The Boy Whaleman

by George Fox Tucker

The most curious thing about the sperm whale is that in rare cases it produces ambergris, often worth its weight in gold; and this, it is said, is due to the cuttlefish. This material is solid, is generally ash-colored, is lighter than water and is fragrant when heated. It is a growth in the intestines of the sperm whale, produced, it is thought, by indigestion caused by the whale not being able to assimilate beaks and other pieces of cuttlefish so often found in the ambergris. Ambergris is generally found in cutting up the whale. Its chief use is in manufacturing perfume. It is not the perfume itself, but the substance which prevents evaporation.

The sperm whale is a great wanderer. He keeps away from the cold water of the extremities of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, but travels all over the rest of the watery world. How do we know all this? Because the whale himself has told us. Harpoons had stamped in them the names of the ship’s owner and sometimes the name of the ship. Often a whale with the harpoon in him would make his escape, when the line parted, and afterwards be captured six or seven thousand miles away from the place of encounter with the harpoon still in his body.

Some of the antics of the sperm whale are striking. He will rise in the water and turn to look around him. Again he will raise his head above the surface and remain for some time in that position, bobbing up and down amid the waves. Then, suddenly turning, he will raise his flukes in the air and beat them upon the water with great violence. The sound caused thereby may be heard for many miles. This, as I have said, is called lobtailing. Then he will spring from the water so as to show a large part of his great frame. This is called breaching.

The female or cow cachalot is only about a third of the size of the male or bull. The mother goes far out to sea with her baby calf, apparently fearing no enemy, and her affection for the little creature is very strong; so whalemen would kill the calf first, for they knew that the mother would not forsake her offspring. The cow is said to show affection for the bull, for when the bull is killed the cow will stay by, only to be captured herself.

How do whales sleep? It is generally thought that it is when they are floating on the surface, either during the day or night. Both whalers and merchantmen are known to have run on to whales with a result similar to that occasioned by striking a rock or reef. If the whales had been awake they would doubtless have avoided the vessels. A famous case of collision was that of the Union, Captain Gardner, which sailed from Nantucket in 1807. At ten o’clock at night, when running at seven knots, she struck a whale with such force as to smash in the timbers on the starboard bow. The pumps were started, but the water gained rapidly and in a couple of hours the vessel began to sink. Three boats left the ship, one of which was abandoned, and the men were divided equally in the other two. There was a heavy sea, and the Azores were over six hundred miles away. They rigged sails which were carried away by the gale, and the two boats were finally lashed together and for a time allowed to drift. They had little water, and the men were put on scant rations. When suffering intensely from thirst and hunger Flores was sighted. Captain Gardner and his men made six hundred miles in seven days and eight nights. This young master was only twenty-four years of age. He followed the sea for many years. In one of his voyages his encounter with a sperm whale resulted in a badly bruised body and a mutilated hand. This injured member is shown in the photograph of the old gentleman in the rooms of the Old Dartmouth Historical Society in New Bedford.

Now a few words about the whales which yield whalebone or baleen. It used to be said that the whale which yielded excellent bone and a generous quantity of oil was called the “right whale” to capture, and hence the name. Later its larger relative was found in the Arctic regions and called the bowhead, because of the structure of the fore part of the head, which is shaped like a half-circle. The whalebone of the bowhead is much larger than that of the right whale, and in former days was more valuable. The slabs are in the upper jaw, and in a bowhead are often a dozen feet or more in length. When the mouth is closed these slabs slant back and lie between the two jaws. When the mouth opens they hang almost perpendicularly along the sides of the mouth, presenting the appearance of a screen, which, as the inner side of each slab is furnished with bristles or hairs, serves as a sieve. A bowhead once captured had two hundred and eighty-six slabs of bone on one side of the mouth and two hundred and eighty-nine on the other. The lower lip supports and holds in place the lower edge of the sieve, while the upper lip is drawn up. The right whales subsist on crustaceans, called “brit,” which are taken in great quantities through the mouth and are strained out by means of the bristles on the inner side of the whalebone. The water flows out and the “brit” is caught by the sieve. The brit is yellow and so abundant in some latitudes as to give the appearance of extensive fields of golden grain. The right whales are said to eat fish, if “brit” is not obtainable. The rushing of a right whale through a field of “brit” has been compared to a snowplow passing through a drift. He leaves behind him a trail of blue water, spouts with great force and is difficult to capture. Here we should note that the whalebone whales cannot see ahead of them.

While the bowheads are very heavy, they are not more than sixty-five feet in length. The tail is about twenty-five feet broad and six feet deep. One of these whales, taken in 1855 in the Okhotsk Sea by the ship Adeline of New Bedford, yielded two hundred and fifty barrels of oil, and another taken in 1861 by the General Pike of the same port produced two hundred and seventy-four barrels. The whalebone whales carry their nostrils on the summit of the head. There are two spout holes; they are f-shaped, close together, and are located about eighteen feet from the end of the head. As they are nearer the lungs than in the case of the sperm whale, the vapor shoots up straight, spreading as it rises. These whales are encased in a layer of blubber which is from a foot to two feet in thickness. It is softer, more oily and also more sticky than that of the sperm whale. The tongue is thick and soft, is glued to the floor of the mouth, and generally contains about six barrels of oil, although it is said that the tongue of a very large bowhead has been known to yield twenty-five barrels. Such a tongue is equal to the weight of ten oxen. The flesh of the animal is coarse, firm and red in color. The flukes are very powerful. Hence the maxim, “Beware of a sperm whale’s jaw and a right whale’s flukes.” While the sperm whale is a great traveler, the right whale never crosses the equator.

The female right whale is much larger than the female sperm, and at the breeding time she frequents shallow waters. Her affection for her young is very strong. It is said that she will clasp the calf with a fin very much as a human mother holds her child. The young of the bowhead mother is seldom seen, and it is thought that she keeps it under the ice until it is weaned.

The bowhead’s method of feeding is like that of its relative, the right whale. The crustaceans in the North Atlantic and Arctic, called “slicks”, give the water the appearance of oily streaks. They are produced by different kinds of jellyfish and range in size from a pea to six inches or more in diameter. When the bowhead is feeding, the spread of the lips is about thirty feet, and the method of feeding is the same as that of the right whale.

Now what happened as the result of the pursuit of all these creatures, well called the leviathans of the deep? Let any boy or girl take the map and see where the whalemen cruised and captured whales. Not content with Baffin’s Bay, Hudson’s Bay, the waters along the coast of Greenland and in the North Atlantic, around the Azores, Madeira, the coast of Africa, Ascension, Tristan da Cunha, the Falkland Islands, the Cape of Good Hope and the Rio de la Plata, the venturesome whalemen sought the Indian Ocean and more particularly the great stretches of the Pacific and the Arctic Oceans. Now let the boy or girl look carefully at the map of the Pacific Ocean and see the multitude of islands in that great stretch of water. It is said that more than four hundred islands were discovered in the Pacific by American whalemen; and, when one sees the names of Nantucket, Howland, Gardner and Starbuck, he need not be told that the names were given by either Nantucket or New Bedford whalemen.