The Boy Whaleman

by George Fox Tucker

I had now learned to box the compass, and I knew the ropes. There used to be an impression that the duties of a whaleman were light. This is far from the truth. The labor was incessant. There was no limit to the hours, and the work was often carried on in the night watches. Contrary to the general impression, the whaler was cleaner and more trim than the merchantman. And now a few words about whales, as we were soon to have our first chase.

Whales have lungs and warm blood, and their bodies do not differ much from those of a cow or a horse. There are several kinds, but in the good old whaling day only two kinds were of real value—the sperm whales or cachalots and the whales which yielded bone. The largest cachalot ever captured was nearly ninety feet long and nearly forty feet in circumference, and weighed about ninety tons! Think of it! One hundred and eighty thousand pounds! Now, if we say that thirteen men weigh a ton, a whale of this kind will weigh more than the entire population of a village of over eleven hundred inhabitants. It is also said that a large sperm whale weighs a good deal more than a hundred oxen, and has the strength of several hundred horses. The head is blunt and flat, and the skull sometimes measures more than twenty feet in length. The eye is near the angle of the jaw; it has no lashes, and is about as large as the eye of a colt. The creature can see ahead or to either side, but the eyes are separated by the immense head, so that each eye seems to work on its own account; and this is thought to be the reason why sperm whales act so queerly at times. The most curious organ is the ear. It is just behind the eye and is so small that a pencil can hardly be inserted in it.

The lower jaw, which contains the teeth, is far smaller than the upper jaw, but it was regarded in whaling days of considerable value, for the posterior part called the “jawbone” and the teeth, which weighed about a pound and a half each, furnished the material out of which sailors made so many curious articles.

The sperm whale has no nose, but a substitute in a spouthole on top of the head.

The interior of the mouth is white, and the tongue is small and the throat large.

The head is, in size, about one third of the body, and in it is what is called the “case” containing spermaceti, formerly used in the manufacture of candles. It is dipped out with buckets, and sometimes fifteen barrels are taken from a single head. What is this great oil case for? Some think that the animal draws upon it for nourishment during periods of food scarcity, just as bears store upon their bodies great quantities of fat to draw on later. The whales are covered with what is called blubber, which keeps them warm in cold water and relieves the pressure when they “sound,” that is, go down to great depths.

The flippers, one on each side of the body, are not like the fins of a fish, but are the limbs of land mammals, covered with blubber to form paddles, and are supplied with bones, blood vessels and nerves.

The tail of the whale divides into two flukes, the distance across which is fifteen feet. This great weapon is used for a number of purposes—for motion, as a weapon when pursued by enemies, for play, called lobtailing, whereby he throws his tail high in the air and then, lowering it, smites the sea with terrific force, and for peaking, which is the tossing of the entire flukes with a part of the body in the air before plunging below.

When the whale so plunges below he is said to “sound,” and, as he breathes like any other animal, he must take in for his dive a great supply of air; otherwise he would drown. This great creature can hold his breath for a long time, and, when he comes up, the air in his lungs is heated, and, hence, as it is expelled into the cooler air, it condenses and forms a vapor. This is what one sees when the whale spouts. If this vapor touches the human skin, it stings. Now the spout of the sperm whale is rather a poor one. It doesn’t go straight up, but goes forward for a short distance. The blowings are repeated sixty or seventy times at a rising, and then the whale goes down again, and remains below for fifteen to forty-five minutes, and occasionally for an hour or more.

Now what does the cachalot do when he is under water? It is believed that he goes to a great depth in search of cuttlefish or squid. Some of these dead cuttlefish thrown up on the shore are known to be forty to fifty feet in length, and, while some say that live cuttlefish of great size have been seen on the surface of the ocean, the statement may well be doubted. But it is known that fierce battles take place under water between them and the whales; and it is a fact that dead whales have been found floating with their bodies badly cut and bruised. But the cachalot is generally the victor. The cuttlefish is not the only food. It is a fact that pieces of sharks have been found in the stomachs of sperm whales.