American Merchant Ships and Sailors by Willis J. Abbot

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Stories of "fighting whales" fill the chronicles of our old whaling ports.
There was the old bull sperm encountered by Captain Huntling off the River
De La Plata, which is told us in a fascinating old book, "The Nimrod of
the Sea." The first boat that made fast to this tough old warrior he
speedily bit in two; and while her crew were swimming away from the wreck
with all possible speed, the whale thrashed away at the pieces until all
were reduced to small bits. Two other boats meanwhile made fast to the
furious animal. Wheeling about in the foam, reddened with his blood, he
crushed them as a tiger would crunch its prey. All about him were men
struggling in the water--twelve of them, the crews of the two demolished
boats. Of the boats themselves nothing was left big enough to float a man.
The ship was miles away. Three of the sailors climbed on the back of their
enemy, clinging by the harpoons and ropes still fast to him, while the
others swam away for dear life, thinking only of escaping that
all-engulfing jaw or the blows of that murderous tail. Now came another
boat from the ship, picked up the swimmers, and cautiously rescued those
perched on the whale's back from their island of shuddering flesh. The
spirit of the monster was still undaunted. Though six harpoons were sunk
into his body and he was dragging 300 fathoms of line, he was still in
fighting mood, crunching oars, kegs, and bits of boat for more enemies to
demolish. All hands made for the ship, where Captain Hunting, quite as
dogged and determined as his adversary, was preparing to renew the combat.
Two spare boats were fitted for use, and again the whalemen started after
their foe. He, for his part, remained on the battle-ground, amid the
debris of his hunters' property, and awaited attack. Nay, more; he churned
the water with his mighty tail and moved forward to meet his enemy, with
ready jaw to grind them to bits. The captain at the boat-oar, or
steering-oar, made a mighty effort and escaped the rush; then sent an
explosive bomb into the whale's vitals as he surged past. Struck unto
death, the great bull went into his flurry; but in dying he rolled over
the captain's boat like an avalanche, destroying it as completely as he
had the three others. So man won the battle, but at a heavy cost. The
whaleman who chronicled this fight says significantly: "The captain
proceeded to Buenos Ayres, as much to allow his men, who were mostly
green, to run away, as for the purpose of refitting, as he knew they would
be useless thereafter." It was well recognized in the whaling service that
men once thoroughly "gallied," or frightened, were seldom useful again;
and, indeed, most of the participants in this battle did, as the captain
anticipated, desert at the first port.

Curiously enough, there did not begin to be a literature of whaling until
the industry went into its decadence. The old-time whalers, leading lives
of continual romance and adventure, found their calling so commonplace
that they noted shipwrecks, mutinies, and disaster in the struggles of the
whale baldly in their logbooks, without attempt at graphic description. It
is true the piety of Nantucket did result in incorporating the whale in
the local hymn-book, but with what doubtful literary success these verses
from the pen of Peleg Folger--himself a whaleman--will too painfully
attest:

Thou didst, O Lord, create the mighty whale,
That wondrous monster of a mighty length;
Vast is his head and body, vast his tail,
Beyond conception his unmeasured strength.

When the surface of the sea hath broke
Arising from the dark abyss below,
His breath appears a lofty stream of smoke,
The circling waves like glittering banks of snow.

And though he furiously doth us assail,
Thou dost preserve us from all dangers free;
He cuts our boats in pieces with his tail,
And spills us all at once into the sea.

Stories of the whale fishery are plentiful, and of late years there has
been some effort made to gather these into a kind of popular history of
the industry. The following incidents are gathered from a pamphlet,
published in the early days of the nineteenth century, by Thomas Nevins, a
New England whaler:

"A remarkable instance of the power which the whale possesses in
its tail was exhibited within my own observation in the year
1807. On the 29th of May a whale was harpooned by an officer
belonging to the 'Resolution.' It descended a considerable
depth, and on its reappearance evinced an uncommon degree of
irritation. It made such a display of its fins and tail that few
of the crew were hardy enough to approach it. The captain,
observing their timidity, called a boat and himself struck a
second harpoon. Another boat immediately followed, and
unfortunately advanced too far. The tail was again reared into
the air in a terrific attitude. The impending blow was evident.
The harpooner, who was directly underneath, leaped overboard,
and the next moment the threatened stroke was impressed on the
center of the boat, which it buried in the water. Happily no one
was injured. The harpooner who leaped overboard escaped death by
the act, the tail having struck the very spot on which he stood.
The effects of the blow were astonishing--the keel was broken,
the gunwales and every plank excepting two were cut through, and
it was evident that the boat would have been completely divided,
had not the tail struck directly upon a coil of lines. The boat
was rendered useless.

"The Dutch ship 'Gort-Moolen,' commanded by Cornelius Gerard
Ouwekaas, with a cargo of seven fish, was anchored in Greenland,
in the year 1660. The captain, perceiving a whale ahead of his
ship, beckoned his attendants and threw himself into a boat. He
was the first to approach the whale, and was fortunate enough to
harpoon it before the arrival of the second boat, which was on
the advance. Jacques Vienkes, who had the direction of it,
joined his captain immediately afterward, and prepared to make a
second attack on the fish when it should remount to the surface.
At the moment of its ascension, the boat of Vienkes, happening,
unfortunately, to be perpendicularly above it, was so suddenly
and forcibly lifted up by a stroke of the head of the whale that
it was dashed to pieces before the harpooner could discharge
his weapon. Vienkes flew along with the pieces of the boat, and
fell upon the back of the animal. This intrepid seaman, who
still retained his weapon in his grasp, harpooned the whale on
which he stood; and by means of the harpoon and the line, which
he never abandoned, he steadied himself firmly upon the fish,
notwithstanding his hazardous situation, and regardless of a
considerable wound that he received in his leg in his fall along
with the fragments of the boat. All the efforts of the other
boats to approach the whale and deliver the harpooner were
futile. The captain, not seeing any other method of saving his
unfortunate companion, who was in some way entangled with the
line, called him to cut it with his knife and betake himself to
swimming. Vienkes, embarrassed and disconcerted as he was, tried
in vain to follow this council. His knife was in the pocket of
his drawers, and being unable to support himself with one hand,
he could not get it out. The whale, meanwhile, continued
advancing along the surface of the water with great rapidity,
but fortunately never attempted to dive. While his comrades
despaired of his life, the harpoon by which he held at length
disengaged itself from the body of the whale. Vienkes, being
thus liberated, did not fail to take advantage of this
circumstance. He cast himself into the sea, and by swimming
endeavored to regain the boats, which continued the pursuit of
the whale. When his shipmates perceived him struggling with the
waves, they redoubled their exertions. They reached him just as
his strength was exhausted, and had the happiness of rescuing
this adventurous harpooner from his perilous situation.

"Captain Lyons, of the 'Raith,' of Leith, while prosecuting the
whale fishery on the Labrador coast, in the season of 1802,
discovered a large whale at a short distance from the ship. Four
boats were dispatched in pursuit, and two of them succeeded in
approaching it so closely together that two harpoons were struck
at the same moment. The fish descended a few fathoms in the
direction of another of the boats, which was on the advance,
rose accidentally beneath it, struck it with his head, and threw
the boat, men, and apparatus about fifteen feet in the air. It
was inverted by the stroke, and fell into the water with its
keel upward. All the people were picked up alive by the fourth
boat, which was just at hand, excepting one man, who, having
got entangled in the boat, fell beneath it and was unfortunately
drowned. The fish was soon afterward killed.

"In 1822 two boats belonging to the ship 'Baffin' went in
pursuit of a whale. John Carr was harpooner and commander of
them. The whale they pursued led them into a vast shoal of his
own species. They were so numerous that their blowing was
incessant, and they believed that they did not see fewer than a
hundred. Fearful of alarming them without striking any, they
remained a while motionless. At last one rose near Carr's boat,
and he approached and, fatally for himself, harpooned it. When
he struck, the fish was approaching the boat; and, passing very
rapidly, jerked the line out of its place over the stern and
threw it upon the gunwale. Its pressure in this unfavorable
position so careened the boat that the side was pulled under
water and it began to fill. In this emergency Carr, who was a
brave, active man, seized the line, and endeavored to release
the boat by restoring it to its place; but by some circumstance
which was never accounted for, a turn of the line flew over his
arm, dragged him overboard in an instant, and drew him under the
water, never more to rise. So sudden was the accident that only
one man, who was watching him, saw what had happened; so that
when the boat righted, which it immediately did, though half
full of water, the whole crew, on looking round, inquired what
had become of Carr. It is impossible to imagine a death more
awfully sudden and unexpected. The invisible bullet could not
have effected more instantaneous destruction. The velocity of
the whale at its first descent is from thirteen to fifteen feet
per second. Now, as this unfortunate man was adjusting the line
at the water's very edge, where it must have been perfectly
tight, owing to its obstruction in running out of the boat, the
interval between the fastening of the line about him and his
disappearance could not have exceeded the third part of a second
of time, for in one second only he must have been dragged ten or
twelve feet deep. Indeed, he had not time for the least
exclamation; and the person who saw his removal observed that it
was so exceeding quick that, though his eye was upon him at the
moment, he could scarcely distinguish his figure as he
disappeared.

"As soon as the crew recovered from their consternation, they
applied themselves to the needful attention which the lines
required. A second harpoon was struck from the accompanying
boat, on the rising of the whale to the surface, and some lances
were applied; but this melancholy occurrence had cast such a
damp on all present that they became timid and inactive in their
subsequent duties. The whale, when nearly exhausted, was allowed
to remain some minutes unmolested, till, having recovered some
degree of energy, it made a violent effort and tore itself away
from the harpoons. The exertions of the crews thus proved
fruitless, and were attended with serious loss.

"A harpooner belonging to the 'Henrietta,' of Whitby, when
engaged in lancing a whale into which he had previously struck a
harpoon, incautiously cast a little line under his feet that he
had just hauled into the boat, after it had been drawn out by
the fish. A painful stroke of his lance induced the whale to
dart suddenly downward. His line began to run out from under his
feet, and in an instant caught him by a turn round his body. He
had but just time to cry out, 'Clear away the line! Oh, dear!'
when he was almost cut asunder, dragged overboard, and never
seen afterward. The line was cut at that moment, but without
avail. The fish descended to a considerable depth and died, from
whence it was drawn to the surface by the lines connected with
it and secured."

Whaling has almost ceased to have a place in the long list of our national
industries. Its implements and the relics of old-time cruises fill niches
in museums as memorials of a practically extinct calling. Along the
wharves of New Bedford and New London a few old brigs lie rotting, but so
effective have been the ravages of time that scarcely any of the once
great fleet survive even in this invalid condition. The whales have been
driven far into the Arctic regions, whither a few whalers employing the
modern and unsportsmanlike devices of steam and explosives, follow them
for a scanty profit. But the glory of the whale fishery is gone, leaving
hardly a record behind it. In its time it employed thousands of stout
sailors; it furnished the navy with the material that made that branch of
our armed service the pride and glory of the nation. It explored unknown
seas and carried the flag to undiscovered lands. Was not an Austrian
exploring expedition, interrupted as it was about to take possession of
land in the Antarctic in the name of Austria by encountering an American
whaler, trim and trig, lying placidly at anchor in a harbor where the
Austrian thought no man had ever been? It built up towns in New England
that half a century of lethargy has been unable to kill. And so if its
brigs--and its men--now molder, if its records are scanty and its history
unwritten, still Americans must ever regard the whale fishery as one of
the chief factors in the building of the nation--one of the most admirable
chapters in our national story.

CHAPTER V

THE PRIVATEERS--PART TAKEN BY MERCHANT SAILORS IN BUILDING UP THE
PRIVATEERING SYSTEM--LAWLESS STATE OF THE HIGH SEAS--METHOD OF
DISTRIBUTING PRIVATEERING PROFITS--PICTURESQUE FEATURES OF THE
CALLING--THE GENTLEMEN SAILORS--EFFECT ON THE REVOLUTIONARY
ARMY--PERILS OF PRIVATEERING--THE OLD JERSEY PRISON SHIP--EXTENT OF
PRIVATEERING--EFFECT ON AMERICAN MARINE ARCHITECTURE--SOME FAMOUS
PRIVATEERS--THE "CHASSEUR," THE "PRINCE DE NEUFCHATEL," THE "MAMMOTH"--THE
SYSTEM OF CONVOYS AND THE "RUNNING SHIPS"--A TYPICAL PRIVATEERS'
BATTLE--THE "GENERAL ARMSTRONG" AT FAYAL--SUMMARY OF THE WORK OF THE
PRIVATEERS

In the early days of a new community the citizen, be he never so peaceful,
is compelled, perforce, to take on the ways and the trappings of the
fighting man. The pioneer is half hunter, half scout. The farmer on the
outposts of civilization must be more than half a soldier; the cowboy or
ranchman on our southwest frontier goes about a walking arsenal, ready at
all times to take the laws into his own hands, and scorning to call on
sheriffs or other peace officers for protection against personal injury.
And while the original purpose of this militant, even defiant, attitude is
self-protection, those who are long compelled to maintain it conceive a
contempt for the law, which they find inadequate to guard them, and not
infrequently degenerate into bandits.

It is hardly too much to say that the nineteenth century was already well
into its second quarter before there was a semblance of recognized law
upon the high seas. Pirates and buccaneers, privateers, and the naval
vessels of the times that were little more than pirates, made the lot of
the merchant sailor of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries a
precarious one. Wars were constant, declared on the flimsiest pretexts and
with scant notice; so that the sailor putting out from port in a time of
universal peace could feel no certainty that the first foreign vessel he
met might not capture him as spoil of some war of which he had no
knowledge. Accordingly, sailors learned to defend themselves, and the
ship's armory was as necessary and vastly better stocked than the ship's
medicine case. To point a carronade became as needful an accomplishment as
to box the compass; and he was no A.B. who did not know how to swing a
cutlass.

Out of such conditions, and out of the wars which the Napoleonic plague
forced upon the world, sprung the practise of privateering; and while it
is the purpose of this book to tell the story of the American merchant
sailor only, it could not be complete without some account, however brief,
of the American privateersman. For, indeed, the two were one throughout a
considerable period of our maritime history, the sailor turning
privateersman or the privateersman sailor as political or trade conditions
demanded. In our colonial times, and in the earlier days of the nation, to
be a famous privateersman, or to have had a hand in fitting out a
successful privateer, was no mean passport to fame and fortune. Some of
the names most eminent in the history of our country appear in connection
with the outfitting or command of privateers; and not a few of the oldest
fortunes of New England had their origin in this form of legalized piracy.
And, after all, it is the need of the times that fixes the morality of an
act. To-day privateering is dead; not by any formal agreement, for the
United States, at the Congress of Paris, refused to agree to its outlawry;
but in our war with Spain no recourse was had to letters of marque by
either combatant, and it seems unlikely that in any future war between
civilized nations either party will court the contempt of the world by
going back to the old custom of chartering banditti to steal the property
of private citizens of the hostile nation if found at sea. Private
property on shore has long been respected by the armies of Christendom,
and why its presence in a ship rather than in a cart makes it a fit object
of plunder baffles the understanding. Perhaps in time the kindred custom
of awarding prize money to naval officers, which makes of them a species
of privateers, and pays them for capturing a helpless merchant ship, while
an army officer gets nothing for taking the most powerful fort, may
likewise be set aside as a relic of medieval warfare.

In its earliest days, of course, privateering was the weapon of a nation
weak at sea against one with a large navy. So when the colonies threw down
the gage of battle to Great Britain, almost the first act of the
Revolutionary government was to authorize private owners to fit out armed
ships to prey on British commerce. Some of the shipowners of New England
had enjoyed some experience of the profits of this peculiar industry in
the Seven Years' War, when quite a number of colonial privateers harried
the French on the seas, and accordingly the response was prompt. In
enterprises of this character the system of profit-sharing, already noted
in connection with whaling, obtained. The owners took a certain share of
each prize, and the remainder was divided among the officers and crew in
certain fixed proportions. How great were the profits accruing to a
privateersman in a "run of luck" might be illustrated by two facts set
forth by Maclay, whose "History of American Privateers" is the chief
authority on the subject. He asserts that "it frequently happened that
even the common sailors received as their share in one cruise, over and
above their wages, one thousand dollars--a small fortune in those days for
a mariner," and further that "one of the boys in the 'Ranger,' who less
than a month before had left a farm, received as his share one ton of
sugar, from thirty to forty gallons of fourth-proof Jamaica rum, some
twenty pounds of cotton, and about the same quantity of ginger, logwood,
and allspice, besides seven hundred dollars in money." To be sure, in
order to enjoy gains like these, the men had to risk the perils of battle
in addition to the common ones of the sea; but it is a curious fact,
recognized in all branches of industry, that the mere peril of a calling
does not deter men from following it, and when it promises high profit it
is sure to be overcrowded. In civil life to-day the most dangerous
callings are those which are, as a rule, the most ill paid.

Very speedily the privateersmen became the most prosperous and the most
picturesque figures along the waterside of the Atlantic cities. While the
dignified merchant or shipowner, with a third interest in the "Daredevil"
or the "Flybynight," might still maintain the sober demeanor of a good
citizen and a pillar of the church, despite his profits of fifty or an
hundred per cent. on each cruise, the gallant sailors who came back to
town with pockets full of easily-won money, and the recollection of long
and dismal weeks at sea behind them, were spectacular in their rejoicings.
Their money was poured out freely while it lasted; and their example
stirred all the townsboys, from the best families down to the scourings of
the docks, to enter the same gentlemanlike profession.

Queerly enough, in a time of universal democracy, a provision was made on
many of the privateers for the young men of family who desired to follow
the calling. They were called "gentlemen sailors," and, in consideration
of their social standing and the fact that they were trained to arms, were
granted special and unusual privileges, such as freedom from the drudgery
of working the ship, better fare than the common sailors, and more
comfortable quarters. Indeed, they were free of duty except when fighting
was to be done, and at other times fulfilled the function of the marine
guards on our modern men-of-war. This came to be a very popular calling
for adventurous young men of some family influence.

It has been claimed by some writers that "the Revolution was won by the
New England privateers"; and, indeed, there can be no doubt that their
activity did contribute in no small degree to the outcome of that
struggle. Britain was then, as now, essentially a commercial nation, and
the outcry of her merchants when the ravages of American privateers drove
marine insurance rates up to thirty-three per cent., and even for a time
made companies refuse it altogether, was clamorous. But there was another
side to the story. Privateering, like all irregular service, was
demoralizing, not alone to the men engaged in it, but to the youth of the
country as well. The stories of the easy life and the great profits of the
privateersmen were circulated in every little town, while the revels of
these sea soldiers in the water-front villages were described with
picturesque embellishments throughout the land. As a result, it became
hard to get young men of spirit into the patriot armies. Washington
complained that when the fortunes of his army were at their lowest, when
he could not get clothing for his soldiers, and the snow at Valley Forge
was stained with the blood of their unshod feet, any American shipping on
a privateer was sure of a competence, while great fortunes were being made
by the speculators who fitted them out. Nor was this all. Such was the
attraction of the privateer's life that it drew to it seamen from every
branch of the maritime calling. The fisheries and the West India trade,
which had long been the chief mainstay of New England commerce, were
ruined, and it seemed for a time as if the hardy race of American seamen
were to degenerate into a mere body of buccaneers, operating under the
protection of international law, but plunderers and spoilers nevertheless.
Fortunately, the long peace which succeeded the War of 1812 gave
opportunity for the naturally lawful and civilized instincts of the
Americans to assert themselves, and this peril was averted.

It is, then, with no admiration for the calling, and yet with no
underestimate of its value to the nation, that I recount some of the
achievements of those who followed it. The periods when American
privateering was important were those of the Revolution and the War of
1812. During the Civil War the loss incurred by privateers fell upon our
own people, and it is curious to note how different a tone the writers on
this subject adopt when discussing the ravages of the Confederate
privateers and those which we let loose upon British commerce in the brave
days of 1812.

A true type of the Revolutionary privateersmen was Captain Silas Talbot,
of Massachusetts. He was one of the New England lads apprenticed to the
sea at an early age, having been made a cabin-boy at twelve. He rose to
command and acquired means in his profession, as we have seen was common
among our early merchant sailors, and when the Revolution broke out was
living comfortably in his own mansion in Providence. He enlisted in
Washington's army, but left it to become a privateer; and from that
service he stepped to the quarter-deck of a man-of-war. This was not an
uncommon line of development for the early privateersmen; and, indeed, it
was not unusual to find navy officers, temporarily without commands,
taking a cruise or two as privateers, until Congress should provide more
ships for the regular service--a system which did not tend to make a
Congress, which was niggardly at best, hasten to provide public vessels
for work which was being reasonably well done at private expense. As a
result of this system, we find such famous naval names as Decatur, Porter,
Hopkins, Preble, Barry, and Barney also figuring in the lists of
privateersmen. Talbot's first notable exploit was clearing New York harbor
of several British men-of-war by the use of fire-ships. Washington, with
his army, was then encamped at Harlem Heights, and the British ships were
in the Hudson River menacing his flank. Talbot, in a fire-ship, well
loaded with combustibles, dropped down the river and made for the biggest
of the enemy's fleet, the "Asia." Though quickly discovered and made the
target of the enemy's battery, he held his vessel on her course until
fairly alongside of and entangled with the "Asia," when the fuses were
lighted and the volcanic craft burst into roaring flames from stem to
stern. So rapid was the progress of the flames that Talbot and his
companions could scarcely escape with their lives from the conflagration
they had themselves started, and he lay for days, badly burned and unable
to see, in a little log hut on the Jersey shore. The British ships were
not destroyed; but, convinced that the neighborhood was unsafe for them,
they dropped down the bay; so the end sought for was attained. In 1779
Talbot was given command of the sloop "Argo," of 100 tons; "a mere
shallop, like a clumsy Albany sloop," says his biographer. Sixty men from
the army, most of whom had served afloat, were given him for crew, and he
set out to clear Long Island Sound of Tory privateers; for the loyalists
in New York were quite as avid for spoils as the New England
Revolutionists. On his second cruise he took seven prizes, including two
of these privateers. One of these was a 300-ton ship, vastly superior to
the "Argo" in armament and numbers, and the battle was a fierce one.
Nearly every man on the quarter-deck of the "Argo" was killed or wounded;
the speaking trumpet in Talbot's hand was pierced by two bullets, and a
cannon-ball carried away the tail of his coat. The damages sustained in
this battle were scarce repaired when another British privateer appeared,
and Talbot again went into action and took her, though of scarce half her
size. In all this little "Argo"--which, by the way, belonged to Nicholas
Low, of New York, an ancestor of the eminent Seth Low--took twelve prizes.
Her commander was finally captured and sent first to the infamous "Jersey"
prison-ship, and afterward to the Old Mill Prison in England.

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