We will now return to our own vessel and crew. As I stated in the former part of my journal, we shipped Irishmen in Hobartown, and Englishmen in Vasse. During the time they have been aboard we have been thoroughly convinced of their utter uselessness—their indolence preventing their acquiring sufficient insight into a seaman’s duties to render them a useful part of the ship’s company; and our captain was anxious to get rid of them. On the first liberty-day, two, whom we shipped at Vasse, overstaid their liberty, and were informed by the captain that he would not receive them aboard again. On the same day, one, whom we shipped in Hobartown, was discharged for inability to do duty. W. B. Wood, whom we brought from New Bedford, was also discharged sick. Joseph A. Lewis and John Cunningham, discharged sick, and sent to the hospital. Wood and Cunningham were both of our original crew; the remaining one, whom we shipped at Vasse, deserted. A seaman, shipped in Hobartown, was discharged with the consent of the contracting parties; one, shipped in Vasse, in January, 1857, and who, during the time he has been aboard, has been acting as fourth mate, was discharged with his own consent; and one, whom we got in Hobartown, is in jail—so that we are ten less in number than when we dropped anchor on the day of our entering the harbor. In their places we have shipped five men, all of whom are Americans, and have been whaling before. I said that we had shipped five, but two of the five came aboard without any agreement with the captain. These two were policemen, who had become disgusted with wearing her majesty’s button, and on their hinting their wish to get afloat again, our boys readily offered to assist them. Besides these, we shipped a lad of fifteen as steerage-boy.
Although we had thus replaced the ten with but five men, we found, as soon as we got into blue water, that we had a much more effective crew than we had had at any time during the preceding sixteen months. The ten discharged and deserted comprised all the useless material in the ship—the foreign portion of them, in fact, being worse than useless; for, together with their incapacity, they had a propensity to growl, and made both themselves and those with whom they were associated uncomfortable. Their thievishness, too, had still adhered to them, notwithstanding their penal servitude. One of them, we discovered after leaving port, had on his dismissal carried away with him a considerable portion of the cooper’s tools. This was Leonard, professedly a cooper by trade.
CHAPTER XIII.
At two o’clock in the afternoon of October 11th we weighed our anchor, and, with a fair wind, stood out to sea. Twenty-four hours afterwards we sighted a school of sperm whales, consisting of cows and calves. After some little manœuvering, we lowered away all four boats; but the whales going to windward, the captain and mate, after an hour’s chase, deemed farther pursuit useless, and returned aboard. The other boats, however, continued the chase; and at about 5 P. M. the third mate’s boatsteerer fastened, killing the whale with his irons. Whilst hauling up to him, the line became entangled in the jaws of another whale, and was severed. The third mate then lanced and killed three more; but night coming on, and the weather becoming rugged, he was unable to save any of them, and obliged to return to the ship empty-handed. The mate, in the interim, had fastened to a cow, and killed her and her calf, both of which were saved; but it was midnight before we had them secured alongside. These two were the most diminutive whales it has been our fortune to capture. The cow, which was the first female of the species we have had alongside, was about thirty-five feet in length, and of much inferior bulk to the male. Her skin was smoother, glossier, and of a deeper color; and, taken altogether, she was a much handsomer fish than the bull sperm-whale. The calf was about fifteen feet long—lacking none of the peculiarities of the older fish, except the teeth, which as yet were not cut; but on getting the jaw on deck we penetrated the gum, and found perfectly-shaped teeth, about an inch and a half in length. The following day we cut them in, and tried them out. They yielded, altogether, a trifle over twenty barrels of oil.
After taking these whales, we ran several degrees to the eastward, and spent a week in cruising, during which we saw whales three times—in each case going to windward eyes out, without giving us the shadow of a chance to lower for them. We retraced our course, and on the 23d passed Mauritius. The following day we coasted along the Isle Reunion, or Bourbon—an island under the dominion of France, and so beautifully fertile as to be called the Garden of the Indian Ocean. From hence the Mauritians obtain most of their agricultural supplies, and quite a fleet of coasting vessels is employed in the carrying trade between the two islands. Some idea may be formed of the amount of this trade when I quote the remark of one of the citizens of Port Louis, that, “were it not for the productions of Bourbon, all the inhabitants of Port Louis would starve to death.” All the tillage and other laborious work on this island is performed by the natives of Madagascar, introduced here by the French, under the same apprentice-system as that practised by Great Britain.
The island, like Mauritius, is composed principally of very high land, some points being elevated many thousand feet above the level of the sea. A volcano, for the name of which I am at a loss, towers far above all. It being a moonlight night when we passed, we saw but little of its eruption, which is continual—lighting up the surface of the ocean for miles. This island has since been made the French Naval Depot for the Indian Ocean.
There is no good harbor on this island, which, together with the fact of there being no resident American consul, is the reason for the rarity of whaleships visiting it.
The three islands, Bourbon, Mauritius, and Rodrique, were first taken possession of by the French, and for many years were known as the French East India Islands. During the wars between France and Great Britain, Mauritius was the naval depot for the former power, from which her cruisers were fitted out for the annoyance of the East India commerce of the enemy; but during the time of Napoleon, (when England’s operations were restricted to the ocean,) as an offset to the conqueror’s successes on land, the wooden walls of Old England were busily employed in making captures of the various colonial possessions of France, both in the East and West Indies. Many of these, subsequent to the negotiations for peace, were restored. But Mauritius was too important a place to let slip, after being once occupied; wherefore a British regiment became part of its population, and the meteor-flag of England waved over its battlements. This group is often called the Mascarenha Isles.
On Sunday (October the 31st) we spoke the ship Brewster, of Mattapoissett. A few days before, she had a man killed by a sperm whale: the officer in command of the boat having been foolhardy enough to run on the fish whilst in his flurry, his amidship oar’s man was instantly swept from time into eternity by a stroke of its flukes; but, fortunately, no others of the crew were injured.
October the 25th we sighted the southern part of the Island of Madagascar, which was to be our cruising-ground for the next two months. It is anything but a comfortable latitude to make a prolonged stay in; for, on an average, once every twenty-four hours, violent rain-storms of from one to four hours’ duration thoroughly drench the crew and vessel. These squalls are attended with any quantity of thunder and lightning, which adds very much to the disagreeableness of their visitations.