The Catalpa Expedition/Chapter 12
CHAPTER XII
WHALING
But the heart-heaviness did not last long. If Captain Anthony had not been a man of exceptional pluck, he would not have been bound to Australia in the Catalpa. The first days of a voyage are busy. The crew is called aft, watches are told off, and boats' crews selected. The regulations to be observed on shipboard are read, and the master gives general instructions to be obeyed during the voyage. Then, if the weather permits, the boats are lowered and the green hands are taught their places and the handling of their oars.
Perhaps the reader will be interested in the first entry in the log-book of the voyage which was to become famous. It is prosaic enough:—
Remarks on Board Bark Catalpa, Captain Anthony,
Outward Bound, Thursday, Apr, 29th, 1875.
This day commences with light breezes from the S. E. and clear weather. At 9 a. m. took our anchors and stood to sea. At 11.30 the captain came on board with officers. Crew all on board.
For several days thereafter all hands were busily employed in getting the vessel ready for whaling. Captain Anthony did not enter into the preparations with the spirit which might have been expected under different circumstances, possibly, but the work afforded relief from the routine.
The chronometer once more intruded itself upon the captain's troubled mind. After taking a number of sights and making a computation by it, the result showed the vessel to be in the interior of New York State. The hammering and pounding which the instrument had undergone in the process of fitting the key had changed the rate. The captain and the mate corrected it, but when three days out a German bark was signaled and it was found that there was a difference of forty miles in longitude between the navigators. The chronometer was never reliable thereafter, and the captain was never certain of his position.
Violent, rugged weather was now encountered. The first whale was raised on the afternoon of May 3, but it was going quickly to windward and there was no chance to lower the boats. The next day at five p. m., when on the southern edge of the Gulf, a school of whales was sighted and the vessel was luffed to the wind; but again the whales were going so fast that it was useless to lower. On May 5 another school of whales was sighted on the lee quarter and the captain wore ship to head them off. A heavy squall arose, with rain, and under two lower topsails the bark dashed along, but the whales were elusive. All the next day the chase continued, and one small whale was taken.
The whale was taken alongside. At 5.30 the work of cutting commenced and it was finished at eight in the evening. The great pieces of blubber are hauled over the main hatch and minced into fine pieces, called "horse pieces." Then the boiling commences. Water is turned into caboose pens, or jogs along the deck, to prevent the woodwork catching fire from the try works. The casks containing provisions, towlines, and sails are emptied, cleansed, and swabbed clean. The hot oil is then poured in and the casks are lashed to the rail on the ship's side to cool before being stored below.
This whale was a very small one and made but about twenty barrels of oil. It may not be uninteresting to give the reader some idea of the size of the right whale, which is the largest of whales. Captain Davis, a veteran whaleman, has made a comparison of the various parts with familiar objects, which is here quoted: "The blubber, or blanket, of a large right whale would carpet a room twenty-two yards long and nine yards wide, averaging half a yard in thickness. Set up a saw-log two feet in diameter and twenty feet in length for the ridgepole of the room we propose to build; then raise it in the air fifteen feet, and support it with pieces of timber seventeen feet long, spread, say, nine feet. This will make a room nine feet wide at the bottom, two feet wide at the peak, and twenty feet long, and will convey an idea of the upper jaw, the saw-log and slanting supports representing the bone. These walls of bone are clasped by the white blubbery lips, which at the bottom are four feet thick, tapering to a blunt edge, where they fit into a rebate sunk in the upper jaw. The throat is four feet, and is mainly blubber, interpenetrated by fibrous, muscular flesh. The lips and throat of a two-hundred-and-fifty-barrel whale should yield sixty barrels of oil, and, with the supporting jaw-bones, will weigh as much as twenty-five oxen of one thousand pounds each. Attached to the throat by a broad base is the enormous tongue, the size of which can be better conceived by the fact that twenty-five barrels of oil have been taken from one. Such a tongue would equal in weight ten oxen. The tail of such a whale is about twenty-five feet broad and six feet deep, and is considerably more forked than that of the spermaceti. The point of juncture with the body is about four feet in diameter, the vertebra about fifteen inches, the remainder of the small being packed with rope-like tendons from the size of a finger to that of a man's leg. The great rounded joint at the base of the skull gleams like an ivory sphere, nearly as large round as a carriage wheel. Through the greatest blood-vessels, more than a foot in diameter, surges, at each pulsation of a heart as large as a hogshead, a torrent of barrels of blood heated to one hundred and four degrees. The respiratory canal is over twelve inches in diameter, through which the rush of air is as noisy as the exhaust-pipe of a thousand-horse-power steam engine; and when the fatal wound is given, torrents of clotted blood are spattered into the air over the nauseated hunters. In conclusion, the right whale has an eye scarcely larger than a cow's, and an ear that would scarcely admit a knitting-needle."
On May 12 the Catalpa had reached the "Western Ground," and two whales were killed. It was nearly midnight before they were taken alongside.
On May 30, in lat. 37° 3' north, long. 57° 50' west, a brig in distress was raised to leeward, dismasted and flying signals. She proved to be the brig Florence Annapolis, forty-nine days from Liverpool, bound to Nova Scotia with a cargo of salt. Water and provisions were gone and the crew was on the verge of starvation. When the mast went by the board, one of the crew had his leg broken and two others were injured. Captain Anthony supplied the vessel with water and small stores, and his crew assisted in rigging up two sails, with which the brig ultimately reached port in safety.
Late on the afternoon of June 13 the first whale seen for a month was sighted. It was a smoky day, with a fresh breeze from the south. Mr. Smith, the mate, was in charge of one of the boats, which was lowered. The boatsteerer had thrown the iron, and Mr. Smith had taken his position at the head of the boat with the lance for the fatal stroke, when he was knocked overboard by the whale and severely cut about the head. He was pulled in by the crew, and crawled on his hands and knees to the head of the boat once more, where he killed the whale and fell back in a faint. Smith was brought aboard the bark, badly injured, and the whale was alongside at one a. m. The next morning Mr. Smith insisted upon attending to his duties and assisted in directing the cutting-in, although he was very weak from the loss of blood from the cuts on his head and neck. This little incident indicated to Captain Anthony that he had made no mistake in selecting Mr. Smith, and he felt sure that when the supreme test came he would have at least one man behind him upon whom he could rely to the uttermost.
From that date until August nothing of particular interest occurred. Icebergs were seen in July, and the Kanaka boatsteerer died and was buried at sea, the service being read by Captain Anthony.
Late in August the Catalpa fell in with the bark General Scott, Captain Robbins, and "gammed," with her. The word "gammed" is the whaling vernacular for keeping company. On the morning of the 27th a flat calm prevailed, when a large sperm whale was raised close to the ship. Three boats were lowered and this attracted the attention of the captain of the General Scott, who ordered his men to the boats. The fact that the whale spouted seventy times each time it came up indicated that it was of good size. Then the whale sounded and was down forty minutes. The boats from both ships were now in ardent chase, but when the whale came up he was nearer the Scott's boats. So the officers shouted and agreed to "mate," or divide the whale. Mr. Smith of the Catalpa struck the whale, and all joined in the killing. Then, as the General Scott was so much larger than the Catalpa, the whale was taken alongside that vessel for boiling. It is a rule among whalemen that when two ships are mated, if either takes a whale before the first has been boiled, the ships again divide. So while the General Scott was trying out, the Catalpa cruised away, captured another whale, and at six o'clock the same night had it alongside. This latter whale was small, making about forty-five barrels, which was divided. The larger whale "stowed down" 130 barrels.
On September 5 the Catalpa gammed with the bark Draco, Captain Peakes. Captain Anthony had sailed in the Draco for ten years of his life, and Captain Peakes was an old friend. On the 19th the Catalpa raised sperm whales and secured two. On October 14 Flores was sighted, and the captain now learned that through the fault of his chronometer he was 120 miles out of his "reckoning."
Captain Peakes suggested to Captain Anthony that before going in he should catch up a deckload of albicores, which abounded, and as they are a choice edible he could trade them off in the town for potatoes. The albicores follow ships in this locality, and were all about the vessel, breaching for flying-fish and squid. So with white rag for bait, the crew caught half a hundred fish weighing forty or fifty pounds each.
Captain Anthony landed in his small boat and was at once placed under arrest by the customhouse authorities for smuggling. The fish, it seems, were regarded as a product of the American fisheries, and could not be landed without paying a duty. Moreover, Captain Anthony was informed that they were worthless. So he gave them away to a man on the dock, but this made no difference to the customs authorities, who insisted that they must be returned to the vessel or pay the duty. The captain ordered a native to take them back to the ship or do anything he liked with the fish. He rowed around a point and landed the fish, but the island officials, having demonstrated their authority, released Captain Anthony from arrest.
The potatoes were placed aboard the vessel, when a heavy gale sprang up. Captain Anthony was ready to sail, but he had left his bill of health ashore, and he was forced to lay off and on in terrible weather before he could get back once more.
On October 20 the Catalpa left the island for Fayal, and several days later, in a gale of wind, the vessel was worked up between Pico and Fayal and anchored off the town. The vessel had 210 barrels of sperm oil aboard, and for several days the crew was employed in breaking out the cargo and landing it to be shipped home. Then the casks of bread and flour were recoopered and the watches were given liberty on shore. Here the captain was rejoiced at getting letters from his family and a photograph of his daughter.
Most of the crew, including third mate Bolles, one of the boatsteerers, and nearly all of the foremast hands, deserted, and three sailors who were sick were discharged. A runner agreed to furnish men, but it was necessary for them to be smuggled aboard the ship, since they had no passports. They were picked up by the Catalpa's boats under shadow of the fort, and, although hailed by the guard-boat, they were successful in reaching the vessel. One or two of the men who ran away were captured, and a crew was once more patched up.
The chronometer again claimed attention. Although the captain had had it adjusted at Flores, in the short run to Fayal he found himself sixty miles out of the way in his reckoning. Here he met Captain Crapo of the bark Ospray, who had three chronometers, including one which had been in the bark Cornelia, condemned on the Pacific coast. Captain Anthony bought this for $110 and experienced much satisfaction in the belief that he now had an instrument which he could trust.
These were busy days for the captain, for aside from the trouble with the crew, the fierce weather on the Western Ground had used up rigging and canvas, and he was compelled to buy a new outfit.
On the sixth of November Captain Anthony made a hurried departure from Fayal.