CHAPTER VI 

 THE WHALEMAN ASHORE 



THE evolution of the American whaleman left a 

 record of ever-decreasing periods of time spent on 

 shore. From the two-day absences of seventeenth 

 century boat-whaling to the fifty-month voyages 

 of post-Civil War sperm whalers, a "full ship" demanded 

 steadily increasing stretches of unremitting vigilance and de- 

 votion. More and more the whaleman^s life was consecrated 

 to the sea. He worked and lived on the water: he made oc- 

 casional visits, sometimes brief, sometimes extended, to the 

 land. This amphibian existence inevitably colored and con- 

 ditioned his whole outlook; and it is impossible to understand 

 him or his manner of life without making generous allowance 

 for the physical and psychological changes wrought by the 

 none-too-subtle alchemy of the sea. 



A whaling voyage was a venture not to be entered upon 

 lightly, nor terminated speedily. A report made to the Secre- 

 tary of the Navy in 1828 showed that during the years 1815- 

 1824, inclusive, the average length of 178 cruises had been 

 twenty-nine months.^ And figures compiled by the Whale- 

 men^s Shi^p-ping List, the authentic organ of the industry, made 

 it clear that from 1842 to 1857, inclusive, the average ab- 

 sence of 865 sperm whalers was no less than forty-two months 

 per voyage.^ Three and one-half years of steady cruising in 

 order to fill a single vessel with oil! And with the passing 



iThis "Report on Islands Discovered by Whalers in the Pacific," made by- 

 Reynolds, J. N., was transmitted on September 24, 1828, and printed in 1835 ^s 

 House Executive Document III, No. 105, 23rd Congress, 2nd Session. 



2 In January of each year, beginning in 1843, this publication printed in- 

 valuable statistical summaries of the industry's progress which had been col- 

 lected throughout the preceding year. 



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