WHALING IN THE ARCTIC OCEAN
The _Hope_--John Gray--Boxing--The Terrible Mate--Our Criminal--First
Sight of a Woman--A Hurricane--Dangers of the Fishing--Three Dips
in the Arctic--The Idlers’ Boat--Whale Taking--Glamour of the
Arctic--Effect of Voyage.
It was in the _Hope_, under the command of the well-known whaler, John
Gray, that I paid a seven months’ visit to the Arctic Seas in the year
1880. I went in the capacity of surgeon, but as I was only twenty years
of age when I started, and as my knowledge of medicine was that of an
average third year’s student, I have often thought that it was as well
that there was no very serious call upon my services.
It came about in this way. One raw afternoon in Edinburgh, whilst I
was sitting reading hard for one of those examinations which blight
the life of a medical student, there entered to me one Currie, a
fellow-student with whom I had some slight acquaintance. The monstrous
question which he asked drove all thought of my studies out of my head.
“Would you care,” said he, “to start next week for a whaling cruise?
You’ll be surgeon, two pound ten a month and three shillings a ton oil
money.”
“How do you know I’ll get the berth?” was my natural question.
“Because I have it myself. I find at this last moment that I can’t go,
and I want to get a man to take my place.”
“How about an Arctic kit?”
“You can have mine.”
In an instant the thing was settled, and within a few minutes the
current of my life had been deflected into a new channel.
In little more than a week I was in Peterhead, and busily engaged, with
the help of the steward, in packing away my scanty belongings in the
locker beneath my bunk on the good ship _Hope_.
I speedily found that the chief duty of the surgeon was to be the
companion of the captain, who is cut off by the etiquette of the
trade from anything but very brief and technical talks with his other
officers. I should have found it intolerable if the captain had been
a bad fellow, but John Gray of the _Hope_ was a really splendid man,
a grand seaman and a serious-minded Scot, so that he and I formed a
comradeship which was never marred during our long _tête-à-tête_. I
see him now, his ruddy face, his grizzled hair and beard, his very
light blue eyes always looking into far spaces, and his erect muscular
figure. Taciturn, sardonic, stern on occasion, but always a good just
man at bottom.
There was one curious thing about the manning of the _Hope_. The man
who signed on as first mate was a little, decrepit, broken fellow,
absolutely incapable of performing the duties. The cook’s assistant, on
the other hand, was a giant of a man, red-bearded, bronzed, with huge
limbs, and a voice of thunder. But the moment that the ship cleared the
harbour the little, decrepit mate disappeared into the cook’s galley,
and acted as scullery-boy for the voyage, while the mighty scullery-boy
walked aft and became chief mate. The fact was, that the one had the
certificate, but was past sailoring, while the other could neither read
nor write, but was as fine a seaman as ever lived; so, by an agreement
to which everybody concerned was party, they swapped their berths when
they were at sea.
Colin McLean, with his six foot of stature, his erect, stalwart figure,
and his fierce, red beard, pouring out from between the flaps of his
sealing-cap, was an officer by natural selection, which is a higher
title than that of a Board of Trade certificate. His only fault was
that he was a very hot-blooded man, and that a little would excite him
to a frenzy. I have a vivid recollection of an evening which I spent in
dragging him off the steward, who had imprudently made some criticism
upon his way of attacking a whale which had escaped. Both men had had
some rum, which had made the one argumentative and the other violent,
and as we were all three seated in a space of about seven by four, it
took some hard work to prevent bloodshed. Every now and then, just as
I thought all danger was past, the steward would begin again with his
fatuous, “No offence, Colin, but all I says is that if you had been a
bit quicker on the fush----” I don’t know how often this sentence was
begun, but never once was it ended; for at the word “fush” Colin always
seized him by the throat, and I Colin round the waist, and we struggled
until we were all panting and exhausted. Then when the steward had
recovered a little breath he would start that miserable sentence once
more, and the “fush” would be the signal for another encounter. I
really believe that if I had not been there the mate would have hurt
him, for he was quite the angriest man that I have ever seen.
There were fifty men upon our whaler, of whom half were Scotchmen
and half Shetlanders, whom we picked up at Lerwick as we passed. The
Shetlanders were the steadier and more tractable, quiet, decent, and
soft-spoken; while the Scotch seamen were more likely to give trouble,
but also more virile and of stronger character. The officers and
harpooners were all Scotch, but as ordinary seamen, and especially as
boatmen, the Shetlanders were as good as could be wished.
There was only one man on board who belonged neither to Scotland
nor to Shetland, and he was the mystery of the ship. He was a tall,
swarthy, dark-eyed man, with blue-black hair and beard, singularly
handsome features, and a curious, reckless sling of his shoulders when
he walked. It was rumoured that he came from the south of England, and
that he had fled thence to avoid the law. He made friends with no one,
and spoke very seldom, but he was one of the smartest seamen in the
ship. I could believe from his appearance that his temper was Satanic,
and that the crime for which he was hiding may have been a bloody one.
Only once he gave us a glimpse of his hidden fires. The cook--a very
burly, powerful man--the little mate was only assistant--had a private
store of rum, and treated himself so liberally to it that for three
successive days the dinner of the crew was ruined. On the third day
our silent outlaw approached the cook with a brass saucepan in his
hand. He said nothing, but he struck the man such a frightful blow that
his head flew through the bottom and the sides of the pan were left
dangling round his neck. The half-drunken, half-stunned cook talked of
fighting, but he was soon made to feel that the sympathy of the ship
was against him, so he reeled back, grumbling, to his duties while the
avenger relapsed into his usual moody indifference. We heard no further
complaints of the cooking.
I have spoken of the steward, and as I look back at that long voyage,
during which for seven months we never set foot on land, the kindly
open face of Jack Lamb comes back to me. He had a beautiful and
sympathetic tenor voice, and many an hour have I listened to it with
its accompaniment of rattling plates and jingling knives, as he cleaned
up the dishes in his pantry. He had a great memory for pathetic and
sentimental songs, and it is only when you have not seen a woman’s
face for six months that you realize what sentiment means. When Jack
trilled out “Her bright smile haunts me still,” or “Wait for me at
Heaven’s Gate, sweet Belle Mahone,” he filled us all with a vague sweet
discontent which comes back to me now as I think of it. To appreciate
a woman one has to be out of sight of one for six months. I can well
remember that as we rounded the north of Scotland on our return we
dipped our flag to the lighthouse, being only some hundreds of yards
from the shore. A figure emerged to answer our salute, and the excited
whisper ran through the ship, “It’s a wumman!” The captain was on the
bridge with his telescope. I had the binoculars in the bows. Every one
was staring. She was well over fifty, short skirts and sea boots--but
she was a “wumman.” “Anything in a mutch!” the sailors used to say, and
I was of the same way of thinking.
However, all this has come before its time. It was, I find by my log,
on February 28 at 2 p.m. that we sailed from Peterhead, amid a great
crowd and uproar. The decks were as clean as a yacht, and it was very
unlike my idea of a whaler. We ran straight into bad weather and the
glass went down at one time to 28.375, which is the lowest reading
I can remember in all my ocean wanderings. We just got into Lerwick
Harbour before the full force of the hurricane broke, which was so
great that lying at anchor with bare poles and partly screened we were
blown over to an acute angle. If it had taken us a few hours earlier
we should certainly have lost our boats--and the boats are the life of
a whaler. It was March 11 before the weather moderated enough to let
us get on, and by that time there were twenty whalers in the bay, so
that our setting forth was quite an occasion. That night and for a day
longer the _Hope_ had to take refuge in the lee of one of the outlying
islands. I got ashore and wandered among peat bogs, meeting strange,
barbarous, kindly people who knew nothing of the world. I was led back
to the ship by a wild, long-haired girl holding a torch, for the peat
holes make it dangerous at night--I can see her now, her tangled black
hair, her bare legs, madder-stained petticoat, and wild features under
the glare of the torch. I spoke to one old man there who asked me the
news. I said, “The Tay bridge is down,” which was then a fairly stale
item. He said, “Eh, have they built a brig over the Tay?” After that I
felt inclined to tell him about the Indian Mutiny.
What surprised me most in the Arctic regions was the rapidity with
which you reach them. I had never realized that they lie at our very
doors. I think that we were only four days out from Shetland when we
were among the drift ice. I awoke one morning to hear the bump, bump of
the floating pieces against the side of the ship, and I went on deck
to see the whole sea covered with them to the horizon. They were none
of them large, but they lay so thick that a man might travel far by
springing from one to the other. Their dazzling whiteness made the sea
seem bluer by contrast, and with a blue sky above, and that glorious
Arctic air in one’s nostrils, it was a morning to remember. Once on one
of the swaying, rocking pieces we saw a huge seal, sleek, sleepy, and
imperturbable, looking up with the utmost assurance at the ship, as if
it knew that the close time had still three weeks to run. Further on we
saw on the ice the long human-like prints of a bear. All this with the
snowdrops of Scotland still fresh in our glasses in the cabin.
I have spoken about the close time, and I may explain that, by an
agreement between the Norwegian and British Governments, the subjects
of both nations are forbidden to kill a seal before April 3. The reason
for this is that the breeding season is in March, and if the mothers
should be killed before the young are able to take care of themselves,
the race would soon become extinct. For breeding purposes the seals
all come together at a variable spot, which is evidently pre-arranged
among them, and as this place can be anywhere within many hundreds of
square miles of floating ice, it is no easy matter for the fisher to
find it. The means by which he sets about it are simple but ingenious.
As the ship makes its way through the loose ice-streams, a school
of seals is observed travelling through the water. Their direction
is carefully taken by compass and marked upon the chart. An hour
afterwards perhaps another school is seen. This is also marked. When
these bearings have been taken several times, the various lines upon
the chart are prolonged until they intersect. At this point, or near
it, it is likely that the main pack of the seals will be found.
When you do come upon it, it is a wonderful sight. I suppose it is the
largest assembly of creatures upon the face of the world--and this
upon the open icefields hundreds of miles from the Greenland coast.
Somewhere between 71 deg. and 75 deg. is the rendezvous, and the
longitude is even vaguer; but the seals have no difficulty in finding
the address. From the crow’s nest at the top of the main-mast, one
can see no end of them. On the furthest visible ice one can still see
that sprinkling of pepper grains. And the young lie everywhere also,
snow-white slugs, with a little black nose and large dark eyes. Their
half-human cries fill the air; and when you are sitting in the cabin of
a ship which is in the heart of the seal-pack, you would think you were
next door to a monstrous nursery.
The _Hope_ was one of the first to find the seal-pack that year, but
before the day came when hunting was allowed, we had a succession of
strong gales, followed by a severe roll, which tilted the floating ice
and launched the young seals prematurely into the water. And so, when
the law at last allowed us to begin work, Nature had left us with very
little work to do. However, at dawn upon the third, the ship’s company
took to the ice, and began to gather in its murderous harvest. It is
brutal work, though not more brutal than that which goes on to supply
every dinner-table in the country. And yet those glaring crimson pools
upon the dazzling white of the icefields, under the peaceful silence
of a blue Arctic sky, did seem a horrible intrusion. But an inexorable
demand creates an inexorable supply, and the seals, by their death,
help to give a living to the long line of seamen, dockers, tanners,
curers, triers, chandlers, leather merchants, and oil-sellers, who
stand between this annual butchery on the one hand, and the exquisite,
with his soft leather boots, or the savant, using a delicate oil for
his philosophical instruments, upon the other.
I have cause to remember that first day of sealing on account of the
adventures which befell me. I have said that a strong swell had arisen,
and as this was dashing the floating ice together the captain thought
it dangerous for an inexperienced man to venture upon it. And so, just
as I was clambering over the bulwarks with the rest, he ordered me
back and told me to remain on board. My remonstrances were useless,
and at last, in the blackest of tempers, I seated myself upon the top
of the bulwarks, with my feet dangling over the outer side, and there
I nursed my wrath, swinging up and down with the roll of the ship.
It chanced, however, that I was really seated upon a thin sheet of
ice which had formed upon the wood, and so when the swell threw her
over to a particularly acute angle, I shot off and vanished into the
sea between two ice-blocks. As I rose, I clawed on to one of these,
and soon scrambled on board again. The accident brought about what I
wished, however, for the captain remarked that as I was bound to fall
into the ocean in any case, I might just as well be on the ice as on
the ship. I justified his original caution by falling in twice again
during the day, and I finished it ignominiously by having to take to
my bed while all my clothes were drying in the engine-room. I was
consoled for my misfortunes by finding that they amused the captain to
such an extent that they drove the ill-success of our sealing out of
his head, and I had to answer to the name of “the great northern diver”
for a long time thereafter. I had a narrow escape once through stepping
backwards over the edge of a piece of floating ice while I was engaged
in skinning a seal. I had wandered away from the others, and no one saw
my misfortune. The face of the ice was so even that I had no purchase
by which to pull myself up, and my body was rapidly becoming numb in
the freezing water. At last, however, I caught hold of the hind flipper
of the dead seal, and there was a kind of nightmare tug-of-war, the
question being whether I should pull the seal off or pull myself on.
At last, however, I got my knee over the edge and rolled on to it. I
remember that my clothes were as hard as a suit of armour by the time I
reached the ship, and that I had to thaw my crackling garments before I
could change them.
This April sealing is directed against the mothers and young. Then, in
May, the sealer goes further north, and about latitude 77 deg. or 78
deg. he comes upon the old male seals, who are by no means such easy
victims. They are wary creatures, and it takes good long-range shooting
to bag them. Then, in June, the sealing is over, and the ship bears
away further north still, until in the 79th or 80th degree she is in
the best Greenland whaling latitudes. There we stayed for three months
or so, with very varying fortunes, for though we pursued many whales,
only four were slain.
There are eight boats on board a whaler, but it is usual to send out
only seven, for it takes six men to man each, so that when seven are
out no one is left on board save the so-called “idlers” who have not
signed to do seaman’s work at all. It happened, however, that aboard
the _Hope_ the idlers were rather a hefty crowd, so we volunteered to
man the odd boat, and we made it, in our own estimation at least, one
of the most efficient, both in sealing and in whaling. The steward, the
second engineer, the donkey-engine man, and I were the oars, with a
red-headed Highlander for harpooner and the handsome outlaw to steer.
Our tally of seals was high, and in whaling we were once the lancing
and once the harpooning boat, so our record was good. So congenial
was the work to me that Captain Gray was good enough to offer to make
me harpooner as well as surgeon, with the double pay, if I would come
with him on a second voyage. It is well that I refused, for the life is
dangerously fascinating.
[Illustration: STEAM-WHALER “HOPE.”]
It is exciting work pulling on to a whale. Your own back is turned to
him, and all you know about him is what you read upon the face of the
boat-steerer. He is staring out over your head, watching the creature
as it swims slowly through the water, raising his hand now and again
as a signal to stop rowing when he sees that the eye is coming round,
and then resuming the stealthy approach when the whale is end on. There
are so many floating pieces of ice, that as long as the oars are quiet
the boat alone will not cause the creature to dive. So you creep slowly
up, and at last you are so near that the boat-steerer knows that you
can get there before the creature has time to dive--for it takes some
little time to get that huge body into motion. You see a sunken gleam
in his eyes, and a flush in his cheeks, and it’s “Give way, boys! Give
way, all! Hard!” Click goes the trigger of the big harpoon gun, and
the foam flies from your oars. Six strokes, perhaps, and then with
a dull greasy squelch the bows run upon something soft, and you and
your oars are sent flying in every direction. But little you care for
that, for as you touched the whale you have heard the crash of the gun,
and know that the harpoon has been fired point-blank into the huge,
lead-coloured curve of its side. The creature sinks like a stone, the
bows of the boat splash down into the water again, but there is the
little red Jack flying from the centre thwart to show that you are
fast, and there is the line whizzing swiftly under the seats and over
the bows between your outstretched feet.
And this is the great element of danger--for it is rarely indeed that
the whale has spirit enough to turn upon its enemies. The line is
very carefully coiled by a special man named the line-coiler, and it
is warranted not to kink. If it should happen to do so, however, and
if the loop catches the limbs of any one of the boat’s crew, that man
goes to his death so rapidly that his comrades hardly know that he has
gone. It is a waste of fish to cut the line, for the victim is already
hundreds of fathoms deep.
“Haud your hand, mon,” cried the harpooner, as a seaman raised his
knife on such an occasion. “The fush will be a fine thing for the
widdey.” It sounds callous, but there was philosophy at the base of it.
This is the harpooning, and that boat has no more to do. But the
lancing, when the weary fish is killed with the cold steel, is a more
exciting because it is a more prolonged experience. You may be for half
an hour so near to the creature that you can lay your hand upon its
slimy side. The whale appears to have but little sensibility to pain,
for it never winces when the long lances are passed through its body.
But its instinct urges it to get its tail to work on the boats, and
yours urges you to keep poling and boat-hooking along its side, so as
to retain your safe position near its shoulder. Even there, however, we
found on one occasion that we were not quite out of danger’s way, for
the creature in its flurry raised its huge-side-flapper and poised it
over the boat. One flap would have sent us to the bottom of the sea,
and I can never forget how, as we pushed our way from under, each of
us held one hand up to stave off that great, threatening fin--as if
any strength of ours could have availed if the whale had meant it to
descend. But it was spent with loss of blood, and instead of coming
down the fin rolled over the other way, and we knew that it was dead.
Who would swap that moment for any other triumph that sport can give?
The peculiar other-world feeling of the Arctic regions--a feeling so
singular that if you have once been there the thought of it haunts
you all your life--is due largely to the perpetual daylight. Night
seems more orange-tinted and subdued than day, but there is no great
difference. Some captains have been known to turn their hours right
round out of caprice, with breakfast at night and supper at ten in
the morning. There are your twenty-four hours, and you may carve them
as you like. After a month or two the eyes grow weary of the eternal
light, and you appreciate what a soothing thing our darkness is. I can
remember as we came abreast of Iceland, on our return, catching our
first glimpse of a star, and being unable to take my eyes from it,
it seemed such a dainty little twinkling thing. Half the beauties of
Nature are lost through over-familiarity.
Your sense of loneliness also heightens the effect of the Arctic
Seas. When we were in whaling latitudes it is probable that, with the
exception of our consort, there was no vessel within 800 miles of
us. For seven long months no letter and no news came to us from the
southern world. We had left in exciting times. The Afghan campaign
had been undertaken, and war seemed imminent with Russia. We returned
opposite the mouth of the Baltic without any means of knowing whether
some cruiser might not treat us as we had treated the whales. When we
met a fishing-boat at the north of Shetland our first inquiry was as
to peace or war. Great events had happened during those seven months:
the defeat of Maiwand and the famous march of Roberts from Cabul to
Candahar. But it was all haze to us; and, to this day, I have never
been able to get that particular bit of military history straightened
out in my own mind.
The perpetual light, the glare of the white ice, the deep blue of the
water, these are the things which one remembers most clearly, and the
dry, crisp, exhilarating air, which makes mere life the keenest of
pleasures. And then there are the innumerable sea-birds, whose call is
for ever ringing in your ears--the gulls, the fulmars, the snow-birds,
the burgomasters, the loons, and the rotjes. These fill the air, and
below, the waters are for ever giving you a peep of some strange new
creature. The commercial whale may not often come your way, but his
less valuable brethren abound on every side. The finner shows his 90
feet of worthless tallow, with the absolute conviction that no whaler
would condescend to lower a boat for him. The mis-shapen hunchback
whale, the ghost-like white whale, the narwhal, with his unicorn horn,
the queer-looking bottle-nose, the huge, sluggish, Greenland shark, and
the terrible killing grampus, the most formidable of all the monsters
of the deep,--these are the creatures who own those unsailed seas. On
the ice are the seals, the saddle-backs, the ground seals and the huge
bladdernoses, 12 feet from nose to tail, with the power of blowing
up a great blood-red football upon their noses when they are angry,
which they usually are. Occasionally one sees a white Arctic fox upon
the ice, and everywhere are the bears. The floes in the neighbourhood
of the sealing-ground are all criss-crossed with their tracks--poor
harmless creatures, with the lurch and roll of a deep-sea mariner. It
is for the sake of the seals that they come out over those hundreds
of miles of ice; and they have a very ingenious method of catching
them, for they will choose a big icefield with just one blow-hole for
seals in the middle of it. Here the bear will squat, with its powerful
forearms crooked round the hole. Then, when the seal’s head pops up,
the great paws snap together, and Bruin has got his luncheon. We used
occasionally to burn some of the cook’s refuse in the engine-room
fires, and the smell would, in a few hours, bring up every bear for
many miles to leeward of us.
Though twenty or thirty whales have been taken in a single year in
the Greenland seas, it is probable that the great slaughter of last
century has diminished their number until there are not more than a few
hundreds in existence. I mean, of course, of the right whale, for the
others, as I have said, abound. It is difficult to compute the numbers
of a species which comes and goes over great tracts of water and among
huge icefields, but the fact that the same whale is often pursued by
the same whaler upon successive trips shows how limited their number
must be. There was one, I remember, which was conspicuous through
having a huge wart, the size and shape of a beehive, upon one of the
flukes of its tail. “I’ve been after that fellow three times,” said the
captain, as we dropped our boats. “He got away in ’71. In ’74 we had
him fast, but the harpoon drew. In ’76 a fog saved him. It’s odds that
we have him now!” I fancied that the betting lay rather the other way
myself, and so it proved, for that warty tail is still thrashing the
Arctic seas for all that I know to the contrary.
I shall never forget my own first sight of a right whale. It had
been seen by the look-out on the other side of a small icefield, but
had sunk as we all rushed on deck. For ten minutes we awaited its
reappearance, and I had taken my eyes from the place, when a general
gasp of astonishment made me glance up, and there was the whale _in
the air_. Its tail was curved just as a trout’s is in jumping, and
every bit of its glistening lead-coloured body was clear of the water.
It was little wonder that I should be astonished, for the captain,
after thirty voyages, had never seen such a sight. On catching it we
discovered that it was very thickly covered with a red, crab-like
parasite, about the size of a shilling, and we conjectured that it was
the irritation of these creatures which had driven it wild. If a man
had short, nailless flippers, and a prosperous family of fleas upon his
back, he would appreciate the situation.
Apart from sport, there is a glamour about those circumpolar regions
which must affect everyone who has penetrated to them. My heart goes
out to that old, grey-headed whaling captain who, having been left
for an instant when at death’s door, staggered off in his night gear,
and was found by nurses far from his house and still, as he mumbled,
“pushing to the norrard.” So an Arctic fox, which a friend of mine
endeavoured to tame, escaped, and was caught many months afterwards
in a gamekeeper’s trap in Caithness. It was also pushing norrard,
though who can say by what strange compass it took its bearings? It
is a region of purity, of white ice and of blue water, with no human
dwelling within a thousand miles to sully the freshness of the breeze
which blows across the icefields. And then it is a region of romance
also. You stand on the very brink of the unknown, and every duck that
you shoot bears pebbles in its gizzard which come from a land which the
maps know not. It was a strange and fascinating chapter of my life.
I went on board the whaler a big, straggling youth, I came off it a
powerful, well-grown man. I have no doubt that my physical health
during my whole life has been affected by that splendid air, and
that the inexhaustible store of energy which I have enjoyed is to
some extent drawn from the same source. It was mental and spiritual
stagnation, or even worse, for there is a coarsening effect in so
circumscribed a life with comrades who were fine, brave fellows, but
naturally rough and wild. However I had my health to show for it, and
also more money than I had ever possessed before. I was still boyish in
many ways, and I remember that I concealed gold pieces in every pocket
of every garment, that my mother might have the excitement of hunting
for them. It added some fifty pounds to her small exchequer.
Now I had a straight run in to my final examination, which I passed
with fair but not notable distinction at the end of the winter session
of 1881. I was now a Bachelor of Medicine and a Master of Surgery,
fairly launched upon my professional career.