The Esquimaux at this time were very much more advanced than the Indians, and showed their ingenuity by inventing the “toggle” harpoon, which is in use to this day, and which was improved upon in 1848 by a Negro in New Bedford called Lewis Temple, who made his fortune turning out irons. This harpoon was arranged to sink very easily into the blubber, but when pulled out the end turned at right angles to the shank, thus preventing the harpoon from withdrawing.
Boston is mentioned only occasionally in connection with the Whale Fishery. During 1707 the Boston papers state that a whale forty feet long entered the harbour and was killed near Noddle’s Island, and another interesting record is in a letter written in 1724 by the Hon. Paul Dudley, who mentions that he has just received a note from a Mr. Atkins of Boston, who was one of the first to go fishing for sperm whales. There were many whaleships recorded in the Boston records, although fitting out and sailing from other neighboring ports.
NANTUCKET
A large part of the romance of whaling centres around the island of Nantucket and its hardy seamen. It was from here that the Red Men first sallied out in canoes to chase the whale; from here the small sloops first set out laden with cobblestones, as the story goes, to throw at the whales to see if they were near enough to risk a harpoon. These daring Nantucketers were, in 1791, the first to sail to the Pacific, and later on in 1820 to the coast of Japan, and finally they made their ships known in every harbour of the world. Thirty islands and reefs in the Pacific are named after Nantucket captains and merchants.
There is an amusing legend concerning the origin of the island. A giant was said to be in the habit of sleeping on Cape Cod, because its peculiar shape fitted him when he curled himself up. One night he became very restless and thrashed his feet around so much that he got his moccasins filled with sand. In the morning he took off first one moccasin and then the other, flinging their contents across the sea, thus forming the islands of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket.
From the time of the settlement of the island, the entire population, from the oldest inhabitant down to the youngest child, realized that on the whaling industry depended their livelihood. A story is told of a Nantucket youngster who tied his mother’s darning cotton to a fork, and, hurling it at the cat as she tried to escape, yelled “Pay out, mother! Pay out! There she ‘sounds’ through the window!” The inhabitants always alluded to a train as “tying up,” a wagon was called a “side-wheeler,” every one you met was addressed as “captain,” and a horse was always “tackled” instead of harnessed. The refrain of an old Nantucket song runs as follows:—
“So be cheery, my lads, let your hearts never fail,
While the bold harpooner is striking the whale!”
A young man who had not doubled the cape or harpooned a whale had no chance of winning a Nantucket, New Bedford, or New London belle, and it is stated as a fact that the girls of Nantucket at one time formed a secret society, and one of their pledges was never to marry a man until he had “struck his whale.” The well-known Nantucket novel “Miriam Coffin” tells of a girl who made to her two lovers a condition of marriage that they must first of all undertake a whaling voyage, and that she would wed the more successful of the two. It happened that one was a Minister, and the other was no better adapted to the whale fishery; nevertheless, both set out to sea. The former was killed by a whale, and the latter returned after an absence of several years, but instead of claiming his bride, he tells her that before going he had already made up his mind that a girl who made such foolish propositions was no girl for him; and so the story ends.
