vill THE AMERICAN WHALEMAN 



terest in the sailing-ship era which extends to the men as well 

 as to the vessels. What manner of men occupied the fore- 

 castles and cabins, and how did they live while at sea? Where 

 did they hail from, and what were the tricks of their trade? 

 What of hours, wages, and working conditions? And what 

 of dangers and discipline? 



The present work seeks primarily to answer such questions, 

 in the case of the whalemen, by holding a mirror up to real- 

 ity. It is designed to be a study of labor conditions and of 

 labor problems in a much-neglected corner of American eco- 

 nomic history — an excursion into the field of whaling man- 

 power rather than of whaling tonnage. A considerable pro- 

 portion of the material presented has been taken directly from 

 original manuscripts — log-books. Consular Letters, crew- 

 lists, and, most valuable of all, crew-accounts and other whal- 

 ing account-books — which have scarcely been touched, here- 

 tofore, for research purposes. And yet the entries in scores of 

 crew-accounts are more accurately eloquent of whalemen's 

 earnings and treatment than hundreds of pages of general 

 description ! 



Seen in retrospect, the whaleman assuredly did not merit 

 the scorn which was heaped upon him so generously by his 

 cousin, the merchant seaman. On the contrary, "whether we 

 consider the stupendous object of his pursuit, or the vast ex- 

 tent of waters over which he roams to secure his prey, or the 

 dangers and perils peculiar to his avocation," the whaleman 

 is a figure to conjure with. And that without the aid of a 

 single spark of fancy! For the unadorned facts of his life 

 became at times so strange or so harrowing that they had no 

 need of the pale aid of imagination. Here was daring, lan- 

 guorous love in the South Seas, exotic adventure, and explor- 

 ing wanderlust J and here also was danger, monotony, exploit- 

 ation, shipwreck, "ugly" and "gallied" whales, vice, cruel 

 hardship, and "Nantucket sleigh-rides!" Small wonder that 

 such ingredients, mixed in constantly varying proportions by 

 romantic fortune, made for experiences far stranger than those 

 undergone by many heroes of fiction! 



Part II is meant to present a picture of whaling life at 

 the time when the fishery was in full career. This is the 



