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IheStoiyoflhe New Enoland Whalers*W 4 T"B 'Y John R. Spears ! BANCROFT LIBRARY < THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA THE STORY OF THE NEW ENGLAND WHALERS THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. TORONTO Ready to Sail THE STORY OF THE NEW ENGLAND WHALERS JOHN R. SPEARS THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1910 All right* reurved St, HISTORi .. COPYRIGHT, 1908, Bv THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1908. Reprinted September, 1910. Norwood Prett J. S. Gushing Co. Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S. A. L -3 TO ALL WHO PULL TO THE TUNE OF "A DEAD WHALE OR A STOVE BOAT" CONTENTS CHAPTER *AGK I. SAMUEL MULFORD, ALONGSHORE WHALER . I II. TOLD OF THE RED INDIAN WHALERS . 1 8 III. EARLY DAYS ON NANTUCKET . 38 IV. THE MINOR COLONIAL PORTS . 73 V. NANTUCKET IN THE WAR OF THE REVOLUTION 85 VI. A LONG PERIOD OF DEPRESSION ... 97 VII. ADVENTURES OF THE EXPLORERS . .123 VIII. WHALES AS THE WHALERS KNEW THEM . 159 IX. HARPOONS, LANCES, GUNS, AND BOATS . 203 X. SKETCHES AFLOAT WITH THE WHALERS . 244 XI. WORK OF THE FIGHTING WHALES . 286 XII. WHALING AS A BUSINESS ENTERPRISE . .312 XIII. THE MUTINEERS AND SLAVERS . ,340 XIV. TALES OF WHALERS IN THE CIVIL WAR . 365 XV. IN THE LATER DAYS . .394 vu LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Ready to sail ...... Frontispiece FACING PAGE Trying out blubber on deck . .68 Towing whales to the Onondar Fiord trying house, Ice- land 128 for a . Off two years' cruise . 1 60 Sperm whaling The chase . .188 Entangled whale diving . .226 Cutting in a whale ....... 276 Ships receiving the captains, officers, and crews of aban- doned ships .... ... 304 View of the Stone Fleet which sailed from New Bedford, November 16, 1861 . 384 Abandonment of the whalers in the Arctic Ocean, Sep- tember, 1871 . 402 SAMUEL MULFORD, ALONGSHORE WHALER a meeting of the inhabitants of AT Easthampton, Long Island, held on November 6, 1651, "It was ordered that Goodman Mulford shall call out ye town by succession to loke for Whale." "Goodman," as the reader will remember, was not a given name but a title that was applied to citizens who were not of the aristocracy. "Goodman" Mulford had been christened John. He was of the peasantry, but the fact that he was chosen to the office mentioned shows that he was a man of influence in the community, and of tried impartiality as well. Restless Englishmen from the settlements on Massachusetts Bay had scattered themselves along the coasts to the south and west, and crossing Long Island Sound (the first purchasers numbered The. /Story pif ]the,New England Whalers thirty-five), they had formed a settlement at the easterly end of Long Island as early as 1640. Long Island was a goodly country in its soil and climate. Prodigious crops of wheat could be raised, and prodigious crops of truck are yet raised there. And what was of more importance to this story, the sea, just off the dune-lined beach, was a natural feeding ground for whales at cer- tain seasons of the year. The pioneers on Massachusetts Bay, with their followers, seem to have had some knowledge of the whale fishery. When the Mayflower had anchored inside of Cape Cod, the Pilgrims ob- served that "large whales of the best kind for oil and bone came daily alongside and played about the ship. The master and his mate and others experienced in fishing preferred it to the Greenland whale fishery." Because of the num- ber of whales seen there some of the Pilgrims wished to settle on the cape rather than go on in search of another location, for they had come to establish a fishing colony as well as in search of "freedom to worship God." As the products of the whale formed an impor- Samuel Mulford, Alongshore Whaler 3 tant source of income to the first settlers on Mas- sachusetts Bay, the prospectors who came to Long Island to spy out the land looked away across the surf, as well as at the soil in the clearings the Indians had made; and seeing the familiar spout of the right whale out at sea confirmed them in the good opinion of the locality which an inspec- tion of the soil had already given them. More- over they learned from the Indians that "drift whales," namely, those that had died from natural causes, were often to be found on the beach. It is manifest from the records that the whale fishery was prosecuted on Long Island almost from the first day the settlers arrived. In March, 1644, the settlers divided themselves into four wards of eleven persons each to attend to the drift whales cast ashore, and it was voted that, " when such a whale was found, Every inhabitant, with his child or servant that is above sixteen years of age," should share equally in the products, save only as two men who were appointed to cut up the carcass were to have two shares each. The active work of hunting live whales was carried on at the Long Island settlement after a 4 The Story of the New England Whalers fashion that had already been established on Massachusetts Bay. Boats fit to launch through the surf were built by the community, and, with the necessary implements, these boats were held in readiness to go in pursuit of any whale that might be seen offshore. To make sure that every whale that came near the beach would be seen it was necessary to keep some one constantly on watch alongshore. To give such lookouts a wide range of vision the settlers erected among the dunes a number of tall spars, fitted with wooden pins up which the lookouts could climb, with perches or seats at the top. Further than that, a well-thatched hut was built, here and there, near the beach to serve as a shelter from heavy storms; for the whales "struck in" along that beach in winter from November to April. Naturally, the work of the lookout was irk- some and distasteful even to settlers inured to hardship. The perch on the spar was an uncom- fortable seat in the best of weather, and a gale of wind searched the hut, in spite of the fire that was built, for every hut was open on the side toward the sea. However energetic these settlers Samuel Mulford, Alongshore Whaler 5 might be in the actual work of killing a whale and preparing the products for market, some of them would shirk their tours of duty on lookout. Shirking roused the anger of those who did not shirk, and therefore, to preserve peace in the community, it was necessary to give some one authority "to call out ye town to loke for Whale." To this delicate and thankless task "Good- man" John Mulford was called in 1651. It may be noted also that he was chosen to serve as magistrate during the same year. It has seemed important to give these facts about the whaler settlers of Long Island, partly to set forth something of the character of their work, but chiefly because "Goodman" John Mul- ford was the father of Samuel Mulford, who was not only the most notable whaler of his day, but a patriot of the colonial period, whose work has never received the attention it has merited. Samuel was six years old when, in 1651, his father was authorized to "call out ye town to " loke for Whale. In connection with his career it will be interesting to consider a peculiar feature of the work of the whalers among whom he was 6 The Story of the New England Whalers raised. It was the custom to employ the natives of the island, the red Indians, in the boats used for pursuing the whales. The story of the Indian as a whaler shall be told in the next chapter, but it may be noted here that the tribesmen of vari- ous parts of the American coast had been in the habit of going afloat in canoes in pursuit of whales before the white man came, and that they succeeded, now and then, in worrying one to death, though possessed of no more efficient weapon than a bone spear or a flint-pointed arrow. And that is to say that they were able and courageous in the handling of such weapons as they had. How the European invaders usually treated the unfortunate aborigines is very well known to all readers; the story as a whole is shocking, but at the east end of Long Island the white settlers employed the Indians as whal- ers instead of exterminating them. Moreover, the pay given to the Indians when thus employed was three shillings a day at a time when that of common white laborers was two shillings. In fact, the competition of individual white whalemen for the services of the more expert Samuel Mulford, Alongshore Whaler 7 red men led, in time, to an increase of the pay given to a point where the white community as a whole deemed it necessary to enact a law for the regulation of the matter. The act declared that "whosoever shall hire an Indyan to go a-Whaling, shall not give him for his Hire above one Truck- ing Cloath Coat, for each Whale, hee and his Company shall Kill, or halfe the Blubber with- out the Whale Bone." Samuel Mulford was not only trained by a father who was noted for his sense of justice, but he grew up in a community that would provide by law that Indians might receive a "lay" of half the blubber of the whales they helped the white men to take.

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