APPENDIX 319 



Note on Appendix C. 



The figures included in the five tables of this appendix were taken directly 

 from the original manuscript crew-accounts of the four vessels concerned. 

 All voyages were made from New Bedford, and the crew-accounts are now in 

 the New Bedford Public Library. The members of this particular quartet 

 were chosen because they were well-known and representative whalers, be- 

 cause their accounts were available for several consecutive voyages, and be- 

 cause, taken together, their voyages covered the decades of the industry's 

 greatest prosperity and of its early decline. Six hundred and eighty-one 

 individual accounts yielded figures indicating the cash balances received or 

 due; and three hundred and two individual accounts showed the amounts of 

 the gross lays which were payable. Only accounts belonging to the more 

 stable whalemen, who completed an entire voyage or a substantial portion of 

 one, were included. Certain others were omitted because they involved factors 

 which, though by no means uncommon in the industry, were hardly character- 

 istic of the majority of whalemen. Such excluded accounts, numbering well 

 over one hundred in the aggregate, belonged to men who had deserted, who 

 had died during the early stages of a cruise, who had been on board for 

 only a few weeks, or who had received monthly wages in place of, or in addi- 

 tion to, the more familiar device of the lay. These figures, if used, would 

 have lowered materially the average earnings secured. But since the object 

 of the analysis was to arrive at certain suggestive averages arising from the 

 earnings of the ordinary whaleman, who was neither a mere transient nor 

 unusually unfortunate or unscrupulous, the lowest rungs of the whaling account 

 ladder were omitted. Only in the accounts of the Fabius (Table V) were the 

 figures for all hands, regardless of circumstances, brought into the computa- 

 tions. 



The proper interpretation of any average figures for the whaling industry, 

 however, demands that the averages be accepted as suggestive rather than 

 definitive. In an occupation which was subject to so many wide fluctuations 

 it was practically impossible to secure figures which would yield an average 

 of meticulous accuracy. And averages dealing with earnings were particularly 

 treacherous because of the numerous and complicated ramifications of the lay 

 system. (See the chapters on Earnings and the Lay, and Debits and Credits, 

 for a detailed discussion of the many qualifications and abuses of this peculiar 

 scheme of wage payment). Nevertheless the results yielded by hundreds of 

 individual accounts, spread over thirty separate voyages, and extending over a 

 period of forty-three years, are not without some significance. Particularly 

 interesting are the median figures for lays and balances. It will be noted that 

 the median cash balance for 175 foremast hands, shipped during twelve voyages 

 of the Marcella, was actually a minus amount! And sixty-three hands on the 

 Minerva, bj' a curious stroke of fortune, yielded a median figure which was 

 exactly zero; while the median balance received by 85 hands on the James 

 Maury proved to be the relatively munificent sum of $103.20. 



