After turning the whale up, we took him alongside our ship. When ships’ boats in company take a whale, it is customary, either to give one party the head and the body to the other, or else to release the ship whose boat fastened first from all further trouble with the prize: her companion taking the whale alongside, cutting him in, trying him out, and then either stowing down, or rafting half the oil to her companion. In case she stows it down, one-half of the barrels are branded with the other vessel’s name, and credited to her account. In the present case, Captain Perkins of the Plover wishing to make through us a consignment to the owners, we took the whale, and a boat’s crew of his assisted us to cut in. After trying out, one-half the oil, amounting to forty-six barrels, was stowed between decks in casks brought from his ship for the purpose and duly branded. We engaged to carry it home as freight, charging six cents per gallon for the carriage. We had also twelve hundred pounds of right whalebone on freight, from the ship Martha, of Fairhaven. This freight-business pays no one but the owners, and perhaps the captain: the proportion of it that any one else gets being so small as to make it a trifling object.
On the same day that we stowed, we gammoned the barque Iowa, of Fairhaven. She had been very successful, having filled up with humpbacked oil at the Rosemary Islands. She was but a short time from Mauritius, and brought us the sad news of the demise of John Cunningham, of New Bedford, whom we had left at the hospital in Mauritius. The cause of his death was to some degree enveloped in mystery. It appears that on the day previous to his decease he applied to the resident physician of the hospital for a discharge, stating as his reason for it the many deaths that were daily occurring in the same ward in which he was (the dysentery having assumed a fatal type just after our leaving the port). The physician told him that he was loath to discharge him as yet, for his stricture was not entirely removed; but, after some urging on Cunningham’s part, the doctor directed him to apply on the following day, and he would make out his discharge. The morning following his attendants found him dead in his bed, without an external sign to show why the spirit had fled. The physicians, at a loss to account for so sudden and unexpected a termination, held a post-mortem examination upon his body, and finding all the organs free from disease, they gave in as their opinion that he had died from fright. Poor fellow!—his health aboard ship had been almost uninterruptedly good, and he bade fair to live as long as any of us. But Providence, for His own wise purposes, saw fit to call him away from life to (I trust) a better and happier sphere; and although in this world he will no more hear the storm whistling through the rigging, or the sudden boom of the tempest-tossed ocean, yet I hope that he
“Shall find pleasant weather,
When He who all commands
Shall give, to call Life’s crew together,
The word to pipe all hands.”
This young man was the eldest son of a widow in New Bedford. His father was for years engaged in whaling, and some eight years since, whilst master of the ship Florida, was drowned in the surf, off the Island of Rorotongu, in the Pacific Ocean; and now his poor relict is called upon to weep over the untimely end of her eldest boy, in a foreign hospital, unattended by a single friend to soothe his dying-pillow. He whom she looked upon as the stay of her declining years, like her husband, engaged in the same perilous pursuit, and died thousands of miles from home, under painfully afflicting circumstances.
He was the third who has been called away out of our bonnie crew, who in July, 1855, sailed from New Bedford full of life and hope: all at that date feeling assured of returning with a well laden ship and full crew—with stores of curiosities, gleaned from foreign ports, as keepsakes for the loved ones at home: all were sanguine, and certainly expected to make a good voyage and return by July, 1858.
But “man purposes—God disposes;” as a proof of which, let us review our relative positions now, and then. One of our men was discharged, sick, in King George’s Sound; from thence he went to Melbourne, since which we have heard of his death. Our second mate was discharged at Vasse, went home as mate of the barque Pamelia, and is now, I hope, in the full enjoyment of every blessing, surrounded by an affectionate family. Three of our original number deserted, and through the example and influence of evil-minded associates, allowed themselves to be made parties to the origination of a false report, according to which our vessel had foundered on a tempestuous night, and the greater number of the crew set afloat in open boats off the inhospitable coast of New Zealand. Poor John Walters has gone to his long home! the blue waves of the South Pacific having closed over him whilst in the discharge of his duty. We learn from the Iowa’s report, that another one of our original crew, whom we discharged at Port Louis, has shipped aboard the barque Agnes, of New York, bound to Batavia for a cargo, thence homeward. And, lastly, Cunningham too is gone! Whilst we, who are left, have been forty months from home, and are still battling with the ocean’s elements—alas! in pocket, poor indeed, and hopefully longing for home.
We also learned from the Iowa, that the New Yorker, whom we left at Port Louis, had been discharged from the Hospital, perfectly recovered; and that he, together with an Irishman, also discharged there by us, had solicited and obtained employment in the police-force of that port.
The rest of those whom we left at Port Louis, never having done anything to entitle them to remembrance, we neither know nor care what has become of them, with the exception of our late fourth mate, who deserves mention singly on account of his utter uselessness. From the same source, we learn that he shipped, and left Mauritius in the barque Eagle, as boatsteerer. In this new position he will, no doubt, act with about as much credit to himself, and receive as unenviable a name and reputation, as he did among us.
A few days subsequent to the above date we saw and gammoned the barque Coimbra. She had sailed from Mauritius a few days after our leaving; but, owing to the sickness of her captain, was forced to return, and remain ten additional days. The captain of this vessel, quite an original, hailed from New Brunswick, and was a veritable Blue Nose—long, lank, and parsimonious. He has had during the voyage three different crews, who for some reason or other left him after a cruise or two. Early in the voyage a veto was put by the authorities of Vasse upon his entering any port on the coast of New Holland, owing to his having carried a prisoner away in his vessel. This prisoner, who was a thief, doing a good business at Freemantle, report says, paid one thousand dollars for the accommodation. The captain of the Columbus had little or no trouble with him—merely carrying him outside, and then transferring him to a merchant-ship. Being debarred from entering these ports, where the cost of recruiting ships is comparatively trifling, and having kept his crew out of port as long as a wholesome dread of the scurvy would allow, he, with an eye to economy, made the following address to his men, to wit: “Boys, I would like to go into a good port, where we could all enjoy ourselves. Such a port is Hobartown; but the limits set to my expenses by my owners will not allow of my indulging in such an outlay as lying with the ship in that harbor would occasion; but, if you by subscription pay a certain sum apiece out of your earnings, I will go there.” Several of the ship’s company assenting, a document was drawn up, and most of them attached their names: agreeing to contribute towards the port-expenses sums varying in amount from two to twenty dollars. One of the foremast hands demurring to this arrangement, the old fellow told him that he would get it out of him some way or other; and so he did, by persisting in tormenting him until his victim was glad to pay the two dollars, and thereby gain somewhat of an exemption from further bad treatment.
This is not a solitary case of such sharp business-operations. A certain captain once boasted aboard our barque, that by his finesse in settling with those whom he discharged in Hobartown he had made the clear sum of two thousand dollars for his owners; in other words, that by misrepresenting the quantity of oil taken, he had cheated his crew out of so much money. A most creditable boast! Of a piece with such conduct was also his mode of serving out meat. A barrel was broken out, brought on deck, and divided into so many portions as were equivalent to his idea of a day’s allowance (which was about one-third of that prescribed by law). It was then tied together, and strung up on deck; whence if a remnant of it disappeared, it was charged to the steward and cook.