? This was a strange mechanism in the old
ships, for the wheel was fixed to the tiller and the whole affair was
moved athwart the ship, so that it needed no ordinary sailorman to
control her.
But if she was aged and her fo’c’sle was foul, yet on deck she was
kept spotlessly clean. Flush-decked, she was of about 350 tons, with
the try-works measuring about ten feet by eight erected in the waist.
Right aft were the galley and skylight by the taffrail, the wooden
cranes for the boats being of course along the bulwarks. These boats
were each fitted with a centreboard, a mast and two spritsails in
addition to the oars and other gear, so that by the time her men had
launched and got into her she was already well loaded. Having slipped
across the Atlantic and reached the sperm grounds, there were plenty
of eyes looking out so as to earn that bounty of extra ’baccy which
went to the first man who should report a whale. Plenty of false alarms
came from the greenhorns, and it was usually the veteran who won the
prize. And then the comparative comfort of passage-making gave way to
frantic energy--hunting the whale in the boats for hours, then towing
him alongside, slinging him securely, flensing him, and keeping the
try-works going all through the night, and finally cleaning ship once
more.
Out of a crew of say thirty-seven, twenty-four would be ordinary
seamen. Fresh water except for drinking was forbidden. After all
what was the sea for besides floating ships? But it is hope and
the expectation of the future which keep men going as it did in
those ships. The shares of profits, or as these shares were known,
“lays,” had been reckoned in accordance with each man’s duties
and usefulness. One two-hundredth share of oil at 200 dollars a
tun meant £4 a barrel, but a greenhorn might be allotted only one
two-hundred-and-seventy-fifth share of the clear net profits. This was
just better than nothing and referred to as “a long lay.” But from that
would have to be deducted the charge for that assortment of fairly good
but high-priced clothes which the captain issued from the ship’s slop
chest; in addition to the tobacco, matches and soap, also bought from
the ship at extortionate terms.
Thus the whaler’s life was likely to appeal only to three classes of
men: those who had been compelled to leave the land to avoid gaol or
starvation, those who thought they were going to see the world and
gain adventures, and those who were determined to work their way up
till they owned a whaling ship of their own. It was only the latter
who ever stuck to the occupation for voyage after voyage. No one who
sympathizes with humanity can wish that those conditions should ever
return. Better education has raised the standard of living aboard all
kinds of ships: the difference between then and now is really much more
than merely half a century.
You remember Melville’s account of how the Nantucket _Pequod_ whaler
met the British whaler _Samuel Enderby_ at sea and hailed her with
“Ship ahoy! Hast seen the White Whale?” and Ahab ordered his boat to
be manned and lowered with him in it to the water, and rowed alongside
the London vessel. Ahab had lost a leg, so how was he to clamber up the
English ship’s side? It was then that the English skipper took in the
situation. “I see, I see!” he shouted. Then to his men, “’Vast heaving
there! Jump, boys, and swing over the cutting-tackle.” The _Samuel
Enderby_ had only recently been cutting up a whale and the great
tackles were still aloft and the massive blubber-hook still attached to
the end. So this hook was lowered to Ahab, who slid his solitary thigh
into the curve and was swung on board and exchanged yarns with the
London skipper.
Melville speaks enthusiastically about that name Enderby, which will
be found mentioned in our present volume more than once. He speaks of
this London ship as named “after the late Samuel Enderby, merchant
of that city, the original of the famous whaling house of Enderby &
Sons; a house which, in my poor whaleman’s opinion, comes not far
behind the united royal houses of the Tudors and Bourbons, in point of
real historical interest.” Ever since that memorable year 1775, when
this firm fitted out the first English ships that ever went hunting
the sperm whale regularly, it had sent ship after ship into southern
waters; though ever since 1726 the Coffins and Maceys had been sending
their whalers from North America into the Atlantic. When the Enderby
ship _Amelia_ rounded the Horn and was the first of all vessels ever
to harpoon whales in the Pacific and came home with a full cargo, she
was but setting the fashion which was soon to be followed by British
and American whalers. It was this same pioneering firm, too, which in
1819 sent out that exploration ship, the _Syren_, and made known the
Japanese whaling grounds. Her skipper, however, was Captain Coffin of
Nantucket. Melville refers to the _Samuel Enderby_ as a fast-sailing
ship, an hospitable ship. “Fore and aft, I say, the _Samuel Enderby_
was a jolly ship; of good fare and plenty; fine flip and strong; crack
fellows all, and capital from boot heels to hat-band.”
But the first American ship, says Mr. R. McNab in his interesting
monograph on New Zealand whaling, to take up bay whaling in the South
Island of New Zealand was the _Erie_, which sailed from Newport, Rhode
Island, bound for the South Pacific in April 1832, and got back to
Newport again in June 1835 with 200 barrels of sperm and 1,800 of
black oil. During the next few years, American whalers continued to
frequent these waters, and the trade became considerable, for the early
American whalers brought home such favourable news of their success. By
these ships letters from New England were taken to the South Atlantic
and New Zealand. So by 1836 such whalers as the _Samuel Robertson_,
_Favourite_, _Mary Mitchell_, _Jasper_, _Erie_, _Vermont_ and others
sailed across from New Bedford, Fairhaven, Nantucket, Poughkeepsie and
other ports.
In the _Mary Mitchell’s_ journal of 1836, still in possession of the
Nantucket Historical Society, we are able to see into the mind of her
skipper day by day. Can we not almost see for ourselves the character
of this Captain Samuel Joy as he entered up his book after reaching
safely Cloudy Bay, on the north-east shoulder of South Island? The date
is Friday, April 22nd, and the punctuation is typical of this sailor
type:
“Heavy S.E. gale bad Sea steered down past Cape Campbell looking for
the harbor. At 5 saw it bearing N.W. steered for it and at 6 happily
came to an Anchor. thus after much toil fatigue and Labour we are
happily Arrived at our port it now only remains for us to be thankful
to God for his preservation and safe Guidance of us thro these dark
times--I shall ever esteem it as a merciful interposition in my favor
that thro divine Providence I have been enabled to conduct this ship
thro this Passage on a Coast without any person on board acquainted
with it any more than myself and to the Lord be the Praise Amen Latter
strong S.E. wind. Employed Clearing Ship Ther 58 Bar. 30.30.”
Two days later arrived the _Jasper_ and _Erie_. The _Mary Mitchell_
having been moored, yards and topmasts were sent down, and boats were
sent out whaling. Lugsails were now made for the boats and the hands
kept busy. But we can see that there are always two aspects to ship
life: one is as it appears from the angle of the mates and men, the
other is as viewed through the anxious captain’s eyes. Everyone who has
had command of a vessel knows this well enough: the others are apt to
forget this fact. Thus under April 30th Captain Joy writes: “The Second
mate is no officer the fourth Mate is worse I can express my opinion
of the others hereafter.” Then apparently there was some friction with
some of the English whalers, for twenty boats had come into a bay.
“Commences with fine weather,” Joy writes under Saturday, May 7th, “at
4 boats returned at 6 heavy S.E. gale sent on shore 22 cedar boards
Latter went out myself with 4 boats saw nothing wind blew up from S
E heavy came into the Neck landed about 20 boats there and the most
Blackguard language used from 5 english boats there Sparing no person
at all in Short I hope I shall ever keep clear of English Ships again
as they have no Authority.”
Joy was his name but sorrow was his experience, for these daily
entries are full of woes and disappointments. Thus Friday, May 27th,
was another disheartening day: “fore part fresh S E wind at 4 boats
returned 1 calf got today Latter part much fine rain went out with 4
boats the 4 mate a lame hand one of our steersman stopped to Save his
oar and did not strike the whale O dear.” And even the next day when
his boats captured a whale and a calf he could but exert himself to
write: “We now have hope I live in hope Latter part fine weather went
out with 4 boats--Sick.”
However, Joy must have withdrawn his animosity towards the British
whalers, for on June 2nd he was able to make a satisfactory bargain:
“fine weather at 5 boats returned I got an anchor from an English ship
for 40 lbs tobacco and a steering oar Latter fine weather went out
with 4 boats and the Captain Got a large whale wafted and anchored
him.” Other ships arrived from New England, but apparently Joy was not
anxious for the society of his fellow humans. Whales were again killed,
and then comes this delightful little summary of what happened on June
20th: “fore part cloudy began to boil at 5 boats returned got a Whale
anchored him outside at 7 broke the cook’s head for getting rum from
the Shore contrary to law Latter part strong N W wind went out with 4
boats the others boiling.”
It is the simple unforced sincerity of this whaling captain which
makes his journal so readable in spite of his quaint confusion of
thoughts and absence of stops or commas. Joy was not an exception but a
product of his time and environment when these wooden whalers contained
hard-case seamen and peppery skippers. To criticize the crews is not
to free the captains from blame: but discipline had to be maintained,
even after a fashion, in these as in any other ships. Joy went on
quarrelling with other whaler-masters as we learn from the sentence,
“this day I formally noted the different masters that I would not agree
in case my boats were stove that I would give up my claim to any Whale
obliged to cut from in consequence of being stove.”
Anyone with a little imagination and the knowledge of the ways of
men can see how the deadly monotony of the life in such a distant
place with Maoris to consort with was bound to make the crews dismal,
disgruntled, and disgusted with life generally. There is an expression
unofficially used to-day in the Royal Navy which describes exactly
the condition into which these whaler men had descended through
sheer boredom and mental weariness. Some who read these pages will
recognize the phrase “b----y minded.” It is not pretty, but it is
truthful. And the first thing that a man in that condition does is to
break out of the ship, go ashore and get drunk as soon as opportunity
presents itself. Joy’s men were thus disposed whilst the ship lay in
semi-commission and the boats hunted for the whales. “John Wood left
ship without leave got drunk I floged him and put him in irons Latter
raining let the prisoner out of irons on promise of amendment” runs
the laconic statement. And a few days later: “I cannot well leave the
Ship in charge of the 4th mate he can do nothing in the boat and has
been Sick and dozey 1/2 the time we have been here.” But finally this
mate who also had “a difference with some of the crew requested his
discharge” and went off: “a good riddance,” Joy wrote.
Boats went on being stove, arguments continued between captains, but
in August Joy began to refit his ship, topmasts were sent up, and on
September 1st he was so pleased with life that he could write: “I feel
better to-day.” Presently topsails were bent, the fine weather began to
break up, wood and water were fetched from the shore and preparations
made for putting to sea. Boats were painted, harpoon lines coiled, the
anchors hove in and stowed, and on September 27th, in company with
two other New England whalers, the _Mary Mitchell_ got under way. The
season there had ended.
Although British, French and American whaling ships were using these
New Zealand waters at that time to the number of forty, one-half of
these were American, the average size being of 333 tons, but New
Bedford and Fairhaven were the principal ports sending ships. In the
year 1832 whaler-ships of 350 tons from New Bedford, Nantucket and New
London were working to the following “lay” or scale of remuneration:
The captain received one-fifteenth, Chief Mate one-twenty-fifth,
Second Mate one-forty-fifth, Third Mate one-fiftieth, boat-steerers
one-hundredth each, ordinary seamen one-hundred-and-seventy-fifth each,
in the South New Zealand whaling; additional help was also obtained
from the shore, where a few men who had deserted from some previous
whaler could usually get a temporary job and bring along a few Maoris
with them.
In one entry Captain Joy wrote that “the Second Mate had his boat
robbed in his absence of a bottle of rum, it being customary to carry
it here so that in case of a hard drag to give it to the boats crew
but they will carry no more from this ship as I will turn it all
into the sea first.” The practice was to take a bottle in each boat
and give each man a drink after a heavy whale had been brought in.
But, unfortunately, there was a rum shop ashore whither the crews
were enticed from their duty and came aboard their ship insolent and
incapable, with the result that someone’s head got smashed, but it was
not always the captain who came off best in the mutual rupture. It was
the old story. As Conrad wrote twenty years before he died, “ships and
men both rot in ports.”
By the year 1839 the number of American whalers on the New Zealand
coast reached the unprecedented number of thirty-seven, whereas five
years previously there had been but one. Nothing could be more eloquent
of the migration of whales than the change of grounds which these
ships from across the world had been compelled to make. Still, as the
reader will find in the course of our inquiry, the fleets have been
obliged in different generations to do this over and over again. But,
as showing the intimate connection that has always existed between
whaling and exploration, it may not be out of place to mention that all
this American development of Southern Pacific whaling culminated in the
natural desire to explore and survey the seas still further south.
And so it all culminated in an American naval officer, Charles Wilkes,
taking out from Hampton Roads an expedition in 1838 consisting of
six vessels which were reduced to four. The Antarctic continent was
discovered, and Wilkes Land shown on the modern maps remains as a
further reminder that this industry of hunting leviathans is capable
not merely of bringing into existence large fleets and employing
considerable numbers of men, but of sowing the seeds for future
international complications if ever those extreme southern areas,
through the advent of aerial navigation or scientific discovery, become
of first-rate importance in the development of the world and its
commerce.