Part 3

The illustrations used in this brochure are from rare prints in the possession of the Dartmouth Historical Society and the Free Public Library of New Bedford, H. S. Hutchinson & Co., Charles H. Taylor, Jr., Roy C. Andrews of the American Museum of Natural History of New York, Doubleday, Page & Co., and others.

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“Neither the perseverance of Holland, nor the activity of France, nor the dexterous and firm sagacity of the English enterprise, ever carried this most perilous mode of hardy industry to the extent to which it has been pushed by this recent People; a People who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone, of manhood.”—From a speech by Edmund Burke before Parliament in 1775.

THE WHALE

“Oh, the rare old Whale, ’mid storm and gale, In his ocean home will be A giant in might where might is right, And King of the boundless sea.”

From “Moby Dick.”

No animal in prehistoric or historic times has ever exceeded the whale, in either size or strength, which explains perhaps its survival from ancient times. Few people have any idea of the relative size of the whale compared with other animals. A large specimen weighs about ninety tons, or thirty times as much as an elephant, which beside a whale appears about as large as a dog compared to an elephant. It is equivalent in bulk to one hundred oxen, and outweighs a village of one thousand people. If cut into steaks and eaten, as in Japan, it would supply a meal to an army of one hundred and twenty thousand men.

Whales have often exceeded one hundred feet in length, and George Brown Goode, in his report on the United States Fisheries, mentions a finback having been killed that was one hundred and twenty feet long. A whale’s head is sometimes thirty-five feet in circumference, weighs thirty tons, and has jaws twenty feet long, which open thirty feet wide to a mouth that is as large as a room twenty feet long, fifteen feet high, nine feet wide at the bottom, and two feet wide at the top. A score of Jonahs standing upright would not have been unduly crowded in such a chamber.

The heart of a whale is the size of a hogshead. The main blood artery is a foot in diameter, and ten to fifteen gallons of blood pour out at every pulsation. The tongue of a right whale is equal in weight to ten oxen, while the eye of all whales is hardly as large as a cow’s, and is placed so far back that it has in direction but a limited range of vision. The ear is so small that it is difficult to insert a knitting needle, and the brain is only about ten inches square. The head, or “case,” contains about five hundred barrels, of ten gallons each, of the richest kind of oil, called spermaceti.

One of these giants, when first struck by a harpoon, can go as fast as a steam yacht, twenty or twenty-five miles an hour, but it soon slows down to its usual speed of about twelve miles, developing about one hundred and forty-five horse-power.

Mr. Roy C. Andrews, of the American Museum of Natural History, New York, was on a whaler ninety feet long, which struck a finback whale, and he says that for seven hours the whale towed the vessel, with engines going at full speed astern, almost as though it had been a rowboat.

The whale’s young are about twelve feet long at birth, and can swim as soon as they are born. So faithfully does the cow whale watch over her offspring when they are together that she will rarely move when attacked for fear of leaving the young whale unprotected, or of hurting it if she thrashes round to escape capture. It is believed that whales sometimes live to attain the age of eight hundred years. They sleep at the bottom of the ocean, which fact shows that they do not inhale air when asleep, like the warm-blooded animals, and to help them in breathing below the surface they have a large reservoir of blood to assist circulation. This spot is known to whalemen as the “life” of the whale. When “sounding” to a great depth it is estimated that the whale bears on its back the weight of twenty battleships. The strength and power of a whale are described as almost unbelievable.

ANCIENT HISTORY OF WHALING

Every one knows the story of Jonah; how he was thrown overboard to appease the gods, and how a “big fish” swallowed him and carried him ashore. It will always be a mooted question whether or not the big fish was a whale. If it were a whale, it is doubtful whether Jonah got any further than its mouth, on account of the smallness of a whale’s throat. It may be well to explain that a whale does not belong to the fish family, but is a mammal, and therefore, perhaps, this great fish mentioned wasn’t a whale.

This “fishing on a gigantic scale,” as it has been often termed, is of very ancient origin and dates back to 890 A.D., when a Norwegian, called Octhere, skirted the coast of Norway for whales.

The Biscayans, who in the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries became famous on account of their whale fishery, were the first people to prosecute this industry as a regular commercial pursuit. In this connection the French are also mentioned about 1261, using the whale for food. Also the Icelanders are believed to have whaled some time during the twelfth century. The first reference to English whaling appears during the fourteenth century, and by statutory law the whale was declared “a royal fish.” Another curious law was that the King, as Honorary Harpooner, received the head, and the Queen the tail of all whales captured along the English coast, which is very much like halving an apple, there is so little left.

The Norwegians were the earliest whalers of which we have any records.]

In 1612 the Dutch became the leaders and were still very active about 1680, employing two hundred and sixty ships and fourteen thousand seamen, and during the last part of the seventeenth century they furnished nearly all Europe with oil. To them is attributed the improvements in the harpoon, the line, and the lance, and to their early prominence in the industry we owe the very name “whale,” a derivation from the Dutch and German word “wallen,” meaning to roll or wallow. They established a whaling settlement at Spitzbergen, only eleven degrees from the North Pole, where they boiled the oil; in fact, during the early days of whaling all nations “tried out” their oil on land. The Dutch continued to be the leaders until about 1770, when the English superseded them owing to the royal bounties.

EARLY NEW ENGLAND WHALING

The history of American whaling really begins with the settlement of the New England Colonies. When the “Mayflower” anchored inside of Cape Cod, the Pilgrims saw whales playing about the ship, and this was their chief reason for settling there. It afterwards proved that the products of the whale formed an important source of income to the settlers on Massachusetts Bay.

The subject of drift, or dead whales which were washed ashore, first attracted the colonists, and there are numerous references to them on record. It was the invariable rule for the government to get one-third, the town one-third, and the owner one-third, and in 1662 it was voted that a portion of every whale should be given to the church. The whale fishery increased steadily, so that in 1664 Secretary Randolph could truthfully write to England, “The new Plymouth colony made great profit by whale killing.” The success of the settlers on Cape Cod and elsewhere encouraged Salem to consider ways and means of whaling; for as early as 1688 one James Loper, of Salem, petitioned the Colonial authorities for a patent for making oil, and four years later some Salem whalers complained that Easthamptonites had stolen whales that bore Salem harpoons. As early as 1647 whaling had become a recognized industry in Hartford, Conn., but for some reason did not prosper.

The first white people to explore our New England coasts discovered that the Indians were ahead of them in the pursuit of the whale. The Red Men in canoes attacked these beasts with stone-headed arrows and spears which were attached to short lines. Usually wooden floats were tied to the line, which impeded the progress of the animal, and by frequent thrusts these early hunters actually worried the life out of the whale.

Waymouth’s Journal of his voyage to America in 1605 gives the first description of the Indian method of whaling in canoes on the New England coast from November to April, when spouters generally abounded there. “One especial thing is their manner of killing the whale” runs the quaint description “which they call a powdawe; and will describe his form; how he bloweth up the water; and that he is twelve fathoms long: that they go in company of their king with a multitude of their boats; and strike him with a bone made in fashion of a harping iron fastened to a rope, which they make great and strong of the bark of trees, which they veer out after him; then all their boats come about him as he riseth above water, with their arrows they shoot him to death; when they have killed him and dragged him to shore, they call all their chief lords together, and sing a song of joy; and those chief lords, whom they call sagamores, divide the spoil and give to every man a share, which pieces so distributed, they hang up about their houses for provisions; and when they boil them they blow off the fat and put to their pease, maize and other pulse which they eat.”

The Esquimaux at this time were very much more advanced than the Indians, and showed their ingenuity by inventing the “toggle” harpoon, which is in use to this day, and which was improved upon in 1848 by a Negro in New Bedford called Lewis Temple, who made his fortune turning out irons. This harpoon was arranged to sink very easily into the blubber, but when pulled out the end turned at right angles to the shank, thus preventing the harpoon from withdrawing.

Boston is mentioned only occasionally in connection with the Whale Fishery. During 1707 the Boston papers state that a whale forty feet long entered the harbour and was killed near Noddle’s Island, and another interesting record is in a letter written in 1724 by the Hon. Paul Dudley, who mentions that he has just received a note from a Mr. Atkins of Boston, who was one of the first to go fishing for sperm whales. There were many whaleships recorded in the Boston records, although fitting out and sailing from other neighboring ports.

NANTUCKET

A large part of the romance of whaling centres around the island of Nantucket and its hardy seamen. It was from here that the Red Men first sallied out in canoes to chase the whale; from here the small sloops first set out laden with cobblestones, as the story goes, to throw at the whales to see if they were near enough to risk a harpoon. These daring Nantucketers were, in 1791, the first to sail to the Pacific, and later on in 1820 to the coast of Japan, and finally they made their ships known in every harbour of the world. Thirty islands and reefs in the Pacific are named after Nantucket captains and merchants.

There is an amusing legend concerning the origin of the island. A giant was said to be in the habit of sleeping on Cape Cod, because its peculiar shape fitted him when he curled himself up. One night he became very restless and thrashed his feet around so much that he got his moccasins filled with sand. In the morning he took off first one moccasin and then the other, flinging their contents across the sea, thus forming the islands of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket.