A Year With A Whaler - free ebook by Walter Noble Burns

WALTER NOBLE BURNS

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CHAPTER I

THE LURE OF THE OUTFITTER When the brig Alexander sailed out of San Francisco on a whaling voyage a few years ago, I was a member of her forecastle crew. Once outside the Golden Gate, I felt the swing of blue water under me for the first time in my life. I was not shanghaied. Let's have that settled at the start. I had shipped as a green hand before the mast for the adventure of the thing, because I wanted to go, for the glamor of the sea was upon me. I was taking breakfast in a San Francisco re

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CHAPTER II

THE MEN OF THE "ALEXANDER" The brig Alexander was a staunch, sea-worthy little vessel. She had no fine lines; there was nothing about her to please a yachtsman's eye; but she was far from being a tub as whaling ships are often pictured. She was built at New Bedford especially for Arctic whaling. Her hull was of sturdy oak, reinforced at the bows to enable her to buck her way through ice. Though she was called a brig, she was really a brigantine, rigged with square sails on her fore-mast and with

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CHAPTER III

WHY WE DON'T DESERT As soon as we were under sail, the crew was called aft and the watches selected. Gabriel was to head the starboard watch and Mendez the port. The men were ranged in line and the heads of the watches made their selections, turn and turn about. The deep-water sailors were the first to be chosen. The green hands were picked for their appearance of strength and activity. I fell into the port watch. Sea watches were now set—four hours for sleep and four for work throughout the twe

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CHAPTER IV

TURTLES AND PORPOISES We slipped out of Turtle bay one moonlight night and stood southward. We were now in sperm whale waters and the crews of the whale boats were selected. Captain Winchester was to head the starboard boat; Mr. Landers the larboard boat; and Gabriel the waist boat. Long John was to act as boatsteerer for Mr. Winchester, Little Johnny for Mr. Landers, and Mendez for Gabriel. The whale boats were about twenty-five feet long, rigged with leg-of-mutton sails and jibs. The crew of e

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CHAPTER V

THE A, B, C OF WHALES One damp morning, with frequent showers falling here and there over the sea and not a drop wetting the brig, Captain Winchester suddenly stopped pacing up and down the weather side of the quarter-deck, threw his head up into the wind, and sniffed the air. "There's sperm whale about as sure as I live," he said to Mr. Landers. "I smell 'em." Mr. Landers inhaled the breeze through his nose in jerky little sniffs. "No doubt about it," he replied. "You could cut the smell with a

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CHAPTER VI

THE NIGHT KING The crew called Tomas Mendez, the acting third mate, the "Night King." I have forgotten what forecastle poet fastened the name upon him, but it fitted like a glove. In the day watches when the captain and mate were on deck, he was only a quite, unobtrusive little negro, insignificant in size and with a bad case of rheumatism. But at night when the other officers were snoring in their bunks below and the destinies of the brig were in his hands, he became an autocrat who ruled with

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CHAPTER VII

DREAMS OF LIBERTY At midnight after the burial, we raised the volcanic fire of Mauna Loa dead ahead. Sailors declare that a gale always follows a death at sea and the wind that night blew hard. But we cracked on sail and next morning we were gliding in smooth water along the shore of the island of Hawaii with the great burning mountain towering directly over us and the smoke from the crater swirling down through our rigging. We loafed away three pleasant weeks among the islands, loitering along

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CHAPTER VIII

GABRIEL'S LITTLE DRAMA On a bright, sunshiny morning a few days later, with a light breeze just ruffling the harbor, the brig with her sails laid back and her head pointed seaward was drifting with the ebb tide perhaps a mile and a quarter off shore between Honolulu and Diamond Head. Captain Winchester had set out for the city in a whale boat. Those of the sailors left aboard were idling forward. Mr. Landers, the mate, sat by the skylight on the poop, reading a magazine. Second Mate Gabriel and

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CHAPTER IX

THROUGH THE ROARING FORTIES Before leaving the islands, we shipped a Portuguese negro boat-steerer to take the place of the Night King. He was coal black, had a wild roll to his eyes, an explosive, spluttering way of talking, looked strikingly like a great ape, and had little more than simian intelligence. His feet had the reputation of being the largest feet in the Hawaiian Islands. When I had seen them I was prepared to believe they were the largest in the world. He was dubbed "Big Foot" Louis

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CHAPTER X

IN THE ICE From Unalaska, into which port we put to have the captain's leg attended to, the brig stood northwesterly for the spring whaling on the bowhead and right whale grounds off the Siberian coast. We were a week's sail from the Fox Islands when we encountered our first ice. It appeared in small chunks floating down from the north. The blocks became more numerous until they dappled the sea. They grew in size. Strings and floes appeared. Then we brought up against a great ice field stretchin

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CHAPTER XI

CROSS COUNTRY WHALING We had hardly washed clear of the ice in the heavy seas when "Blow!" rang from the crow's nest. A school of whales close ahead, covering the sea with fountains, was coming leisurely toward the ship. There were more than thirty of them. "Bowheads!" shouted the mate. Their great black heads rose above the surface like ponderous pieces of machinery; tall fountains shot into the air; the wind caught the tops of the fountains and whisked them off in smoke; hollow, sepulchral whi

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CHAPTER XII

CUTTING IN AND TRYING OUT Two boats were sent to secure the whale. I lowered with one. As we came up to the whale, I marveled at its immense bulk. It looked even larger than when it had breached and I had seen it shoot up, a giant column of flesh and blood, against the heavens. It had turned belly up as dead whales do, its ridged white abdomen projecting above the waves. It seemed much like a mighty white and black rock, against which the waves lapped lazily. Seventy-five feet long the officers

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CHAPTER XIII

SHAKING HANDS WITH SIBERIA The ship's prow was turned northward after work on the whale had been finished. I expected we would soon run into the ice again. We sailed on and on, but not a block of ice big enough to make a highball did we sight. The white floes and drifts and the frozen continent floating southward, along the coasts of which we had cruised for whales and which had surrounded us and held us captive for three weeks, had disappeared entirely. The warm water from the south, the southe

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CHAPTER XIV

MOONSHINE AND HYGIENE We noticed that several of our Eskimo guests appeared at times to be slightly under the influence of liquor and thought perhaps they had obtained gin or rum from some whaling vessel that had touched at the port before we arrived. We asked the intellectual Eskimo where these fellows had got their booze. He pointed to an Eskimo and said, "Him." "Him" was a lordly person dressed in elaborately trimmed and ornamented skin clothes. From the way he strutted about, we had fancied

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CHAPTER XV

NEWS FROM HOME With the first breeze, we set sail for Port Clarence, Alaska, the northern rendezvous of the Arctic Ocean whaling fleet in early summer. There in the latter part of June or the early part of July, the fleet always met the four-masted schooner Jennie , the tender from San Francisco, by which all firms in the whaling trade sent mail and supplies to their vessels. On our way across from Siberia to Alaska, we passed just south of Behring Straits and had our first distant glimpse of th

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CHAPTER XVI

SLIM GOES ON STRIKE It was the heart of the Arctic summer and the high hills that rose all about the town were green with deep grass—it looked as if it would reach a man's waist—and ablaze with wild flowers. I was surprised to see such a riot of blooms in this far northern latitude, but there they were, and every off-shore breeze was sweet with their fragrance. The village was dingy enough, but the country looked alluring and, as the day after we dropped anchor was Sunday and nothing to do aboar

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CHAPTER XVII

INTO THE ARCTIC From Unalaska, we headed north for the Arctic Ocean. For one day of calm, we lay again off the little Eskimo village of St. Lawrence Bay and again had the natives as our guests. Peter made an elaborate toilet in expectation of seeing once more his little Eskimo sweetheart, but she did not come aboard. A little breeze came walking over the sea and pushed us on northward. On August 15, we sailed through Behring Straits and were at last in the Arctic. The straits are thirty-six mile

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CHAPTER XVIII

BLUBBER AND SONG We were cruising in open water soon afterward with two whaling ships in sight, the Reindeer and the Helen Marr , both barkentines and carrying five boats each, when we raised a school of bowheads straight ahead and about five miles distant. There were twenty-five or thirty whales and a broad patch of sea was covered with their incessant fountains. The other ships saw them about the same time. The long-drawn, musical "Blo-o-o-w!" from their mastheads came to us across the water.

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CHAPTER XIX

A NARROW PINCH The whaling fleet divided soon after entering the Arctic Ocean. Some of the ships went straight on north to the whaling grounds about Point Barrow and Herschel Island. The others bore to the westward for the whaling along the ice north of eastern Siberia. We stood to the westward. In a few days we had raised the white coasts of a continent of ice that shut in all the north as far as the eye could see and extended to the Pole and far beyond. With the winds in the autumn always blow

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CHAPTER XX

A RACE AND A RACE HORSE Early one morning the old familiar cry rang from the crow's-nest—"Blo-o-o-w." A lone whale, in plain view from the deck, was sporting lazily on the surface about a mile and a half off our starboard bow. The three boats were hurriedly lowered and the crews scrambled in. We took to the oars, for not a breath of air was stirring and the sea was as smooth as polished silver. Away went the boats together, as if from a starting line at the crack of a pistol, with the whale as t

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CHAPTER XXI

BEARS FOR A CHANGE Soon after taking our third whale, we saw our first polar bears—two of them on a narrow floe of ice. When the brig was within fifty yards of them the mate got out his rifle and began blazing away. His first shot struck one of the bears in the hind leg. The animal wheeled and snapped at the wound. The second shot stretched it out dead. The second bear was hit somewhere in the body and, plunging into the sea, it struck out on a three-mile swim for the main ice pack. It swam with

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CHAPTER XXII

THE STRANDED WHALE Our fourth and last whale gave us quite a bit of trouble. We sighted this fellow spouting in a choppy sea among ice islands two or three miles off the edges of the polar pack. All three boats lowered for it. It was traveling slowly in the same direction the brig was sailing and about two miles from the vessel. It took the boats some time to work to close quarters. When the mate's boat was almost within striking distance, the whale went under. As frightened whales usually run a

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CHAPTER XXIII

AND SO—HOME It was on October tenth that we broke out the Stars and Stripes at our main gaff and squared our yards for home. Everybody cheered as the flag went fluttering up, for everybody was glad that the end of the long, hard voyage was in sight. Behring Straits which when we were about to enter the Arctic Ocean—sea of tragedy and graveyard of so many brave men and tall ships—had looked like the portals of inferno, now when we were homeward bound seemed like the gateway to the Happy Isles. Th

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