AT SEA: ON THE WHALING GROUNDS 179 



of the day considered a desecration of the Sabbath. But the 

 ministers of the gospel in the whaling ports said little or noth- 

 ing about Sunday whaling — a fact which one contemporary 

 writer attributed to apathy, a fear of offending wealthy parish- 

 ioners, and a disinclination to mingle in practical affairs/^ 

 Partly as a result of this general lack of interest in the ques- 

 tion, the percentage of "Sunday whalers" was negligible j and 

 for the most part it was accepted as a matter of course that 

 whales were to be pursued upon every possible occasion, un- 

 less a vessel was homeward bound and fairly bursting with oil. 



To the officers and boatsteerers this was, on the whole, a 

 satisfactory and even desirable condition of affairs. For them 

 the pursuit and capture of a whale was a gloriously thrilling 

 sport, to which undoubted dangers merely added zest. For in 

 addition to maneuvering the boat and wielding the lance and 

 harpoon, they were in a position to plan the strategy and to 

 observe the varying fortunes of the chase. 



But to the men at the oars it was "a good deal as though they 

 were being conveyed to the center of a field of battle, blind- 

 folded, and seated on a car, with their backs to the enemy." ^^ 

 At best they could follow the course of the action only im- 

 perfectly and at second-hand. Their part was to obey the 

 excited orders of the mate and to send their frail craft into the 

 danger zone without knowing when or how the crises of the 

 battle were to be met. And yet they must manifest no out- 

 ward sign of fright or panic j for in spite of the nature of the 

 conditions, which were such as to tax the courage of the stead- 

 iest as well as of the most reckless of men, no quality was more 

 universally and heartily despised by both officers and fore- 

 mast hands than the fear of "going on to a whale." Any form 

 of weakness or villainy might be condoned more readily than 

 timidity in pressing the pursuit. To many men, however, such 

 heroic stoicism was unattainable j and in spite of the certainty 

 of incurring contempt and ostracism, they never succeeded in 

 overcoming a natural, understandable, and, to a novice, well- 

 nigh inevitable feeling of mingled fear and despair. 



i»See Cheever, H. T., (Reverend), "The Whale and His Captors," pp. 232 

 et passim. 



20 See Nordhoff, Charles, "Life on the Ocean," p. 225. 



