CHAPTER VIII

THE YANKEE WHALEMEN

Bold Pioneers of Cape Cod, Long Island, and Nantucket Havoc of the Revolutionary War - The First South-Sea Whalers - A True Co-operative Industry - Hardships, Perils, and Triumphs of the Calling Porter and his Exploits in the Pacific

Rapid Growth after the War of 1812 Ventures to Japan and the Arctic — Three-fourths of the World's Whaleships American — Burke's Famous Tribute Strange Fate of the Whaler "Essex " Tragedies and Hairbreadth Escapes Great Profit of Successful Voyages - Whaling at its Zenith-Ruinous Work of the "Shenandoah" - Disaster in the Frozen North An Almost-Vanished Industry - Risk and Cost too Heavy, Whales too Few- WhaleShip Tonnage for a Hundred Years

MORE than two centuries ago, in the year 1690, when King Philip's War had left the New England colonists free and safe to turn their faces to the sea, a group of men on the sand bluffs of Nantucket was watching a school of whales playing and sporting just off shore. One of these men, turning to his comrades and pointing to the ocean, said, "There is a green pasture where our children's grandchildren will go for bread."

This nameless islander proved a true though unhonored prophet. Nantucket in the years to come made all the five great oceans of the globe yield the livelihood denied by her own narrow, sterile acres. She was not the pioneer in the bold trade of whaling which has lent so much picturesqueness to the annals of the American merchant marine. Long Island, Cape Cod, and Plymouth had been chasing and capturing the monarchs of the deep before 1690. But Nantucket, once embarked in the noble in

dustry, straightway surpassed them all and dominated the whale fishery as perhaps no community of like size ever dominated so hazardous and important a vocation.

The red aborigines were really the first American whalemen. It astounded the English settlers to observe the audacity with which they attacked the monsters in their fragile canoes. These Indian canoes were the models of the first whaleboats of the white men, and to this day the Yankee whaleboat, the most seaworthy light craft afloat, retains in its clean, sharp, double-ended form the essential canoe characteristics. Whales in the olden time were very much tamer as well as more plentiful than now. They came in great numbers close into the sandy beaches of Cape Cod and Long Island. Captain John Smith in 1614 found whales so thick and so easy of approach that he turned aside from his exploring to take them; and one of the English settlers who came over a few years afterward records in his journal that he saw as the long voyage ended "mighty whales spewing up water like the smoke of a chimney, and making the sea about them white and hoary, as is said in Job, of such incredible bigness that I will never wonder that the body of Jonas could be in the belly of a whale."

It was the New York colonists who took the lead in whale-hunting as a systematic industry. In 1644 the town of Southampton, Long Island, whose waters even in late years have been a favorite playground for marine mammalia, appointed men especially to look for whales cast ashore. From this it was easy to hold boats in readiness to chase and kill whales which came close in, but were not actually stranded. The trade developed in the same way on Cape Cod, which bears so close a physical resemblance to Long Island. There also, as an old chronicler remarks, "Whales formerly for many successive years set in alongshore. There was good whaling in boats. Proper watchmen on shore by signal gave

notice when a whale appeared. After some years they [the whales] left this ground and passed further off upon the banks at some distance from the shore. The whalers then used sloops with whaleboats aboard, and this fishery turned to a good account. At present the whales take their course in deep water, where upon a peace our whalers design to follow them. This business is by whaling sloops or schooners with two whaleboats and thirteen men." In 1662 the Cape Cod town of Eastham voted that a part of every whale cast ashore should be appropriated for the support of the ministry.

As whales grew more and more shy and voyages lengthened, these sloops and schooners gave way to brigs and ships, carrying three or four boats and twenty to forty men. But until the Revolution the American whaler was seldom much larger than one hundred tons. In 1690 the people of Nantucket,1 "finding that the people of Cape Cod had made greater proficiency in the art of whalecatching than themselves," sent thither and engaged one Ichabod Paddock to remove to the island and instruct them in the best ways of killing whales and obtaining the oil. This Cape Cod expert must have had apt pupils, for in 1775 the guns of Lexington found one hundred and fifty Nantucket whalers at sea with an aggregate burden of fifteen thousand tons. The years between 1770 and 1775, says Macy in his history, were exceptionally prosperous for Nantucket. Some of her one hundred and fifty vessels were large brigs. From the very first the whale fishery was pervaded by a spirit adventurous and indomitable. American whalemen pushed farther and farther out into the deep sea, as their gigantic quarry retreated before them. In the early years of the eighteenth century the whale craft of the colonies were cruising within a great triangle formed by the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the Virginia Capes, and the Western or Azores Islands. In 1760 the

1 "History of the American Whale Fishery," by Alexander Starbuck.

little town of Sag Harbor, Long Island, had three brave sloops searching for whales in icy northern latitudes, and in 1774 bold Captain Uriah Bunker, in the brig" Amazon " of Nantucket, made the first voyage across the equinoctial line to the Brazil Banks and returned to port with a "full ship" on April 19, 1775, just as the redcoats were in full retreat from Concord Bridge.

The Revolutionary War dealt a terrific blow to American whaling. England was intensely jealous of the growth of the colonial industry as a nursery of American seapower. She saw her chance and made merciless use of it. Her swarming cruisers seized or destroyed American whale vessels wherever they could be found, and forced their hardy and daring crews into the king's service. John Adams, who had been one of our envoys abroad, and was to be an envoy again, wrote on Sept. 13, 1779, from Braintree to the Council of Massachusetts, "Whenever an English man-of-war or privateer has taken an American vessel, they have given to the whalemen among the crew, by order of government, their choice either to go on board. a man-of-war and fight against their country, or go into the whale fishery." As a result of this policy, Mr. Adams declared that the British had seventeen vessels in the whale fishery off the mouth of the river Plate, South America, "which all sailed from London in the months of September and October. All the officers and men are Americans." Mr. Adams urged that a frigate or a sloop-of-war be sent out to seize this British whale fleet; that "at least four hundred and fifty of the best kind of seamen would be taken out of the hands of the English, and might be gained into the American service to act against the enemy."

When the war began there were in the whole American whale fleet between three and four hundred vessels of an aggregate of about 33,000 tons, manned by about five thousand seamen. The annual product of this fleet was "probably at least 45,000 barrels of spermaceti oil, and

"Melampus," appeared off Sandy Hook, and resumed the exasperating work of the "Cambrian" and "Leander." They stopped and searched American merchant vessels, maltreated and impressed their seamen, and seized all craft bound to French ports in Europe or the colonies. Meek and long-suffering Thomas Jefferson was no longer President of the United States. Madison's Secretary of the Navy sent Commodore John Rodgers, in the fortyfour-gun frigate "President," to watch this insulting blockade of the chief port of a neutral nation. On May 16,1811, south of New York, at sundown, Rodgers spoke a war vessel which he took in the gathering dusk to be the "Guerrière." He hailed, and received in return an evasive reply and a round shot in his mainmast. The "President's" crew was at quarters; a quick, straight Yankee broadside streamed out of the open ports. After fifteen minutes' firing the British ship was silenced with thirtytwo men killed and wounded. The stranger proved to be not the "Guerrière," she was left for the "President's" sister, "Constitution," but the twenty-gun ship sloop "Little Belt." The fight was due to a misunderstanding, but it warmed the Yankee blood; it was accepted by the people as honest vengeance for the "Chesapeake."

Once more, in the spring of 1812, Congress resorted to an embargo, but this time it was no blank charge; the gun was shotted. This third embargo was meant frankly as a preparation for war. Madison told the British Minister that though "embargo was not war," the United States was undoubtedly justified in resorting to the extreme measure, for Great Britain was actually waging war on us, and within a month had seized eighteen vessels of a value of fifteen hundred thousand dollars. Congress, in April, laid the embargo for ninety days. It kept American ships in our own ports and saved them from capture, while a swift pilot craft was sent to warn American merchantmen in North Europe that war was impend