FORECASTLE AND CABIN $$ 



or mere nicknames such as Joe, Jim, Sam, or Jackj and often 

 they were christened facetiously, and became known as Spun- 

 yarn, Peter Owyhee, John Hawaii, Henry Second, Jim Kan- 

 acker, Ned Buntline, Bill Bowhead, Jim Maui, or William 

 Bowline. If the native names were short and easily pro- 

 nounceable, however, they were frequently retained} and con- 

 sequently the whaling account-books contain such euphonious 

 names as Kama, Kahana, Manu, Kavna, Kaune, Kohopu, 

 Kalua, Pahia, Nahina, and Nakauna. 



The confusion of names, nationalities, and races in the whal- 

 ing forecastles was rendered still more pronounced by two 

 other factors. Some foreign whalemen voluntarily adopted 

 English surnames, or Anglicized their own names, as part of 

 a naturalization process. And many other hands, in order to 

 avoid a variety of undesirable contingencies, assumed fictitious 

 names upon going to sea. Charles R. Tucker, one of the lead- 

 ing whaling merchants of New Bedford, wrote under date 

 of 7 Mo. 24, 1837: " — it has of late become very fashionable 

 for Sailors to assume some fictitious name by which they 

 ship and are known by before they sail — and thus may de- 

 prive their friends from tracing them." He might have 

 added another fact which was even more significant, — that 

 shipping on a whaler under an assumed name was one of the 

 most effective means of evading pursuit and capture by en- 

 emies and by officers of the law. 



More intimate views of specific crews brought out striking 

 high-lights in this picture of strange cosmopolitanism. Con- 

 trasting types and clashing personalities were everywhere. 

 The forecastle of one whaler, for instance, contained during 

 a single voyage the following kaleidoscopic group: Bill Mann, 

 "son of Ed. Mann, sail-maker. New York" — a blustering, 

 hard-drinking tar who knew a little Shakespeare as a result 

 of playing minor roles on the stage j Jack Smith, a young Eng- 

 lishman, a kleptomaniac and an inveterate liar, but generous 



and fearless} Barzilla MacF , a typical "down-easter" of 



nineteen years, awkward, lean, unselfish, imperturbable, with a 

 quaint sense of humor and a keen desire, easily explained, 

 to be back on the farm j Tom Vernon, a Philadelphia youth of 

 some education who had been a hardware clerk before he had 



