86 THE AMERICAN WHALEMAN 



Now and then, too, a Pacific sperm whaler would shorten 

 her voyage by returning without a full cargo. But this was 

 a drastic measure, to be resorted to only in extremis^ and sel- 

 dom considered justified except in cases of shipwreck, mutiny, 

 or the loss of many men and of several boats. Yankee thrift 

 and perseverance, as well as professional pride so strong that 

 it became virtually an unwritten law, demanded that a vessel 

 remain out until her casks were filled. And filled they were, 

 though it required four years or more! The whaling captain 

 who dared to return to his home port with neither a "full ship" 

 nor an impregnable excuse was a brave skipper indeed. For 

 the Spartan mother who told her son to return with his shield 

 or upon it would have found many spiritual followers in the 

 ranks of whaling owners and officers, who expected a master 

 to come back with a "full ship" or not to come back at all. 



But whether a vessel had been gone two years or four years, 

 her arrival was an occasion of great excitement and much re- 

 joicing. Lookout stations, making use of a semaphore tele- 

 graph system, often enabled the return to be announced several 

 hours before the whaler herself dropped anchor in the harbor. 

 In Nantucket, as soon as the vessel's name was ascertained, the 

 small boys of the town vied with each other for the privilege 

 of being the first to inform the captain's wife, as well as for 

 the ownership of the coveted silver dollar which was the tra- 

 ditional reward for bringing such long-awaited news. This 

 speedy messenger service, together with the unfurling of the 

 national flag, soon placed the tidings on every tongue. 



In the smaller ports the entire community turned out to 

 welcome the returned wanderers. The townsfolk were eager 

 with news of what had transpired since the last batch of letters 

 went out. They had marriages, births, and deaths to an- 

 nounce, and they had many choice bits of town gossip to re- 

 tail. And they bartered their homely tidings for the colorful 

 and exotic yarns of the whalemen. There were tales of chance 

 meetings in strange seas and stranger ports, of daring feats of 

 the chase, of miraculous escapes, of wild and picturesque ad- 

 ventures, of heavy weather, of tragic sequels to encounters with 

 "ugly" whales, and of shipmates who would never return. 



