58 THE AMERICAN WHALEMAN 



at sea J and even middle-aged men were rare except amongst 

 the masters and mates. Voyage after voyage whaling ves- 

 sels sailed with crews whose average ages were little in excess 

 of twenty years. It was exceptional to find a man of thirty 

 in a forecastle J while countless hands were still in their 'teens. 

 In one instance only the captain and one seaman, out of a 

 crew of twenty-nine, were over twenty-six years of age. The 

 ship Acushnetj when it sailed from Fairhaven on December 

 30, 1840, with Herman Melville as one of the foremast hands, 

 carried a relatively mature crew 5 for six men had reached the 

 age of thirty, and only four were under twenty. 



Nor is it surprising that the whalers were manned so largely 

 by young men. The life of the whalemen was one which 

 involved adventure, hardship, daring, danger — experiences 

 which have always been the birthright of youth. And in 

 whaling, in particular, these experiences were so dearly bought 

 that only the recklessness and ignorance of youth would re- 

 fuse to count the cost. Two or three years before the Civil 

 War the American consul at Paita stated in an official report 

 that many hundreds of young men left the United States an- 

 nually on whaling vessels and never returned because of the 

 vicissitudes and degradation which they encountered in the 

 Pacific. Some served as tributes to Davy Jones j some left 

 their bones to rot on a tropical island j others bartered their 

 manhood and will-power for the licentious and dissipated se- 

 ductions of the South Seasj and many fell victims to the bru- 

 talities, hardships, and dangers of the industry itself. 



A logical corollary of such extreme youth was found in 

 lack of experience. The percentage of green hands carried by 

 many whalers was truly astounding. In one vessel which left 

 New Bedford in 1832 only four of the fourteen men in the 

 forecastle had ever been to sea before. On another voyage, 

 which began three decades later, fifteen of the eighteen men 

 before the mast were rated as green hands. Joseph Grinnell, 

 Member of Congress from New Bedford, stated on the floor 

 of the House that on January i, 1844, there were 17,594 men 

 in the whaling crews of the United States, and that one-half of 

 this number ranked as green hands.^ This figure of fifty per 



8 This speech, made on May i, 1844, was reprinted in the form of a pamphlet 



