SONG AND DANCE
With a Negro or two in the crew, the foc’s’le could always be assured of entertainment in the dog watches or during a gam.
BUMBOATS
When ships touched at ports in the Cape Verde Islands, the Azores, or other such rendezvous they were surrounded by peddlers of fresh fruit and vegetables, a very welcome variant after months of salt junk and hardtack.
ARCTIC WHALING
Compared to the dramatic action of Sperm whaling, the taking of Right whales was a tame business, but the chase of Bowhead or Arctic whales took men among icebergs and floes where their work was complicated by discomfort and the danger of ships being crushed or wrecked.
Many individual whalers have been thus lost, and in 1871 a fleet of thirty-four was crushed and abandoned in the Arctic ice.
