THE WHALEMAN ASHORE 105 



bing and defrauding the sailor at every turn. Both amazing 

 and revolting were the experiences of many men caught in the 

 toils of this system. "The pages of a Smollet, himself a sailor, 

 and drawing from the life, might furnish us with truths so 

 startling and revolting, that the reader of the present day re- 

 gards them as exaggerations." ^^ From the moment they set 

 foot on shore until their money was gone, the returned whaling 

 hands were subjected to multifold temptations and encouraged 

 to indulge in every form of vice and dissipation. Divorcing 

 the seaman from his money became a fine art, practiced with 

 striking success by experts who were parts of a systematized 

 and commercialized scheme of exploitation. Even the de- 

 tailed methods were largely standardized, in spite of the fact 

 that they ran the whole gamut from mere encouragement of 

 unwise generosity through shameless overcharging and cheat- 

 ing to downright theft. There was ample justification for the 

 warning issued by one author, "Seamen, beware! There are 

 shoals, quicksands, and death-pointed rocks upon the land as 

 well as upon the ocean." ^^ 



Unfortunately, many of the returned voyagers were only 

 too eager to throw themselves headlong into this mad career 

 of drunken sensuality. After many weary months of danger, 

 hardship, monotony, poor food, and cramped quarters, sub- 

 ject at best to an unvarying discipline and at worst to cruel 

 and inhuman treatment, they were in a mood for hectic revelry 

 and complete forgetfulness. And what more easily available 

 means of attaining these ends than the harlot and the bottle 

 — especially when both were paraded and thrust forward by 

 an organized system of exploitation which employed vice and 

 drunkenness as material aids in its programme? To many 

 men hard liquor seemed the prime solvent for the harsh and 

 ugly facts of their environment, as well as the only means of 

 regaining even temporarily that feeling of self-respect and of 

 personal importance so difiicult to retain in a whaler's fore- 

 castle. For "with a shilling's worth he becomes a manj with 



19 Harris, John, "Zebulon ; or. The Moral Claims of Seamen Stated and En- 

 forced," p. 20 (first American edition, Boston, 1837). This work was written 

 originally about British conditions; but the American edition introduced much 

 material drawn from American ports as well. 



20 Holmes, Lewis, "The Arctic Whaleman," p. 282. 



