This estimate would give the sum of 90,000l., or, omitting the first voyage, 87,000l. for the amount of this individual skill and enterprise, divided, in the shape of profits, among the owners embarked in the general enterprise! On another ground of calculation, guided by the proportion of expenses in certain known cases, the expenses were taken at two-fifths the produce, which would reduce the profits (probably too low) to about 80,000l.
In setting forth this result as very remarkable, it is with reference, it should be observed, to the instrumentality and capital employed. It is no uncommon thing for a sum like this, or much greater than this, to be realized in commercial enterprises; but, in such cases, there are generally many instruments and a large capital employed in the business. But here, under the one individual direction, there was but one ship employed, involving an investment of capital of from 6000l. to 12,700l., or, on an average, not exceeding 9000l., and this small investment yielding, through a series of about thirty years, no less a sum than 3000l. a year, being at the rate of 33⅓ per cent per annum on the capital employed.
Section V.—Unusual Capture of Walruses.
This incident, which belongs to the period of the Fame’s voyages, is here introduced, in conclusion of the general series of my Father’s Northern adventures, as presenting something of novelty in the modern whale-fishery.
The walrus or sea-horse, as the whalers designate it, is one of those extraordinary animals so prevalent in the Arctic regions, in which, like the whale, are comprised the mixed characteristics of the inhabitants of sea and land. The body, generally, from its extensive conformity, might be supposed to be that of a huge seal; but the head is peculiar, approaching the nearest, but only in rude and diminutive resemblance, to that of the elephant, as being somewhat square-faced, with a hard and massive skull, scarcely pervious to a musket-ball, and with two large external tusks pointing downward. The fore paws may be compared to webbed hands; the hind feet, in their ordinary position when at rest, form an expansive tail. The skin, covered with short hair, is of remarkable substance, so as to produce a strong, but rather porous leather, of about an inch in thickness. A thin layer of fat lies beneath the skin.
As met with on the coast of Spitzbergen, this animal is found of the length, ordinarily, of twelve to fifteen feet, and eight to ten feet in circumference. But specimens elsewhere found on the coasts of some Arctic countries, are represented as extending to twenty feet in length. The Spitzbergen animal, full grown, is about the bulk of an ox; its weight, as I have estimated it, being from fifteen to twenty-four hundredweight. But a twenty-feet walrus could hardly weigh less than three tons.
Though the tusks, the fat, and the skins, have a fair commercial value, the animal is never sought after as a special object of enterprise by the whalers, except incidentally, and very few are taken. Large captures, indeed, were occasionally made of sea-horses, in the early periods of adventure after the discovery of Spitzbergen; but these animals have seldom been met with by our modern whalers in any considerable number together, and their capture, consequently, has very rarely exceeded half-a-dozen in a voyage. No summary mode of killing them, indeed, had been prevalent or understood by which due advantage might be taken of any extraordinary opportunity. If met with in the water, where they might be attacked with muskets or lances, the chance of capture was but small, as the wounded animal would generally dive and escape. Formerly, I remember, harpoons of a small kind were provided expressly for the sea-horse; but with the whale harpoon, now only used, the tough skin of the creature is hard to be penetrated. If met with on shore or on ice, lances and muskets were more available, and in such positions the principal, though scanty, captures of modern times were wont to be made.
My Father’s enterprise, therefore, in the case now referred to, was the more remarkable, not only because of the unusual number captured, but because of the novelty adopted in the mode of attack, by which mainly the success was gained.
Being on the coast of Spitzbergen, in the Fame, in the summer of 1819, when no incumbrance was met with from ice, my Father was induced to stretch into one of the fine picturesque inlets with which this remarkable region abounds, Magdalena Bay, where an extraordinary sight on the beach attracted his attention. Hundreds, if not thousands, of animals, which on their near approach proved to be sea-horses, were seen congregated on the sloping shore, thickly huddled together, basking in the bright sunshine and genial warmth of the sheltered position.
No one on board having ever seen anything of the kind before, all were in a state of excitement, which soon became naturally diverted into ardour for conflict and capture. Measures were speedily concerted by which a due harvest might, if possible, be reaped out of this wonderfully stocked field. Muskets, evidently, could do little, as the vast herd, on being alarmed, would doubtless hurry into the sea, before the discharged arms could be reloaded, and harpoons could be of no avail. Lances and whale-knives, however, promised a better instrumentality, and especially one kind of the latter, the tail-knife, which in reality proved the most effective of all. This instrument, designed for making perforations in the tail and fins of the captured whale, when preparing to be towed to the ship, constitutes a portion of the furniture of every whale-boat, and consists of a nearly three-feet straight sharp-pointed blade, with a wooden handle of like measure. It resembles the blade of a cutlass, out of which weapon, indeed, this kind of knife is frequently constructed.