Old Jack

by William Henry Giles Kingston

As I have said, I never saw anyone learn so rapidly as he did everything which came in his way. Before six weeks had passed, there was very little remaining for me to teach him. Every knot and splice he mastered in a week or so, and could make them as neatly as I did. I don’t think he had ever before been up a ship’s mast; but from the first day he was constantly aloft, examining the rigging, and seeing where all the ropes led to. I had shown him how to reef and furl sails, and the very first squall we had, he was among the foremost aloft to lay-out on the yard. His hands went as readily as those of the oldest seaman into the tar-bucket; and so, though when he came aboard they were fair and soft, they soon became as brown and hard as any of ours. With the theory of seamanship he was already well acquainted—such as the way by which the wind acts on the sails, the resistance offered by the water on the hull, and so on; so that, when any manoeuvre was performed, he at once knew the reason of it. It is not too much to say that before we crossed the line he was as good a seaman, in many respects, as most of the hands on board; and certainly he would have made a better officer than any of us forward.

We were bound round Cape Horn, and Captain Carr intended to try his fortune on the borders of the Antarctic ice-fields, in the neighbourhood of New Zealand and the coast of Japan, among the East India Islands; and those wide-spreading groups, among which are found the Friendly Islands, the Navigators, the Feejees, the New Hebrides, the Loyalty Islands, and New Caledonia, and known under the general name of Polynesia. Perhaps other places might be visited, so that we had a pretty wide range over which our voyage was likely to extend. People at home are little aware, in general, of the great number of places a South-Seaman visits in the course of a three or four years’ whaling-voyage; and certainly in no other trade is a lad of a roving disposition so likely to be able to gratify his tastes.

The first place we touched at was Porto Praya, in the island of Saint Jago, one of the Cape de Verds, our captain being anxious to fill up with water, and to get for the crew a supply of fruit and vegetables and poultry, which are here to be procured in abundance. Sailors, however, are apt to forget that fruit, at all events, is not to be found all the year round; and I have seen people very indignant because the fruit-trees were not bearing their ripe produce at the very moment they were honouring the place by their presence, and heartily abuse previous visitors for having deceived them.

I was one of the boat’s crew which went on shore to get provisions, and we were half pulled to pieces, as we entered the town, by men, women, and boys—brown, yellow, and black—chattering away in a jargon of half-African half-Portuguese, as they thrust before our eyes a dozen chickens a few weeks old, all strung together; baskets of eggs, or tamarinds, or dates, or bananas, and bunches of luscious grapes, and pointed to piles of cocoa-nuts, oranges, or limes, heaped up on cocoa-nut leaves close at hand. The place seemed filled with beggars, pigs, monkeys, slatternly females, small donkeys, and big oxen; dirty soldiers and idle sailors of all the shades and colours which distinguish the human race, dressed in handkerchiefs, and shirts, and jackets, and petticoats of every hue of the rainbow—the only thing they had in common being their dirt. Indeed, dirt predominates throughout the streets and dwellings, and in every direction. The houses, though mean, from being white-washed deceive a stranger at a little distance as to the cleanliness of the place. From a spirited sketch Newman made of the scene I have described, I here discovered his talent for drawing.

We next touched at the Falkland Islands, then uninhabited, except by a few Gauchos, who had crossed from South America with a herd of cattle, which have since increased to a prodigious number, as they thrive well on the tussac grass, the chief natural production of the country. The fresh beef afforded by a couple of oxen was very acceptable, and contributed to keep us in health.

Even before crossing the line, we had been on the look-out for whales, and all the boats and gear were in readiness to be lowered, and to go in chase at a moment’s notice. Everybody on board a whaler must be wide-awake, and prepared for all emergencies, or the ship may chance to return home with an empty hold. In no position in which a seaman can be placed is it so necessary to belong to the try fraternity. If whales are not to be found on one fishing-ground, the ship must move to another; and if not seen there, she must sail on till she chases them round the globe. So if, when a whale is seen, the harpooner misses his aim, and the fish dives and swims a mile or more off, he must watch and watch till she rises, and try again. This try principle should be followed in all the concerns of life. Whatever ought to be done, try and do it; never suppose a work cannot be done till it has been tried—perseverance in duty is absolutely necessary. Its neglect must bring ruin.

We had a look-out at each mast-head, and one of the mates, or the boatswain, and sometimes the captain, was stationed at the fore-topgallant yard-arm. Sharp eyes were, therefore, constantly watching every part of the ocean, as our ship floated over it to the very verge of the horizon in search of the well-known spout of the whales. Great improvements have taken place since the time I speak of in the apparatus employed in the whale-fishery. I am told that guns are now used with which to send the harpoon into the whale’s body, while in my time it was driven by sheer strength and dexterity of arm, as the harpooner stood up at his full height in the bow of the tossing whale-boat, close to the huge monster, one blow of whose tail is sufficient to dash her into atoms.

We were, it must be understood, in search of the sperm whale, which is a very different animal from what is called the black or Greenland whale, whose chief habitation is towards the North Polar regions, though found in other parts of the ocean. There are several sorts of whales, but I will not attempt to give a learned dissertation on them. I should not, indeed, have thought much about the matter, had not Newman called my attention to it. I should have hunted them, and killed them, and boiled down their blubber, with the notion that we had the produce of so many fish on board. Now naturalists, as he told me, assert that whales should not be called fish. They swim and live in the water, and so do fish; they have no legs, nor have fish; but their implements of locomotion are more like arms than fins. But whales do what no fish do: they bring forth their young alive—they suckle them, and tend them with the fondest affection in their youth. They have warm blood, and a double circulation; and they breathe the atmospheric air by true lungs. The tail of a fish is placed vertically, or up and down; that of a whale, horizontally—that is to say, its broadest part is parallel with the surface of the water. The tail of a large whale is upwards of 20 feet wide, and with a superficies of 100 square feet, and it is moved by muscles of immense strength. This will give some idea of the terrific force with which it can strike a boat. I have, indeed, heard of instances where a whale has stove in a ship’s bottom, and caused her to founder, with little time for the crew to escape. Their progressive movement is effected entirely by the tail; sometimes, when wishing to advance leisurely, by an oblique lateral and downward impulse, first on one side and then on the other, just as a boat is sent through the water when sculled with an oar; but when rushing through the deep at their greatest speed, they strike the water, now upwards and now downwards, with a rapid motion and vast force. As whales breathe the atmospheric air, they must come to the surface frequently for a fresh supply. They have then to throw out the water which has got into their mouths when feeding. This they do by closing a valve leading to the nasal passages, and forcing it by means of air through the blow-hole placed in the upper part of the head. It is this necessity of whales for breathing at the surface which enables man to make them his prey, in spite of their immense strength, while their spouts point out to him the place where they are to be found.

The remarks I have made apply in common to the two chief sorts of whales, but the Greenland whale is a very different animal from the sperm whale, of which we were in search. The Greenland whale, (Balaena mysticetus), is also called the common, true, or whale-bone whale. I remember once, in a man-of-war, falling in with a dead whale in a perfect calm. We towed it alongside, but so ignorant was everybody on board of natural history, that no one knew where the whale-bone was to be found. At the cost of great trouble, with a horrible odour to our noses, we cut out a jaw-bone; which was perfectly valueless, except to make the front of a summer-house for our commander; and we then let our prize go with its rich contents, and glad enough we were to get rid of it.

The Greenland whale is less in size than the sperm—its length being about 60 feet. The head occupies about a third of the entire length. It is narrow above, and broad, flat, and rounded beneath, so as to allow it to move rapidly under the water. The body is largest about the middle, and tapers suddenly towards the tail. The general colour is a blackish-grey, with part of the lower jaw, and throat, and belly white. The lips are five or six feet high, the eyes very small, and the external opening of the ears scarcely perceptible. The pectoral fins or arms are not long, and are placed about two feet behind the angle of the lips. The black whale has no teeth; but from the upper palate and jaw there hang down perpendicularly numerous parallel laminae—the baleen, or whale-bone, as it is called. (Footnote: The baleen or whale-bone I have described forms a most valuable portion of the produce afforded by the black whale, although not so valuable as the oil extracted from the same animal.) These filaments fill up the whole of the cavity of the mouth, and form a most complete strainer, so that only the most minute animals can enter. This is necessary, as the swallow is too small to admit even the smallest fish. When a black whale feeds, it throws up millions of small animals at a time with its thick lower lip, into the straining apparatus I have described; and as they are scarcely perceptible to the naked eye, when its vast size is considered some slight notion may be formed of the prodigious number it must consume at meal.