The Adventures of Baron Munchausen/Chapter VII

The Baron relates his adventures on a voyage to North America.—Pranks of a whale.…A sea-gull saves a sailor's life.…A dangerous leak stopped a posteriori.

I embarked at Portsmouth in a first-rate English man of war, for North America. When we arrived within three hundred leagues of the river Saint Laurence, the ship struck against (as we supposed) a rock; however, on heaving the lead, we could find now bottom. What made this circumstance the more wonderful, was, that the violence of the shock was such that we lost our rudder, broke our bowsprit in the middle, and split all our masts from top to bottom: a poor fellow, who was aloft, furling the main sheet, was flung at least three leagues from the ship; but he fortunately saved his life, by laying hold of the tail of a large sea-gull, who brought him back, and lodged him on the very spot from whence he was thrown. Whilst we were all in a state of astonishment at the general and unaccountable confusion in which we were involved, the whole was suddenly explained, by the appearance of an enormous whale, who had been basking asleep, and was so much displeased with the disturbance which our ship had given him, that he beat in all the gallery and part of the quarter-deck with his tail, and almost at the same instant took the main-sheet anchor, which was suspended, as usual from the head, between his teeth, and ran away with the ship, at least sixty leagues, at the rate of twelve leagues an hour, when fortunately the cable broke. On our return to Europe some months after, we found the same whale, within a few leagues of the same spot, floating dead on the water; it measured above half a mile in length. We got our boats out, and with much difficulty cut off his head, where, to our great joy, we found the anchor, and above forty fathom of the cable concealed on the left side of his mouth, just under his tongue. One part of our distress I had like to have forgotten: while the whale was running away with the ship, she sprung a leak, and the water poured in so fast, that all our pumps could not keep us from sinking: it was, however, my good fortune to discover it first. I found it a large hole about a foot in diameter; I had infinite pleasure, that this noble vessel was preserved, with all its crew, by a most fortunate though! I immediately stopped the hole with the hinder part of my body. My situation, while I sat there, was rather cool, but the carpenter's art soon relieved me.