FORECASTLE AND CABIN 57 



The captain (quite an unusual circumstance) and one mate 

 were Portuguese j while the three other mates were natives 

 of New Bedford/ 



On a third large vessel the complement of twenty-four 

 hands was made up of one professional gambler, six factory 

 hands from New England mill towns, one Boston school-boy, 

 two lawyers' clerks, one runaway from his father's counting- 

 house in New York, one American who had sailed in both the 

 navy and the merchant service, one New York "butcher-boy," 

 six boys from the farms of New England and New York, one 

 canal-boat man, and four Portuguese.^ 



Though greatly outnumbered in this flood of foreign ele- 

 mients, the Yankee of the New England seaboard retained a 

 clear supremacy in the more skilled and responsible phases of 

 the industry. He was shrewd, thrifty, self-reliant, ingenious, 

 persevering, hard-working, reasonably intelligent, and, if 

 necessary, courageous and daring. But this whaling paragon 

 appeared to advantage only when in action. If at sea he was 

 the personification of trained and alert activity, on shore he 

 often became a caricature of awkwardness and ungainliness. 

 Thus a typical "smart" harpooner was described by a mid- 

 century writer as a man of "sallow cheek, with hands tanned 

 a deep enduring saffron color" j very round-shouldered as a 

 result of countless hours at the oars 3 listless in movement, 

 careless in speech, and uncertain of gazej obviously ill at ease 

 in unaccustomed "shore togs"j and radiating a general air of 

 shabbiness fully borne out by his dress. This consisted of 

 a pair of rough shoes, with the ends of the shoe-strings trail- 

 ing on the ground as he walked j a pair of trousers with several 

 inches of gray woolen socks exposed at the bottom and a por- 

 tion of red flannel drawers at the top 5 a shirt entirely open in 

 front except where it was held in place by a rusty black hand- 

 kerchief, which in turn was fastened at the throat by a large 

 ring made of whalebone inlaid with mother-of-pearl j a cut- 

 away coat of summer-cloth 5 and a small glazed cap. 



But perhaps the most striking attribute of the typical whale- 

 man was his youth fulness. Old men were virtually unknown 



^ Beane, J. F., "From Forecastle to Cabin," pp. 19-24. 

 8 Nordhoflr, Charles, "Life on the Ocean," p. 46. 



