CHAPTER XIII
WHOSE WHALE WAS IT?
We arrived at the Okhotsk Sea in the early summer; and one has only to visit that inlet to learn how extensive it is. The weather was not so severe as that of the Arctic, and so far as we were concerned we found the whaling equally good. Our captain followed the method he had adopted in the Arctic of dropping a boat, sailing a long distance and dropping another, and then taking a course between them. The bowheads seemed a little more active than those in the Arctic, but, if once struck, there was nothing to fear except their terrible flukes. There was much conjecture as to some probable creature who would yield more oil than the Gay Header’s whale, and thus be the means of bestowing the watch on another. One whale, the largest in the Okhotsk, yielded one hundred and fifty-eight barrels and the Gay Header was safe.
In the whaling days there were quarrels over whales, and a few lawsuits, too. Strange that these differences should arise at places thousands of miles distant from Massachusetts, and that the cases should be tried in the United States Court in that State. How could there be any quarrel or lawsuit over a whale lying dead on the surface of the ocean? And the question may be answered by asking another question, “Whose whale was it?” That is, the question was not always who killed the whale but who owned the whale after it was killed.
There was a usage generally observed by whalemen that when a whale was struck, and the harpoon, with the line attached, remained in the whale, but the line did not remain fast to the boat, and a boat’s crew from another ship continued the pursuit and captured the whale, and the master of the first ship claimed the whale on the spot, the whale belonged to the first ship. At last the matter was taken into the United States Court, and the judge held that the usage was a good one and that the whale belonged to the first ship.
Two lawsuits arose over whales captured in the Okhotsk Sea. One, as follows: Having killed a bowhead, the first mate of the whaler anchored the whale in five fathoms of water and attached a waif, intending to return the next day. Early in the morning, boats of another New Bedford whaler towed the whale to their ship, where it was cut-in and boiled down. It turned out that the anchor didn’t hold in the night, that the cable coiled around the whale’s body, and that no waif irons were attached to it. The captain of the vessel whose boat had originally killed the whale visited the other ship and laid claim to the whale; for oil and bone worth five thousand dollars or more were not to be given up without something more than a protest. If the captain of the vessel which had the oil and the bone had yielded, the bone could easily have been then delivered, but to turn over great casks of oil from one vessel to another, in a rough sea, was not so easy. But the captain wouldn’t yield. The discussion between the two masters was bitter and boisterous.
“I killed the whale,” said the captain of the first vessel.
“Your first mate says he killed it.”
“Now don’t be smart. You know when I said ‘I’, the reference was to my ship.”
“Where’s the proof that anybody in your ship killed it?”
“Proof enough. Even if the waif was gone, the whale was dead, and I can show that the warp coiled around the body was the warp of my ship.”