126 THE AMERICAN WHALEMAN 



Still farther forward, and completely separated from the 

 officers' staterooms, was the steerage, an irregular compartment 

 ordinarily containing eight plainly constructed bunks. It was 

 small, poorly ventilated and lighted, and allowed no privacy j 

 but with care and favoring conditions it might be made pass- 

 ably comfortable. 



In the forecastle, however, conditions were universally in- 

 adequate and often squalid and filthy. The average forecastle 

 was a very low compartment, just under the main deck in the 

 extreme forward part of the vessel, which followed the curve 

 of the bows back some sixteen to twenty-five feet and enclosed 

 the lower portion of the foremast, thus diminishing still fur- 

 ther the small deck space. The bunks, crudely constructed of 

 rough planking, were ranged along the sides of the compart- 

 ment in a double tier. The only ventilation and light came 

 from the hole cut in the deck above for the purpose of giving 

 access to the ladder which was the sole means of entrance and 

 egress. This hole was thus entrance, exit, ventilator, and sky- 

 light. In cold or stormy weather, when it had to be kept 

 closed, there was no ventilation or daylight whatever. Such 

 quarters commonly housed from twelve to twenty men (a 

 number at once tragic and ridiculous.) 



The resultant conditions were such as could be described 

 only by those who had known them at first-hand. One writer 

 declared: "It would be difficult to give any idea of our fore- 

 castle. In wet weather, when most of the hands were below, 

 cursing, smoking, singing, and spinning yarns, it was a perfect 

 Bedlam. Think of three or four Portuguese, a couple of 

 Irishmen, and five or six rough Americans, in a hole about 

 sixteen feet wide, and as many, perhaps, from the bulk-heads 

 to the fore-peak J so low that a full-grown person could not 

 stand upright in it, and so wedged up with rubbish as to leave 

 scarcely room for a foothold. It contained twelve small 

 berths J and with fourteen chests in the little area around the 

 ladder, seldom admitted of being cleaned. In warm weather 

 it was insufferably close. 



"In this loathsome den, the Portuguese were in their ele- 

 ment, revelling in filth, beating harsh discord on an old viola, 

 jabbering in their native tongue, smoking, cursing, and black- 



