HOW TO GO A-WHALING 39 somewhere with a knife in him. Adventure, is it? The day you see Block Island again you'll be the happiest man alive. Your whaler will be a three-masted barque with a bluff bow and a bowsprit sloping upwards. There are plenty here, built by the mile and cut off in lengths as you want 'em. She will be your home, your whaleboat launch quay, your slaughterhouse, your oil factory and your floating warehouse. She is built for strength, not speed. You'll be glad of that when you're hove-to in your hurricane. J)U'TLlNE Of A ;SPERM 'j/HALE, SHOWING THE. /v\ANNER or CtrrT!NG · !N On that first day I was ordered to get below, stow my sea chest and look sharp. Then I was sent aloft to free the main topsails, then to the windlass to weigh anchor. I was assigned to the larboard How to Go a-Whaling watch under the Second Mate, Mr Christian, a fair man though no Yankee. When I could think straight I realised I'd signed three Lesley Walker or four years of my life away, or maybe the whole of it. I know the tablets in the Bethel by heart. 1822 Gilbert Jay, nineteen, lost May kind Neptune protect us with pleasant Gales, and may we be from a boat in pursuit of a whale. 1832 Franklin Jay, the same. successful in catching Sperm Whales. 1844 Captain William Swain, forty-nine, having fastened onto a Thefirst entry in the log of the maiden voyage whale, carried overboard by the line and drowned. 1850 William of the 'Charles W Morgan' in 1841.t Kirkwood, twenty-five, feil from aloft and drowned near Cape Horn. 1854 boatsteerer Nathaniel Cole, twenty-four, and two How tofind a whaling ship of his crew, Edward Laffray, twenty-five, and Frank Kanacka, There is no better whaling port than New Bedford, Massachusetts. nineteen, lost their lives by the upsetting of their whaleboat in the Here I found myself stranded between ships, pockets empty. A Okhotsk Sea. And that's just a few. tall fellow stopped me in the street. Before I knew it, I had signed Whales? We measure them by the barrel. And where might all a paper. Next thing, I was frogmarched to my lodgings to collect these barrels be? In pieces in the hold, most of them, the staves my traps, my debts paid and rowed out to a ship. When I saw the bundled together. The cooper makes them up as the whales are slab sides and the boxy shape of the bow I realised I had shipped taken. When they talk of an eighty-barrel whale what they mean on a whaler, and it was too late to try swimming ashore. That was is 80 x 30.5gal making 244ogal of oil. You'll have signed up for a years ago. 1 lay, a share, maybe 1/i8oth? t You might have some dollars in your pocket when it's over. Then again, you might not. Now it is no business of mine whether you be down on your luck, or maybe some woman is looking for you, or there is someone t 1/i8oth lay meant one barrel out of every one hundred and eighty taken; one barrel was 30.5gal of whale oil. A greenhorn could earn about t Journal of a Voyageto Paci.fieOcean in Ship 'Chas W Morgan', 1841, $160 for a three- or four-year voyage, minus what debts had been paid or Martha 's Vineyard Museum. 'slops' or goods he had been advanced during the voyage. 38 40 THE MARINE QUARTERLY HOW TO GO A-WHALING 41 As a green hand your new home is the foc'sle which you share with will soon find every man has more than enough to do. Meantimes fifteen to twenty seasick Americans: black and white, Portuguese you won't be idle. There's the work of the ship, and irons to be 11111 from Cape Verde or the Western Isles/ British, German, Yankee, ground and sharpened. Once you are in the sperm whale grounds Native Americans and Pacific islanders. You feel your way through you will spend several daylight hours in all weathers in the crow's the scuttle and down the companionway, along the dark passage. nest at the masthead, standing inside a pair of padded hoops like The foc'sle is lit by a smoking teapot lamp fixed to the bulkhead. a pair of giant spectacles a little higher than your waist, your feet Here you will have your being, using your narrow rough-cut bunk on a platform about a foot wide on each side of the mast, watching in a tier of three, turn and turn about with another foremast hand for a spout, a fluke, a breach. Here, a hundred foot above the deck, from the starboard watch. The donkey's breakfast mattress a home you can take your ease. for bugs of all kinds. Your private space is your sea chest, with a change of clothes (maybe), tobacco, pipe, needles, letters and a How to ready whaleboats book or two if you can read them. The captain rules supreme from Oct 16th Got under weigh at 10am beating out until 3Pm when his stern cabin, where you never will go. The four mates, the boat Pilot left kept off steering s wind being strong from the sw ship steerers, the carpenter, cooper and cook share cabins in steerage under double reef top sails separated from the foc'sle by the blubber room. Oct 17th Begin with strong wind from sw ship steering SE by E. The steering gear is called the shincracker or ankle buster. The under double reef top sails all hands employed in fitting out the wheel is set on a square post rising from the tiller, which it moves boats, coiled new lines all around ... three men at the mast heads to and fro with tackles, so when you steer, both the wheel and the all day. Log of the 'Charles W Morgan', North Atlantic, 1877 tiller move. The helmsman straddles the tiller as it swings through its sh.ort arc. It will take you some practice to steer a straight The ship carries seven whaleboats. Five need rigging and setting course, and the old man will be below the skylight watching the up in the davits, two starboard, three larboard. They have a compass to see how you go. centreboard or sliding keel. They carry five long oars of between You will see a curious brick structure at the waist, right in the 9ft and 16ft, one great 19ft steering oar, a mast, two sails and a centre of the weather deck. It is the tryworks, a firebox underneath rudder hung by the stern. The whale line, a quarter of a mile of two huge iron kettles that hold about 150-20ogal each. Funny finest manila 1.5" round, is carefully coiled down into tubs. The thing, but when the ship finally heads for home, the tryworks is boatsteerers or harpooners grind the edges of the irons to razor broken up and the bricks thrown overboard. This is when you sharpness. The harpoon is a clever thing.t The toggle means know you are done whaling for that voyage. the harpoons don't pull out. These irons ain't no use for killing, though. They are only the means by which the boat is attached to Before you know it, the ship is in mid-Atlantic. Going a-whaling a fish. means you don't get off watch except to sleep. You might wonder at the heavy crew on a whaleship, twenty-four men before the mast t Invented by blacksmith Lewis Temple in 1848, this is an arrow-shaped out of a crew of thirty-seven. When you lower after a whale you harpoon with one huge curved barb turned on a strong pivot of steel, and kept in line with the shaft by a tiny wooden peg passing through the barb and shaft, which breaks when a line is jerked once it is fast in the whale. t TheAzores The shaft is about 30" long, forged from the best malleable iron. 42 THE MARINE QUARTERLY HOW TO GO A-WHALING 43 You put three irons in each boat, one above the other in the The call comes from on high. 'Bl-0-0-0-0-ws! She bl-0-0-0-ows!' starboard bow, opposite three lances for killing. Lances are like 'Where away?' slim iron spears about 4ft long, steel points oval or heart-shaped, 'Two points on the lee bow.' about 2" across, edges as keen as a surgeon's lancet. The socket at 'How far?' the other end attaches to a 4ft-long lance pole, and there is a light 'Four miles, heading to leeward. Sperm whales!' warp attached, used to pull the lance back after it's been darted at 'Lower away all boats.' a whale. The boat, though. Because a crew can be out in a whale­ When the call comes, you move to the ship's rail abreast your boat for hours, you stow a keg of drinking water, a few biscuits, boat. Now comes the 'merry rattle of the block/ as the boats are a lantern, candles and matches, a bucket and piggin for bailing lowered from the davits, officer and boatsteerer aboard ready to when you are swamped, a flag or wheft to mark a dead whale, a unhook the minute their boat touches water.