American Merchant Ships and Sailors by Willis J. Abbot

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Instances of the combativeness of the sperm-whale are not confined to the
records of the whale fishery. Even as I write I find in a current San
Francisco newspaper the story of the pilot-boat "Bonita," sunk near the
Farallon Islands by a whale that attacked her out of sheer wantonness and
lust for fight. The "Bonita" was lying hove-to, lazily riding the swells,
when in the dark--it was 10 o'clock at night--there came a prodigious
shock, that threw all standing to the deck and made the pots and pans of
the cook's galley jingle like a chime out of tune. From the deck the
prodigious black bulk of a whale, about eighty feet long, could be made
out, lying lazily half out of water near the vessel. The timbers of the
"Bonita" must have been crushed by his impact, for she began to fill, and
soon sank.

In this case the disaster was probably not due to any rage or malicious
intent on the part of the whale. Indeed, in the days when the ocean was
more densely populated with these huge animals, collision with a whale was
a well-recognized maritime peril. How many of the stout vessels against
whose names on the shipping list stands the fatal word "missing," came to
their ends in this way can never be known; but maritime annals are full of
the reports of captains who ran "bows on" into a mysterious reef where the
chart showed no obstruction, but which proved to be a whale, reddening the
sea with his blood, and sending the ship--not less sorely wounded--into
some neighboring port to refit.

The tools with which the business of hunting the whale is pursued are
simple, even rude. Steam, it is true, has succeeded to sails, and
explosives have displaced the sinewy arm of the harpooner for launching
the deadly shafts; but in the main the pursuit of the monsters is
conducted now as it was sixty years ago, when to command a whaler was the
dearest ambition of a New England coastboy. The vessels were usually brigs
or barks, occasionally schooners, ranging from 100 to 500 tons. They had a
characteristic architecture, due in part to the subordination of speed to
carrying capacity, and further to the specially heavy timbering about the
bows to withstand the crushing of the Arctic ice-pack. The bow was scarce
distinguishable from the stern by its lines, and the masts stuck up
straight, without that rake, which adds so much to the trim appearance of
a clipper. Three peculiarities chiefly distinguished the whalers from
other ships of the same general character. At the main royal-mast head was
fixed the "crow's nest"--in some vessels a heavy barrel lashed to the
mast, in others merely a small platform laid on the cross-trees, with two
hoops fixed to the mast above, within which the lookout could stand in
safety. On the deck, amidships, stood the "try-works," brick furnaces,
holding two or three great kettles, in which the blubber was reduced to
odorless oil. Along each rail were heavy, clumsy wooden cranes, or davits,
from which hung the whale-boats--never less than five, sometimes more,
while still others were lashed to the deck, for boats were the whale's
sport and playthings, and seldom was a big "fish" made fast that there was
not work for the ship's carpenter.

The whale-boat, evolved from the needs of this fishery, is one of the most
perfect pieces of marine architecture afloat--a true adaptation of means
to an end. It is clinker-built, about 27 feet long, by 6 feet beam, with a
depth of about 2 feet 6 inches; sharp at both ends and clean-sided as a
mackerel. Each boat carried five oarsmen, who wielded oars of from nine to
sixteen feet in length, while the mate steers with a prodigious oar ten
feet long. The bow oarsman is the harpooner, but when he has made fast to
the whale he goes aft and takes the mate's place at the steering oar,
while the latter goes forward with the lances to deal the final murderous
strokes. This curious and dangerous change of position in the boat, often
with a heavy sea running, and with a 100-ton whale tugging at the tug-line
seems to have grown out of nothing more sensible than the insistence of
mates on recognition of their rank. But a whale-boat is not the only place
where a spill is threatened because some one in power insists on doing
something at once useless and dangerous.

The whale-boat also carried a stout mast, rigging two sprit sails. The
mast was instantly unshipped when the whale was struck. The American boats
also carried centerboards, lifting into a framework extending through the
center of the craft, but the English whalemen omitted these appendages. A
rudder was hung over the side, for use in emergencies. Into this boat were
packed, with the utmost care and system, two line-tubs, each holding from
100 to 200 fathoms of fine manila rope, one and one-half inches round, and
of a texture like yellow silk; three harpoons, wood and iron, measuring
about eight feet over all, and weighing about ten pounds; three lances of
the finest steel, with wooden handles, in all about eight feet long; a keg
of drinking water and one of biscuits; a bucket and piggin for bailing, a
small spade, knives, axes, and a shoulder bomb-gun. It can be understood
easily that six men, maneuvering in so crowded a boat, with a huge whale
flouncing about within a few feet, a line whizzing down the center, to be
caught in which meant instant death, and the sea often running high, had
need to keep their wits about them.

Harpoons and lances are kept ground to a razor edge, and, propelled by the
vigorous muscles of brawny whalemen, often sunk out of sight through the
papery skin and soft blubber of the whale. Beyond these primitive
appliances the whale fishery never progressed very far. It is true that in
later days a shoulder-gun hurled the harpoon, explosive bombs replaced the
lances, the ships were in some cases fitted with auxiliary steam-power,
and in a few infrequent instances steam launches were employed for
whale-boats. But progress was not general. The old-fashioned whaling tubs
kept the seas, while the growing scarcity of the whales and the blow to
the demand for oil dealt by the discovery of petroleum, checked the
development of the industry. Now the rows of whalers rotting at New
Bedford's wharves, and the somnolence of Nantucket, tell of its virtual
demise.

These two towns were built upon the prosperity of the whale fishery. When
it languished their fortunes sunk, never to rise to their earlier heights,
though cotton-spinning came to occupy the attention of the people of New
Bedford, while Nantucket found a placid prosperity in entertaining summer
boarders. And even during the years when whales were plentiful, and their
oil still in good demand, there came periods of interruption to the trade
and poverty to its followers. The Revolution first closed the seas to
American ships for seven long years, and at its close the whalers found
their best market--England--still shut against them. Moreover, the high
seas during the closing years of the eighteenth and the opening of the
nineteenth centuries were not as to-day, when a pirate is as scarce a
beast of prey as a highwayman on Hounslow Heath. The Napoleonic wars had
broken down men's natural sense of order and of right, and the seas
swarmed with privateers, who on occasion were ready enough to turn
pirates. Many whalers fell a prey to these marauders, whose operations
were rather encouraged than condemned by the European nations. Both
England and France were at this period endeavoring to lure the whalemen
from the United Colonies by promise of special concessions in trade, or
more effective protection on the high seas than their own weakling
governments could assure them. Some Nantucket whalemen were indeed
enticed to the new English whaling town at Dartmouth, near Halifax, or to
the French town of Dunkirk. But the effort to transplant the industry did
not succeed, and the years that followed, until the fateful embargo of
1807, were a period of rapid growth for the whale fishery and increasing
wealth for those who pursued it. In the form of its business organization
the business of whaling was the purest form of profit-sharing we have ever
seen in the United States. Everybody on the ship, from captain to
cabin-boy, was a partner, vitally interested in the success of the voyage.
Each had his "lay"--that is to say, his proportionate share of the
proceeds of the catch. Obed Macy, in his "History of Nantucket," says:
"The captain's lay is generally one-seventeenth part of all obtained; the
first officer's one-twenty-eighth part; the second officer's,
one-forty-fifth; the third officer's, one-sixtieth; a boat-steerer's from
an eightieth to a hundred-and-twentieth, and a foremast hand's, from a
hundred-and-twentieth to a hundred-and-eighty-fifth each." These
proportions, of course, varied--those of the men according to the ruling
wages in other branches of the merchant service; those of the officers to
correspond with special qualities of efficiency. All the remainder of the
catch went to the owners, who put into the enterprise the ship and
outfitted her for a cruise, which usually occupied three years. Their
investment was therefore a heavy one, a suitable vessel of 300-tons burden
costing in the neighborhood of $22,000, and her outfit $18,000 to $20,000.
Not infrequently the artisans engaged in fitting out a ship were paid by
being given "lays," like the sailor. In such a case the boatmaker who
built the whale-boats, the ropemaker who twisted the stout, flexible
manila cord to hold the whale, the sailmaker and the cooper were all
interested with the crew and the owners in the success of the voyage. It
was the most practical communism that industry has ever seen, and it
worked to the satisfaction of all concerned as long as the whaling trade
continued profitable.

The wars in which the American people engaged during the active days of
the whale fishery--the Revolution, the War of 1812, and the Civil
War--were disastrous to that industry, and from the depredations committed
by the Confederate cruisers in the last conflict it never fully recovered.
The nature of their calling made the whalemen peculiarly vulnerable to the
evils of war. Cruising in distant seas, always away from home for many
months, often for years, a war might be declared and fought to a finish
before they knew of it. In the disordered Napoleonic days they never could
tell whether the flag floating at the peak of some armed vessel
encountered at the antipodes was that of friend or foe. During both the
wars with England they were the special objects of the enemy's malignant
attention. From the earliest days American progress in maritime enterprise
was viewed by the British with apprehension and dislike. Particularly did
the growth of the cod fisheries and the chase of the whale arouse
transatlantic jealousy, the value of these callings as nurseries for
seamen being only too plainly apparent. Accordingly the most was made of
the opportunities afforded by war for crushing the whaling industry.
Whalers were chased to their favorite fishing-grounds, captured, and
burned. With cynical disregard of all the rules of civilized
warfare--supposing war ever to be civilized--the British gave to the
captured whalers only the choice of serving in British men-of-war against
their own countrymen, or re-entering the whaling trade on British ships,
thus building up the British whale fishery at the expense of the American.
The American response to these tactics was to abandon the business during
war time. In 1775 Nantucket alone had had 150 vessels, aggregating 15,000
tons, afloat in pursuit of the whale. The trade was pushed with such
daring and enterprise that Edmund Burke was moved to eulogize its
followers in an eloquent speech in the British House of Commons. "Neither
the perseverance of Holland," he said, "nor the activity of France, nor
the dexterous and firm sagacity of English enterprise, ever carried this
most perilous mode of hardy industry to the extent to which it has been
pushed by this most recent people." But the eloquence of Burke could not
halt the British ministry in its purpose to tax the colonies despite their
protests. The Revolution followed, and the whalemen of Nantucket and New
Bedford stripped their vessels, sent down yards and all running rigging,
stowed the sails, tied their barks and brigs to the deserted wharves and
went out of business. The trade thus rudely checked had for the year
preceding the outbreak of the war handled 45,000 barrels of sperm oil,
8500 barrels of right-whale oil, and 75,000 pounds of bone.

The enforced idleness of the Revolutionary days was not easily forgotten
by the whalemen, and their discontent and complainings were great when the
nation was again embroiled in war with Great Britain in 1812. It can not
be said that their attitude in the early days of that conflict was
patriotic. They had suffered--both at the hands of France and
England--wrongs which might well rouse their resentment. They had been
continually impressed by England, and the warships of both nations had
seized American whalers for real or alleged violations of the Orders in
Council or the Ostend Manifesto; but the whalemen were more eager for
peace, even with the incidental perils due to war in Europe, than for war,
with its enforced idleness. When Congress ordered the embargo the whalers
were at first explicitly freed from its operations; but this provision
being seized upon to cover evasions of the embargo, they were ultimately
included. When war was finally declared, the protests of the Nantucket
people almost reached the point of threatening secession. A solemn
memorial was first addressed to Congress, relating the exceedingly exposed
condition of the island and its favorite calling to the perils of war, and
begging that the actual declaration of war might be averted. When this had
availed nothing, and the young nation had rushed into battle with a
courage that must seem to us now foolhardy, the Nantucketers adopted the
doubtful expedient of seeking special favor from the enemy. An appeal for
immunity from the ordinary acts of war was addressed to the British
Admiral Cochrane, and a special envoy was sent to the British naval
officer commanding the North American station, to announce the neutrality
of the island and to beg immunity from assault and pillage, and assurance
that one vessel would be permitted to ply unmolested between the island
and the mainland. As a result of these negotiations, Nantucket formally
declared her neutrality, and by town meeting voted to accede to the
British demand that her people pay no taxes for the support of the United
States. In all essential things the island ceased to be a part of the
United States, its people neither rendering military service nor
contributing to the revenues. But their submission to the British demands
did not save the whale-trade, for repeated efforts to get the whalers
declared neutral and exempt from capture failed.

Half a century of peace followed, during which the whaling industry rose
to its highest point; but was again on the wane when the Civil War let
loose upon the remaining whalemen the Confederate cruisers, the
"Shenandoah" alone burning thirty-four of them. From this last stroke the
industry, enfeebled by the lessened demand for its chief product, and by
the greater cost and length of voyages resulting from the growing scarcity
of whales, never recovered. To-day its old-time ports are deserted by
traffic. Stripped of all that had salable value, its ships rot on
mud-banks or at moldering wharves. The New England boy, whose ambition
half a century ago was to ship on a whaler, with a boy's lay and a
straight path to the quarter-deck, now goes into a city office, or makes
for the West as a miner or a railroad man. The whale bids fair to become
as extinct as the dodo, and the whaleman is already as rare as the
buffalo.

[Illustration: "ROT AT MOLDERING WHARVES"]

With the extension of the fishing-grounds to the Pacific began the really
great days of the whale fishery. Then, from such a port as Nantucket or
New Bedford a vessel would set out, to be gone three years, carrying with
her the dearest hopes and ambitions of all the inhabitants. Perhaps there
would be no house without some special interest in her cruise. Tradesmen
of a dozen sorts supplied stores on shares. Ambitious boys of the best
families sought places before the mast, for there was then no higher goal
for youthful ambition than command of a whaler. Not infrequently a captain
would go direct from the marriage altar to his ship, taking a young bride
off on a honeymoon of three years at sea. Of course the home conditions
created by this almost universal masculine employment were curious. The
whaling towns were populated by women, children, and old men. The talk of
the street was of big catches and the prices of oil and bone. The
conversation in the shaded parlors, where sea-shells, coral, and the
trophies of Pacific cruises were the chief ornaments, was of the distant
husbands and sons, the perils they braved, and when they might be expected
home. The solid, square houses the whalemen built, stoutly timbered as
though themselves ships, faced the ocean, and bore on their ridge-pole a
railed platform called the bridge, whence the watchers could look far out
to sea, scanning the horizon for the expected ship. Lucky were they if she
came into the harbor without half-masted flag or other sign of disaster.
The profits of the calling in its best days were great. The best New
London record is that of the "Pioneer," made in an eighteen-months' cruise
in 1864-5. She brought back 1391 barrels of oil and 22,650 pounds of bone,
all valued at $150,060. The "Envoy," of New Bedford, after being condemned
as unseaworthy, was fitted out in 1847 at a cost of $8000, and sent out on
a final cruise. She found oil and bone to the value of $132,450; and
reaching San Francisco in the flush times, was sold for $6000. As an
offset to these records, is the legend of the Nantucket captain who
appeared off the harbor's mouth after a cruise of three years. "What luck,
cap'n?" asked the first to board. "Well, I got nary a barrel of oil and
nary a pound of bone; but I had a _mighty good sail_."

When the bar was crossed and the ship fairly in blue water, work began.
Rudyard Kipling has a characteristic story, "How the Ship Found Herself,"
telling how each bolt and plate, each nut, screw-thread, brace, and rivet
in one of those iron tanks we now call ships adjusts itself to its work on
the first voyage. On the whaler the crew had to find itself, to readjust
its relations, come to know its constituent parts, and learn the ways of
its superiors. Sometimes a ship was manned by men who had grown up
together and who had served often on the same craft; but as a rule the men
of the forecastle were a rough and vagrant lot; capable seamen, indeed,
but of the adventurous and irresponsible sort, for service before the mast
on a whaler was not eagerly sought by the men of the merchant service. For
a time Indians were plenty, and their fine physique and racial traits made
them skillful harpooners. As they became scarce, negroes began to appear
among the whalemen, with now and then a Lascar, a South Sea Islander,
Portuguese, and Hawaiians. The alert New Englanders, trained to the life
of the sea, seldom lingered long in the forecastle, but quickly made their
way to the posts of command. There they were despots, for nowhere was the
discipline more severe than on whalemen. The rule was a word and a
blow--and the word was commonly a curse. The ship was out for a
five-years' cruise, perhaps, and the captain knew that the safety of all
depended upon unquestioning obedience to his authority. Once in a while
even the cowed crew would revolt, and infrequent stories of mutiny and
murder appear in the record of the whale trade. The whaler, like a
man-of-war, carried a larger crew than was necessary for the work of
navigation, and it was necessary to devise work to keep the men employed.
As a result, the ships were kept cleaner than any others in the merchant
service, even though the work of trying out the blubber was necessarily
productive of smoke, soot, and grease.

As a rule the voyage to the Pacific whaling waters was round Cape Horn,
though occasionally a vessel made its way to the eastward and rounded the
Cape of Good Hope. Almost always the world was circumnavigated before
return. In early days the Pacific whalers found their game in plenty along
the coast of Chili; but in time they were forced to push further and
further north until the Japan Sea and Bering Sea became the favorite
fishing places.

The whale was usually first sighted by the lookout in the crow's nest. A
warm-blooded animal, breathing with lungs, and not with gills, like a
fish, the whale is obliged to come to the surface of the water
periodically to breathe. As he does so he exhales the air from his lungs
through blow-holes or spiracles at the top of his head; and this warm,
moist air, coming thus from his lungs into the cool air, condenses,
forming a jet of vapor looking like a fountain, though there is, in fact,
no spout of water. "There she blows! B-l-o-o-o-ws! Blo-o-ows!" cries the
lookout at this spectacle. All is activity at once on deck, the captain
calling to the lookout for the direction and character of the "pod" or
school. The sperm whale throws his spout forward at an angle, instead of
perpendicularly into the air, and hence is easily distinguished from right
whales at a distance. The ship is then headed toward the game, coming to
about a mile away. As the whale, unless alarmed, seldom swims more than
two and a half miles an hour, and usually stays below only about
forty-five minutes at a time, there is little difficulty in overhauling
him. Then the boats are launched, the captain and a sufficient number of
men staying with the ship.

[Illustration: "THERE SHE BLOWS"]

In approaching the whale, every effort is made to come up to him at the
point of least danger. This point is determined partly by the lines of the
whale's vision, partly by his methods of defense. The right whale can only
see dead ahead, and his one weapon is his tail, which gigantic fin,
weighing several tons and measuring sometimes twenty feet across the tips
of the flukes, he swings with irresistible force and all the agility of a
fencer at sword-play. He, therefore, is attacked from the side, well
toward his jaws. The sperm whale, however, is dangerous at both ends. His
tail, though less elastic than that of the right whale, can deal a
prodigious up-and-down blow, while his gigantic jaws, well garnished with
sharp teeth, and capacious gullet, that readily could gulp down a man, are
his chief terrors. His eyes, too, set obliquely, enable him to command the
sea at all points save dead ahead, and it is accordingly from this point
that the fishermen approach him. But however stealthily they move, the
opportunities for disappointment are many. Big as he is, the whale is not
sluggish. In an instant he may sink bodily from sight; or, throwing his
flukes high in air, "sound," to be seen no more; or, casting himself
bodily on the boat, blot it out of existence; or, taking it in his jaws,
carry it down with him. But supposing the whale to be oblivious of its
approach, the boat comes as near as seems safe, and the harpooner, poised
in the bow, his knee against the bracket that steadies him, lets fly his
weapon; and, hit or miss, follows it up at once with a second bent onto
the same line. Some harpooners were of such strength and skill that they
could hurl their irons as far as four or five fathoms. In one famous case
boats from an American and British ship were in pursuit of the same whale,
the British boat on the inside. It is the law of the fishery that the
whale belongs to the boat that first makes fast--and many a pretty
quarrel has grown out of this rule. So in this instance--seeing the danger
that his rival might win the game--the American harpooner, with a
prodigious effort, darted his iron clear over the rival boat and deep into
the mass of blubber.

[Illustration: "TAKING IT IN HIS JAWS"]

What a whale will do when struck no man can tell before the event. The
boat-load of puffing, perspiring men who have pulled at full speed up to
the monster may suddenly find themselves confronted with a furious,
vindictive, aggressive beast weighing eighty tons, and bent on grinding
their boat and themselves to powder; or he may simply turn tail and run.
Sometimes he sounds, going down, down, down, until all the line in the
boat is exhausted, and all that other boats can bend on is gone too. Then
the end is thrown over with a drag, and his reappearance awaited.
Sometimes he dashes off over the surface of the water at a speed of
fifteen knots an hour, towing the boat, while the crew hope that their
"Nantucket sleigh-ride" will end before they lose the ship for good. But
once fast, the whalemen try to pull close alongside the monster. Then the
mate takes the long, keen lance and plunges it deep into the great
shuddering carcass, "churning" it up and down and seeking to pierce the
heart or lungs. This is the moment of danger; for, driven mad with pain,
the great beast rolls and thrashes about convulsively. If the boat clings
fast to his side, it is in danger of being crushed or engulfed at any
moment; if it retreats, he may recover himself and be off before the
death-stroke can be delivered. In later days the explosive bomb,
discharged from a distance, has done away with this peril; but in the
palmy days of the whale fishery the men would rush into the circle of sea
lashed into foam by those mighty fins, get close to the whale, as the
boxer gets under the guard of his foe, smite him with lance and
razor-edged spade until his spouts ran red, and to his fury there should
succeed the calm of approaching death. Then the boats, pulled off. The
command was "Pipes all"; and, placidly smoking in the presence of that
mighty death, the whalers awaited their ship.

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