A Year with a Whaler

by Walter Noble Burns

The first year passed and the ships anchored in Port Clarence. He hurried out in his kyack to ask the Captains for permission to work his way back to San Francisco. He never once doubted that they would give him his chance. But a sad surprise was in store for him. From ship to ship he went, begging to be allowed to remain aboard, but the hard-hearted captains coldly refused him, one after the other. He was a deserter, they told him; he had made his bed and he could lie in it; to take him away would encourage others to desert. Some captains cursed him; some ordered him off their vessels. Finally the ships sailed away for the whaling grounds, leaving him marooned on the bleak shore to pass another year in the squalor of his igloo.

Next year when the whaling fleet came again it was the same story over again. Again he watched the ships arrive with a heart beating high with hope and again he saw their topmasts disappear over the horizon, leaving him hopeless and wretched behind. Before he came aboard the brig, he had made the rounds of the other ships and had met with the same refusals as of yore. I saw him go aft and plead with Captain Shorey and that stern old sea dog turned him down as curtly as the other skippers had done. The ships sailed away, leaving him to his fate. To me his story was the most pathetic that ever fell within my personal experience. I never learned whether he ever managed somehow to get back home or left his bones to bleach upon the frozen tundra.

From Port Clarence, we headed back to Unalaska to ship our whale bone to San Francisco by steamer. Midway of our run down the Behring Sea a thick fog closed about us and we kept our fog horn booming. Soon, off our bows, we heard another fog horn. It seemed to be coming closer. Our cooper, an old navy bugler, became suspicious. He got out his old bugle and sounded "assembly" sharply. As the first note struck into the mist, the other fog horn ceased its blowing. We did not hear it again. When the mist lifted, no vessel was in sight, but the situation was clear. We had chanced upon a poaching sealer and when she heard our cooper's bugle, she concluded we were a revenue cutter and took to her heels.

At the Gateway to the Arctic

A day or two later, we saw the revenue cutter Corwin chasing a poacher. Heeled over under crowded sail, the sealing schooner was scurrying before a stiff wind. The Corwin was plowing in hot pursuit, smoke pouring from her funnel and hanging thick in the wake of the chase. She was gaining steadily, for she was a steamship and the schooner had only her sails to depend on. Finally the revenue cutter sent a solid shot across the schooner's bows. The ball knocked up a great splash of water. But the poacher did not heave to—just kept on her way, leaning so far over that the clews of her lower sails almost touched the waves and a big white feather of spray stood up in front of her. So pursuer and pursued passed over the horizon and we did not see the end of the hunt. But we knew that there could be but one end. The fate of that poacher was sealed. Only a fog could save her, and the sky was clear.

We passed close to St. George Island, the southernmost of the Pribiloff group, the breeding place of the fur seals. As we came near the shores, the air literally shook with the raucous, throbbing bark of countless seals. The din was deafening. Along the shore, a shelving beach ran up to rocky declivities and beach and rocks were packed with seals. There may have been a hundred thousand; there may have been a million; and it seemed as if every seal was barking. The water alongshore swarmed with them. Thousands of heads were sticking out of the sea. Thousands of other seals were playing, breaching out of the water like porpoises. They swam close to the brig and floated lazily on the surface, staring at us unafraid. If we had been poachers, I should think we could have taken several hundred thousand dollars worth of seals without difficulty.

A dozen little pup seals whose fur was of a snowy and unspotted white came swimming about the vessel. These sea babies were soft, furry, cunning little fellows and they paddled about the brig, sniffing at the strange monster that had invaded their home. They seemed absolutely fearless and gazed up at us out of big, brown, wondering, friendly eyes. Sealers kill them, as their fur makes beautiful edgings and borders for fur garments.