DRAWN BY W. TABER. ENGRAVED BY J. W. EVANS.
FAST TO A WHALE.
“Look out! Here he comes! Stern all! Look out for whale!”
But the mate’s injunctions were received too late. The whale, fairly out of breath, came up with a bound and a puff, scattering the water in all directions, and catching the keel of the boat on the bunch of its neck. The boat bounded from this part of the whale’s anatomy to the hump, and, careening to starboard, shot the crew first on the whale’s side and then into the water. The stroke-oarsman now began to feel wet. The whale, terrified beyond measure by the tickling sensation of the little thirty-foot boat creeping down its back, caught the frail cedar craft on one corner of its flukes, and tossed it gracefully, but perhaps not intentionally, into the air, as one would play with a light rubber ball. As the boat descended, with one tremendous “side wipe” of the mighty caudal fin, and with a terrible crash that was heard on the ship nearly two miles away, the whale smashed it into kindling-wood.
A WHALE-BOAT CUT IN TWO.
This is only one of the exciting tales Mr. Brown has to tell, and the history of whaling in every country could add many more. He tells us that approaching a whale at all times is like going into battle, and says that many of the deeds remembered by old hands were purely heroic, since the danger might have been avoided by declining to attack the animal under the especially hazardous conditions that often present themselves.
The persecution suffered by whales of all kinds in all parts of the world made the more valuable kinds so scarce by the middle of the present century that many voyages were almost fruitless, not only by reason of small catches, but because the substitutes invented for whalebone, and the constantly increasing use of mineral oils had lowered prices to an almost ruinous level. The American fleets suffered with the rest, until during the Civil War they were nearly swept from the seas by the ravages of the Shenandoah and other Confederate privateers.
Since then there has been only a partial revival, accompanied by a good many changes. A few Scotch and German whalers still go to the northern seas, working in the ice, and some American vessels from the Eastern States, and a greater number from California search the Pacific and the waters off Alaska. All or nearly all of these whalers are provided with steam-propellers, having an arrangement by which they can lift the screw out of water and use their sails for ordinary purposes. Many of them chase with a steam-launch instead of the old-fashioned whaleboats, and save their men the back-straining labor of towing a prize perhaps two or three miles to the ship. In place of the hand harpoon they have several forms of swivel-guns and shoulder-guns discharging harpoons and explosive darts by gunpowder, so that a large share of the danger as well as the labor is saved to modern whalemen, who are also much better housed and fed in their large iron steamships than those used to be who wrestled with scurvy in the grim old hulks of half a century ago.
The ships that go up through Davis Straits now frequently winter there, in order to be on hand in May to meet the whales that appear in the first open water, to which the men drag their boats over the ice between their ships and the first open channels. For the same purpose many vessels of the American fleet are accustomed to pass the winter in company under the shelter of islands near the mouth of the Mackenzie River. Here they have a rendezvous where buildings have been erected and means for social comfort have been established, such as billiard tables, books, etc. These western vessels do not force their way into and through the ice, as do those among the eastern archipelagoes, but operate in comparatively open water, as long as it lasts, along the edge of the paleocrystic ice. Delaying the departure of those who mean to return to the Pacific and home until the last moment, it occasionally happens that some are caught and frozen in. These are usually destroyed, but thus far their crews have managed to escape either to more fortunate vessels or to the shore, where, at Point Barrow, the government has built and keeps furnished a strong house, with stores, fuel, and provisions, as a refuge for shipwrecked mariners.