A YEAR WITH A WHALER

A YEAR WITH A
WHALER

BY

WALTER NOBLE BURNS

Illustrated with Photographs

NEW YORK
OUTING PUBLISHING COMPANY
MCMXIII

Copyright, 1913, BY
OUTING PUBLISHING COMPANY
All rights reserved

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

A YEAR WITH A WHALER

A Year With A Whaler

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 restaurant when, in glancing over the morning paper, I chanced across this advertisement:

Until that moment I had never dreamed of going to sea, but that small "ad." laid its spell upon my imagination. It was big with the lure of strange lands and climes, romance and fresh experiences. What did it matter that I had passed all my humdrum days on dry land? "No experience necessary!" There were the magic words staring me in the face. I gulped down my eggs and coffee and was off for the street called Washington.

Levy's was a ship's outfitting store. A "runner" for the house—a hulking man with crafty eyes and a face almost as red as his hair and mustache—met me as I stepped in the door. He looked me over critically. His visual inventory must have been satisfactory. I was young.

"Ever been a sailor?" he asked.

"No."

"Makes no difference. Can you pull an oar?"

"Yes."

"You'll do. Hang around the store to-day and I'll see what vessels are shipping crews."

That was all. I was a potential whaler from that minute.

A young working man in overalls and flannel shirt came in later in the day and applied to go on the voyage. He qualified as a green hand. But no spirit of adventure had brought him to Levy's. A whaling voyage appealed to his canny mind as a business proposition.

"What can we make?" he asked the runner.

"If your ship is lucky," replied the runner, "you ought to clean up a pile of money. You'll ship on the 190th lay. Know what a lay is? It's your per cent. of the profits of the voyage. Say your ship catches four whales. She ought to catch a dozen if she has good luck. But say she catches four. Her cargo in oil and bone will be worth about $50,000. Your share will amount to something like $200, and you'll get it in a lump sum when you get back."

This was "bunk talk"—a "springe to catch woodcock"—but we did not know it. That fluent and plausible man took pencil and paper and showed us just how it would all work out. It was reserved for us poor greenhorns to learn later on that sailors of whaling ships usually are paid off at the end of a voyage with "one big iron dollar." This fact being discreetly withheld from us, our illusions were not disturbed.

The fact is the "lay" means nothing to sailors on a whaler. It is merely a lure for the unsophisticated. It might as well be the 1000th lay as the 190th, for all the poor devil of a sailor gets. The explanation is simple. The men start the voyage with an insufficient supply of clothing. By the time the vessel strikes cold weather their clothes are worn out and it is a case of buy clothes from the ship's slop-chest at the captain's own prices or freeze. As a consequence, the men come back to port with expense accounts standing against them which wipe out all possible profits. This has become so definitely a part of whaling custom that no sailor ever thinks of fighting against it, and it probably would do him no good if he did. As a forecastle hand's pay the "big iron dollar" is a whaling tradition and as fixed and inevitable as fate.

The outfitter who owned the store did not conduct a sailor's boarding house, so we were put up at a cheap hotel on Pacific street. After supper, my new friend took me for a visit to the home of his uncle in the Tar Flats region. A rough, kindly old laboring man was this uncle who sat in his snug parlor in his shirt sleeves during our stay, sent one of the children to the corner for a growler of beer, and told us bluntly we were idiots to think of shipping on a whaling voyage. We laughed at his warning—we were going and that's all there was to it. The old fellow's pretty daughters played the piano and sang for us, and my last evening on shore passed pleasantly enough. When it came time to say good-bye, the uncle prevailed on my friend to stay all night on the plea that he had some urgent matters to talk over, and I went back alone to my dingy hotel on the Barbary Coast.

I was awakened suddenly out of a sound sleep in the middle of the night. My friend stood beside my bed with a lighted candle in his hand.

"Get up and come with me," he said. "Don't go whaling. My uncle has told me all about it. He knows. You'll be treated like a dog aboard, fed on rotten grub, and if you don't die under the hard knocks or freeze to death in the Arctic Ocean, you won't get a penny when you get back. Don't be a fool. Take my advice and give that runner the slip. If you go, you'll regret it to the last day of your life."

In the yellow glare of the candle, the young man seemed not unlike an apparition and he delivered his message of warning with prophetic solemnity and impressiveness. But my mind was made up.

"I guess I'll go," I said.

He argued and pleaded with me, all to no purpose. He set the candle on the table and blew it out.

"You won't come?" he said out of the darkness.

"No."

"You're a fool."

He slammed the door. I never saw him again. But many a time on the long voyage I recalled his wise counsel, prompted as it was by pure friendliness, and wished from my heart I had taken his advice.

Next day the runner for Levy's tried to ship me aboard the steam whaler William Lewis. When we arrived at the shipping office on the water front, it was crowded with sailors and rough fellows, many of them half drunk, and all eager for a chance to land a berth. A bronzed and bearded man stood beside a desk and surveyed them. He was the skipper of the steamer. The men were pushing and elbowing in an effort to get to the front and catch his eye.

"I've been north before, captain," "I'm an able seaman, sir," "I know the ropes," "Give me a chance, captain," "Take me, sir; I'll make a good hand,"—so they clamored their virtues noisily. The captain chose this man and that. In twenty minutes his crew was signed. It was not a question of getting enough men; it was a mere matter of selection. In such a crowd of sailormen, I stood no show. In looking back on it all, I wonder how such shipping office scenes are possible, how men of ordinary intelligence are herded aboard whale ships like sheep, how they even fight for a chance to go.

It was just as well I failed to ship aboard the William Lewis. The vessel went to pieces in the ice on the north Alaskan coast the following spring. Four men lost their lives and only after a bitter experience as castaways on the floes were the others rescued.

That afternoon Captain Shorey of the brig Alexander visited Levy's. I was called to his attention as a likely young hand and he shipped me as a member of his crew. I signed articles for a year's voyage. It was provided that I was to receive a $50 advance with which to outfit myself for the voyage; of course, any money left over after all necessary articles had been purchased was to be mine—at least, in my innocence, I imagined it was.

The brig was lying in the stream off Goat Island and the runner set about the work of outfitting me at once. He and I and a clerk went about the store from shelf to shelf, selecting articles. The runner carried a pad of paper on which he marked down the cost. I was given a sailor's canvas bag, a mattress, a pair of blankets, woolen trousers, dungaree trousers, a coat, a pair of brogans, a pair of rubber sea boots, underwear, socks, two flannel shirts, a cap, a belt and sheath knife, a suit of oil-skins and sou'wester, a tin cup, tin pan, knife, fork and spoon. That was all. It struck me as a rather slender equipment for a year's voyage. The runner footed up the cost.

"Why," he said with an air of great surprise, "this foots up to $53 and your advance is only $50."

He added up the column of figures again. But he had made no mistake. He seemed perplexed.

"I don't see how it is possible to scratch off anything," he said. "You'll need every one of these articles."

He puckered his brow, bit the end of his pencil, and studied the figures. It was evidently a puzzling problem.

"Well," he said at last, "I'll tell you what I'll do. Bring me down a few curios from the Arctic and I'll call it square."

I suppose my outfit was really worth about $6—not over $10. As soon as my bag had been packed, I was escorted to the wharf by the runner and rowed out to the brig. As I prepared to climb over the ship's rail, the runner shook me by the hand and clapped me on the back with a great show of cordial goodfellowship.

"Don't forget my curios," he said.

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 fore-and-aft sails on her main. She was of only 128 tons but quite lofty, her royal yard being eighty feet above the deck. On her fore-mast she carried a fore-sail, a single topsail, a fore-top-gallant sail, and a royal; on her main-mast, a big mainsail with a gaff-topsail above it. Three whale boats—starboard, larboard, and waist boats—hung at her davits. Amidships stood the brick try-works equipped with furnaces and cauldrons for rendering blubber into oil.

As soon as I arrived on board I was taken in charge by the ship keeper and conducted to the forecastle. It was a dark, malodorous, triangular hole below the deck in the bows. At the foot of the ladder-like stairs, leading down through the scuttle, I stepped on something soft and yielding. Was it possible, I wondered in an instant's flash of surprise, that the forecastle was laid with a velvet carpet? No, it was not. It was only a Kanaka sailor lying on the floor dead drunk. The bunks were ranged round the walls in a double tier. I selected one for myself, arranged my mattress and blankets, and threw my bag inside. I was glad to get back to fresh air on deck as quickly as possible.

Members of the crew kept coming aboard in charge of runners and boarding bosses. They were a hard looking lot; several were staggering drunk, and most of them were tipsy. All had bottles and demijohns of whiskey. Everybody was full of bad liquor and high spirits that first night on the brig. A company of jolly sea rovers were we, and we joked and laughed and roared out songs like so many pirates about to cruise for treasure galleons on the Spanish Main. Somehow next morning the rose color had faded out of the prospect and there were many aching heads aboard.

On the morning of the second day, the officers came out to the vessel. A tug puffed alongside and made fast to us with a cable. The anchor was heaved up and, with the tug towing us, we headed for the Golden Gate. Outside the harbor heads, the tug cast loose and put back into the bay in a cloud of smoke. The brig was left swinging on the long swells of the Pacific.

The captain stopped pacing up and down the quarter-deck and said something to the mate. His words seemed like a match to powder. Immediately the mate began roaring out orders. Boat-steerers bounded forward, shouting out the orders in turn. The old sailors sang them out in repetition. Men sprang aloft. Loosened sails were soon rolling down and fluttering from every spar. The sailors began pulling on halyards and yo-hoing on sheets. Throughout the work of setting sail, the green hands were "at sea" in a double sense. The bustle and apparent confusion of the scene seemed to savor of bedlam broke loose. The orders were Greek to them. They stood about, bewildered and helpless. Whenever they tried to help the sailors they invariably snarled things up and were roundly abused for their pains. One might fancy they could at least have helped pull on a rope. They couldn't even do that. Pulling on a rope, sailor-fashion, is in itself an art.

Finally all the sails were sheeted home. Ropes were coiled up and hung neatly on belaying pins. A fresh breeze set all the snowy canvas drawing and the brig, all snug and shipshape, went careering southward.

At the outset of the voyage, the crew consisted of twenty-four men. Fourteen men were in the forecastle. The after-crew comprised the captain, mate, second mate, third mate, two boat-steerers, steward, cooper, cook, and cabin boy. Captain Shorey was not aboard. He was to join the vessel at Honolulu. Mr. Winchester, the mate, took the brig to the Hawaiian Islands as captain. This necessitated a graduated rise in authority all along the line. Mr. Landers, who had shipped as second mate, became mate; Gabriel, the regular third mate, became second mate; and Mendez, a boatsteerer, was advanced to the position of third mate.

Captain Winchester was a tall, spare, vigorous man with a nose like Julius Caesar's and a cavernous bass voice that boomed like a sunset gun. He was a man of some education, which is a rarity among officers of whale ships, and was a typical New England Yankee. He had run away to sea as a boy and had been engaged in the whaling trade for twenty years. For thirteen years, he had been sailing to the Arctic Ocean as master and mate of vessels, and was ingrained with the autocratic traditions of the quarter-deck. Though every inch a sea dog of the hard, old-fashioned school, he had his kindly human side, as I learned later. He was by far the best whaleman aboard the brig; as skillful and daring as any that ever laid a boat on a whale's back; a fine, bold, hardy type of seaman and an honor to the best traditions of the sea. He lost his life—poor fellow—in a whaling adventure in the Arctic Ocean on his next voyage.

Mr. Landers, the mate, was verging on sixty; his beard was grizzled, but there wasn't a streak of gray in his coal-black hair. He was stout and heavy-limbed and must have been remarkably strong in his youth. He was a Cape Codder and talked with a quaint, nasal, Yankee drawl. He had been to sea all his life and was a whaleman of thirty years' experience. In all these years, he had been ashore very little—only a few weeks between his year-long voyages, during which time, it was said, he kept up his preference for liquids, exchanging blue water for red liquor. He was a picturesque old fellow, and was so accustomed to the swinging deck of a ship under him that standing or sitting, in perfectly still weather or with the vessel lying motionless at anchor, he swayed his body from side to side heavily as if in answer to the rise and fall of waves. He was a silent, easy-going man, with a fund of dry humor and hard common sense. He never did any more work than he had to, and before the voyage ended, he was suspected by the officers of being a malingerer. All the sailors liked him.

Gabriel, the second mate, was a negro from the Cape Verde islands. His native language was Portuguese and he talked funny, broken English. He was about forty-five years old, and though he was almost as dark-skinned as any Ethiopian, he had hair and a full beard as finely spun and free from kinkiness as a Caucasian's. The sailors used to say that Gabriel was a white man born black by accident. He was a kindly, cheerful soul with shrewd native wit. He was a whaleman of life-long experience.

Mendez, the third mate, and Long John, one of the boatsteerers, were also Cape Verde islanders. Long John was a giant, standing six feet, four inches; an ungainly, powerful fellow, with a black face as big as a ham and not much more expressive. He had the reputation of being one of the most expert harpooners of the Arctic Ocean whaling fleet.

Little Johnny, the other boatsteerer, was a mulatto from the Barbadoes, English islands of the West Indies. He was a strapping, intelligent young man, brimming over with vitality and high spirits and with all a plantation darky's love of fun. His eyes were bright and his cheeks ruddy with perfect health; he loved dress and gay colors and was quite the dandy of the crew.

Five of the men of the forecastle were deep-water sailors. Of these one was an American, one a German, one a Norwegian, and two Swedes. They followed the sea for a living and had been bunkoed by their boarding bosses into believing they would make large sums of money whaling. They had been taken in by a confidence game as artfully as the man who loses his money at the immemorial trick of three shells and a pea. When they learned they would get only a dollar at the end of the voyage and contemplated the loss of an entire working year, they were full of resentment and righteous, though futile, anger.

Taylor, the American, became the acknowledged leader of the forecastle. He quickly established himself in this position, not only by his skill and long experience as a seaman, but by his aggressiveness, his domineering character, and his physical ability to deal with men and situations. He was a bold, iron-fisted fellow to whom the green hands looked for instruction and advice, whom several secretly feared, and for whom all had a wholesome respect.

Nels Nelson, a red-haired, red-bearded old Swede, was the best sailor aboard. He had had a thousand adventures on all the seas of all the world. He had been around Cape Horn seven times—a sailor is not rated as a really-truly sailor until he has made a passage around that stormy promontory—and he had rounded the Cape of Good Hope so many times he had lost the count. He had ridden out a typhoon on the coast of Japan and had been driven ashore by a hurricane in the West Indies. He had sailed on an expedition to Cocos Island, that realm of mystery and romance, to try to lift pirate treasure in doubloons, plate, and pieces-of-eight, supposed to have been buried there by "Bugs" Thompson and Benito Bonito, those one-time terrors of the Spanish Main. He had been cast away in the South Seas in an open boat with three companions, and had eaten the flesh of the man whose fate had been sealed by the casting of lots. He was some man, was Nelson. I sometimes vaguely suspected he was some liar, too, but I don't know. I think most of his stories were true.

He could do deftly everything intricate and subtle in sailorcraft from tying the most wonderful knots to splicing wire. None of the officers could teach old Nelson anything about fancy sailorizing and they knew it. Whenever they wanted an unusual or particularly difficult piece of work done they called on him, and he always did it in the best seamanly fashion.

Richard, the German, was a sturdy, manly young chap who had served in the German navy. He was well educated and a smart seaman. Ole Oleson, the Norwegian, was just out of his teens but a fine sailor. Peter Swenson, a Swede, was a chubby, rosy boy of sixteen, an ignorant, reckless, devil-may-care lad, who was looked upon as the baby of the forecastle and humored and spoiled accordingly.

Among the six white green hands, there was a "mule skinner" from western railway construction camps; a cowboy who believed himself fitted for the sea after years of experience on the "hurricane deck" of a bucking broncho; a country boy straight from the plow and with "farmer" stamped all over him in letters of light; a man suspected of having had trouble with the police; another who, in lazy night watches, spun frank yarns of burglaries; and "Slim," an Irishman who said he had served with the Royal Life Guards in the English army. There was one old whaler. He was a shiftless, loquacious product of city slums. This was his seventh whaling voyage—which would seem sufficient comment on his character.

"It beats hoboing," he said. And as his life's ambition seemed centered on three meals a day and a bunk to sleep in, perhaps it did.

Two Kanakas completed the forecastle crew. These and the cabin boy, who was also a Kanaka, talked fair English, but among themselves they always spoke their native language. I had heard much of the liquid beauty of the Kanaka tongue. It was a surprise to find it the most unmusical and harshly guttural language I ever heard. It comes from the mouth in a series of explosive grunts and gibberings. The listener is distinctly and painfully impressed with the idea that if the nitroglycerine words were retained in the system, they would prove dangerous to health and is fearful lest they choke the spluttering Kanaka to death before he succeeds in biting them off and flinging them into the atmosphere.

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 twenty-four. My watch was sent below. No one slept during this first watch below, but we made up for lost time during our second turn. Soon we became accustomed to the routine and found it as restful as the usual landsman's method of eight hours' sleep and sixteen of wakefulness.

It is difficult for a landlubber to understand how sailors on shipboard can be kept constantly busy. The brig was a veritable hive of industry. The watch on deck when morning broke pumped ship and swept and flushed down the decks. During the day watches, in addition to working the ship, we were continuously breaking out supplies, keeping the water barrel on deck filled from casks in the hold, laboring with the cargo, scrubbing paint work, polishing brass work, slushing masts and spars, repairing rigging, and attending to a hundred and one details that must be looked after every day. The captain of a ship is one of the most scrupulous housekeepers in the world, and only by keeping his crew busy from morning till night is he able to keep his ship spick and span and in proper repair. Whale ships are supposed to be dirty. On the contrary, they are kept as clean as water and brooms and hard work can keep them.

The food served aboard the brig was nothing to brag about. Breakfast consisted of corned-beef hash, hardtack, and coffee without milk or sugar. We sweetened our coffee with molasses, a keg of which was kept in the forecastle. For dinner, we had soup, corned-beef stew, called "skouse," a loaf of soft bread, and coffee. For supper, we had slices of corned-beef which the sailors called "salt horse," hardtack, and tea. The principal variation in this diet was in the soups.

The days were a round of barley soup, bean soup, pea soup, and back to barley soup again, an alternation that led the men to speak of the days of the week not as Monday, Tuesday, and so on, but as "barley soup day," "bean soup day," and "pea soup day." Once or twice a week we had gingerbread for supper. On the other hand the cabin fared sumptuously on canned vegetables, meat, salmon, soft bread, tea, and coffee with sugar and condensed milk, fresh fish and meat whenever procurable, and a dessert every day at dinner, including plum duff, a famous sea delicacy which never in all the voyage found its way forward.

From the first day, the green hands were set learning the ropes, to stand lookout, to take their trick at the wheel, to reef and furl and work among the sails. These things are the A B C of seamanship, but they are not to be learned in a day or a week. A ship is a complicated mechanism, and it takes a long time for a novice to acquire even the rudiments of sea education. Going aloft was a terrifying ordeal at first to several of the green hands, though it never bothered me. When the cowboy was first ordered to furl the fore-royal, he hung back and said, "I can't" and "I'll fall," and whimpered and begged to be let off. But he was forced to try. He climbed the ratlines slowly and painfully to the royal yard, and he finally furled the sail, though it took him a long time to do it. He felt so elated that after that he wanted to furl the royal every time it had to be done;—didn't want to give anyone else a chance.

Furling the royal was a one-man job. The foot-rope was only a few feet below the yard, and if a man stood straight on it, the yard would strike him a little above the knees. If the ship were pitching, a fellow had to look sharp or he would be thrown off;—if that had happened it was a nice, straight fall of eighty feet to the deck. My own first experience on the royal yard gave me an exciting fifteen minutes. The ship seemed to be fighting me and devoting an unpleasant amount of time and effort to it; bucking and tossing as if with a sentient determination to shake me off into the atmosphere. I escaped becoming a grease spot on the deck of the brig only by hugging the yard as if it were a sweetheart and hanging on for dear life. I became in time quite an expert at furling the sail.

Standing lookout was the one thing aboard a green hand could do as well as an old sailor. The lookout was posted on the forecastle-head in fair weather and on the try-works in a storm. He stood two hours at a stretch. He had to scan the sea ahead closely and if a sail or anything unusual appeared, he reported to the officer of the watch.

Learning to steer by the compass was comparatively easy. With the ship heading on a course, it was not difficult by manipulating the wheel to keep the needle of the compass on a given point. But to steer by the wind was hard to learn and is sometimes a nice matter even for skillful seamen. When a ship is close-hauled and sailing, as sailors say, right in the wind's eye, the wind is blowing into the braced sails at the weather edge of the canvas;—if the vessel were brought any higher up, the wind would pour around on the back of the sails. The helmsman's aim is to keep the luff of the royal sail or of the sails that happen to be set, wrinkling and loose—luffing, sailors call it. That shows that the wind is slanting into the sails at just the right angle and perhaps a little bit is spilling over. I gradually learned to do this in the daytime. But at night when it was almost impossible for me to see the luff of the sails clearly, it was extremely difficult and I got into trouble more than once by my clumsiness. The trick at the wheel was of two hours' duration.

The second day out from San Francisco was Christmas. I had often read that Christmas was a season of good cheer and happiness among sailors at sea, that it was commemorated with religious service, and that the skipper sent forward grog and plum duff to gladden the hearts of the sailormen. But Santa Claus forgot the sailors on the brig. Bean soup only distinguished Christmas from the day that had gone before and the day that came after. No liquor or tempting dishes came to the forecastle. It was the usual day of hard work from dawn to dark.

After two weeks of variable weather during which we were often becalmed, we put into Turtle bay, midway down the coast of Lower California, and dropped anchor.

Turtle bay is a beautiful little land-locked harbor on an uninhabited coast. There was no village or any human habitation on its shores. A desolate, treeless country, seamed by gullies and scantily covered with sun-dried grass, rolled away to a chain of high mountains which forms the backbone of the peninsula of Lower California. These mountains were perhaps thirty miles from the coast; they were gray and apparently barren of trees or any sort of herbage, and looked to be ridges of naked granite. The desert character of the landscape was a surprise, as we were almost within the tropics.

We spent three weeks of hard work in Turtle bay. Sea watches were abolished and all hands were called on deck at dawn and kept busy until sundown. The experienced sailors were employed as sail makers; squatting all day on the quarter-deck, sewing on canvas with a palm and needle. Old sails were sent down from the spars and patched and repaired. If they were too far gone, new sails were bent in their stead. The green hands had the hard work. They broke out the hold and restowed every piece of cargo, arranging it so that the vessel rode on a perfectly even keel. Yards and masts were slushed, the rigging was tarred, and the ship was painted inside and out.

The waters of the harbor were alive with Spanish mackerel, albacore, rock bass, bonitos, and other kinds of fish. The mackerel appeared in great schools that rippled the water as if a strong breeze were blowing. These fish attracted great numbers of gray pelicans, which had the most wonderful mode of flight I have ever seen in any bird. For hours at a time, with perfectly motionless pinions, they skimmed the surface of the bay like living aeroplanes; one wondered wherein lay their motor power and how they managed to keep going. When they spied a school of mackerel, they rose straight into the air with a great flapping of wings, then turned their heads downward, folded their wings close to their bodies, and dropped like a stone. Their great beaks cut the water, they went under with a terrific splash, and immediately emerged with a fish in the net-like membrane beneath their lower mandible.