With these brief prefatory observations, I respectfully throw myself upon the generosity of the reading community, and plead my novitiate in the world of letters to secure me from too rigid a criticism.
WILLIAM B. WHITECAR, Jr.
Philadelphia, July 26th, 1859.
FOUR YEARS
ABOARD THE
WHALESHIP.
CHAPTER I.
In June, 1855, having decided upon embarking on a whaling voyage, I took the steamboat from Philadelphia to Tacony, thence by railway to New York, where, after a delay of a few hours, I boarded the steamer Metropolis, and after a fine run of twelve hours, landed in Fall River; there I entered the cars, and at five o’clock of the morning of June 20, I took up my quarters in the city of New Bedford.
I immediately instituted inquiries as to the preliminaries attendant on the preparation for such a voyage. I soon acquired this information, and was consigned to the tender mercies of one of that class known by seafaring men as Land-sharks, a description of whom I shall attempt hereafter.
This person treated me with much urbanity, desiring me to leave my hotel to reside at a hoarding-house of his selection, stating to me at the same time that numbers of whalemen, outward and homeward bound, were located there. My suspicions were slightly aroused regarding the accommodations of this boarding-house, by the earnestness with which he urged my locating in it; but no other inducement was requisite for me to coincide with his wishes than the one he last named; I being desirous, before going afloat, to mingle and converse with the initiated, to learn, if possible, something concerning the profession in which I was about to embark. So, without more ado, I proceeded to this domicile, which was located on South Water Street. It was kept by a widow lady, who, for the moderate sum of four dollars per week, for each, furnished just such edibles as you do not get at the Girard, in Philadelphia, or the Metropolitan, in New York. The meat was, in nine cases out of ten, salted; she wishing, in the abundance of her forethought, to render the salt junk, which she knew would form the principal article of our diet when at sea, agreeable to our palates; or, on the other hand, desiring to give us a predisposition to scurvy ere yet we were aboard ship. These motives were variously assigned by we tyros as the cause for the over-proportion of the saline in our food; as for those who had been at sea before, they appeared to relish the old lady’s corned pork and beef, and if we made any remark to them in reference to its profusion, they would answer us pertinently, “You will eat worse grub than that, old fellow, before you have done with whaling;” and these prophetic words ofttimes recurred to my memory months, ay, years, afterward. Do not think, kind reader, that I was rendered fastidious by former indulgence; far from it. I had made up my mind to a change of diet, but not to so great a one; for in the four weeks that I remained in this house, we never had but one meal of fresh meat—it was fried beefsteak; and even that the cook and a supernumerary, who had been engaged to assist him, with the aid of a jug of New England rum, managed to burn to a cinder, so that we were compelled to resort to our old provender.
As soon as my companion and myself had become members of this household, we, with our assiduous friend the Shark, proceeded to the agent’s, with whom he wished us to engage, and after being approved by the Captain, and having made inquiries as to the character of the vessel and her commander, we enrolled our names upon the articles of the Barque Pacific, of New Bedford, Captain John W. Sherman, bound to the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans, to cruise for sperm and right whales. The vessel was of three hundred and eighty tons burthen, capable of carrying three thousand barrels of oil, and fitted out for forty months; she was then undergoing thorough repairs, having but two months previously returned from a voyage of thirty months’ duration, in which she had been very successful; and this, with several previous very remunerative voyages, had given her the name of a lucky ship, which insured her a good crew; seamen, as a class, being superstitious, are always eager to sail in a ship with which some favorable omen is, or has been, connected, auguring from such data her subsequent success.