This whale swallows quantities of small fishes, and has been known to eject from its stomach a fish as large as a moderate-sized salmon. This species is gregarious; and the herds, called “schools,” are females and young males. Mr. Beale saw 500 or 600 in one school. With each female school are one to three large “bulls,” or “schoolmasters,” as they are termed by the whalers. The full-grown males almost always go in search of food. A large whale will yield eighty, and sometimes one hundred, barrels of oil. Among the habits of the whale are “breaching,” or leaping clear out of the water and falling back on its side, so that the breach may be seen on a clear day from the mast-head at six miles’ distance; in “going ahead” the whale attains ten or twelve miles an hour, which Mr. Beale believes to be its greatest velocity; “lob-tailing” is lashing the water with its tail. The dangers and hairbreadth escapes in the capture are very numerous.
In 1839 there were discovered among rubbish in a tower of Durham Castle the bones of a sperm whale, which, from a letter of June 20th, 1661, in the Surtees Collection, is shown to have been cast ashore at that time, and skeletonised in order to ornament this old tower. Clusius describes, in 1605, a sperm whale thrown ashore seven years before, near Scheveling, where Cuvier supposed its head to be still preserved, and there is an antiquity of the kind still shown there.
The whale chase is an exciting scene. Sometimes the whale places himself in a perpendicular position, with the head downwards, and rearing his tail on high, beats the water with awful violence. The sea foams, and vapours darken the air; the lashing is heard several miles off, like the roar of a distant tempest. Sometimes he makes an immense spring, and rears his whole body above the waves, to the admiration of the experienced whaler, but to the terror of those who see for the first time this astonishing spectacle. Other motions, equally expressive of his boundless strength, attract the attention of navigators at the distance of miles. The whole structure of the whale exhibits most admirable adaptation to his situations and the element in which he lives, in the toughness and thickness of his skin and disposition of the coating of blubber beneath, which serves the purpose—if we may be permitted to use so homely a simile—of an extra great-coat to keep him warm, and prevent his warm red blood from being chilled by the icy seas. But provision is especially made to enable him to descend uninjured to very great depths. The orifices of the nostrils are closed by valves, wonderfully suited to keep out the water from the lungs, notwithstanding the pressure. In one species [pg 183]they are shaped like cones, which fit into the orifice like corks in the neck of a bottle, and the greater the pressure the tighter they hold. The most surprising fact in the whale, probably, is the power of descending to enormous depths below the surface of the sea, and sustaining that almost inconceivable pressure of the superincumbent water. On one occasion which fell under Mr. Scoresby’s own observation a whale was struck from a boat. The animal instantly descended, dragging down with him a rope nearly one mile long. Having let out this much of the rope, the situation of the boat’s crew became critical. Either they must have cut the line, and submitted to a very serious loss, or have run the risk of being dragged under water by the whale. The men were desired to retire to the stern, to counterbalance the pulls of the whale, which dragged the bow down sometimes to within an inch of the water. In this dangerous dilemma the boat remained some time, vibrating up and down with the tugs of the monster, but never moving from the place where it lay when the harpoon was first thrown. This fact proves that the whale must have descended at once perpendicularly, as had he advanced in any direction he must have pulled the boat along with him. Mr. Scoresby and the crew were rescued by the timely arrival of another boat furnished with fresh ropes and harpoons. A whale when struck will dive sometimes to a depth of 800 fathoms; and as the surface of a large animal may be estimated at 1,500 square feet, at this depth it will have to sustain a pressure equal to 211,000 tons. The transition from that which it is exposed to at the surface, and which may be taken at about 1,300 tons, to so enormous an increase, must be productive of the utmost exhaustion.
Strange incidents are related of harpooning. On September 24th, 1864, as the Alexander, belonging to Dundee, was steaming about in Davis’s Straits, a whale of about twelve tons was observed not far distant from her. Boats were put out, and the crew secured the animal. When they cleansed it, they found embedded in its body, two or three inches beneath the skin, a piece of a harpoon about eighteen inches long; on the one side were engraved the words—“Traveller,” Peterhead, and on the other, “1838.” This vessel was lost in 1856, in the Cumberland Straits whale-fishery; it is therefore clear that the harpoon must have remained in the animal from that time.
A sailor gives the following description of sleeping inside a whale; not, however, quite as Jonah may have done. He says:[50]—“We were on a little expedition in the long-boat one voyage, and we had to encamp for the night with as much comfort as our scant means would afford. The shore was terrible for its wildness and desolation—it was indeed lonely, sad, and sandy, but what was strange and welcome, was, great carcases of whales, stranded like wrecks on the far-reaching shore, in some cases the backbone holding together like a good keel and the great ribs still round, giving you an idea of an elongated hogshead without the staves. We landed for the night, unbent our sails and stretched them over the bleached ribs of a whale’s skeleton, and after supper took a comfortable sleep under the most curious roof-tree I ever rested under.” This was on the north-west coast of Africa; and the sailor came to the conclusion that whales come ashore to die. “And to my mind,” says he, “it is as poetical as it is welcome. I like [pg 184]to think of these mighty travellers in the mighty deep hugging the shore when the fires of life burn low, and the mighty waves, their playmates from their childhood, giving their last lift up on the beach!”
And now for that great mythical or actual animal the sea-serpent.
For ages an animal of immense size and serpentine form has been believed to inhabit the ocean, though rarely seen. A strong conviction of its existence has always prevailed in Norway and the fiords, where it has been reported to have been frequently seen. It is also said that the coasts of New England have been frequently visited by this marine monster many times during this century.
Bishop Pontoppidan, who, about the middle of the eighteenth century, wrote a history of Norway, his native land, collected a quantity of testimonies as to its occasional appearance. Among other evidence he mentions that of Captain de Ferry, of the Norwegian Navy, who saw the serpent, while in a boat rowed by eight men, near Molde, in August, 1774. A declaration of this was made by the captain and two of the crew before a magistrate. The animal was described as of the general form of a serpent stretched on the surface in [pg 185]receding coils or undulations, and the head, which resembled that of a horse, elevated some two feet out of the water.
In the summer of 1846 many respectable persons stated that in the vicinity of Christiansand and Molde they had seen the marine serpent. The affidavits of numerous persons were given in the papers, which, with some discrepancies in minute particulars, agree in testifying that an animal of great length (from about fifty to a hundred feet) had been seen at various times, in many cases more than once. All agreed that the eyes were large and glaring; that the body was dark-brown and comparatively slender; and that the head, which for size was compared to a ten-gallon cask, was covered with a long spreading mane.
An account of one of these encounters, which took place on the 28th May, 1845, was published by the Rev. P. W. Demboll, Archdeacon of Molde, those present being J. C. Lund, bookseller and printer, G. S. Krogh, merchant, Christian Flang, Lund’s apprentice, and John Elgenses, labourer. These men were fishing on the Romsdal Fjord, and the appearance took place about seven in the evening, a little distance from shore, near the ballast place and the Molde Hove. Lund fired at the animal, which followed them till they came to shallow water, when it dived and disappeared.