200 THE AMERICAN WHALEMAN 



ning the gamut from stove boats and foul lines to shipwreck 

 and mutiny, contributed to a manner of life which bred ill 

 health, disease, and incapacity.^ Many whalemen, more for- 

 tunate than their comrades, lived to a ripe old agej but they 

 did so in spite of their whaling careers. Countless circum- 

 stances of whaling life, both at sea and ashore, carried dis- 

 ease, injury, or lessened vitality in their wake. Well-known 

 habits of dissipation in many ports made venereal disease 

 a commonplace on shipboard. Coarse, salty, monotonous 

 food and brackish water, coupled with a minimum of fresh 

 provisions and months of confinement on shipboard, led to 

 scurvy and organic disorders. Shore leave, with its fresh 

 food and hectic indulgence in drunkenness and vice, relieved 

 the scurvy but only aggravated the disturbance of kidneys 

 and liver. And, in turn, the organic functions were still 

 further disorganized by a return to the whaling grounds, 

 where days of comparative idleness alternated with periods 

 of superhuman exertion under gruelling conditions. Bruises 

 and fractures resulted from accidents in the boats, falls from 

 aloft, slipping on the oily decks in heavy weather, or blows 

 delivered by the mates. And tuberculosis, dropsy, and other 

 chronic affections arose through long and repeated exposure 

 to cold, heat, and water. 



An authoritative description of the peculiar ailments of 

 whalemen was given in an official consular despatch written 

 at Paita, Peru, on August lO, 1863. The State Department 



* For accounts of the specific incidents related in the preceding pages, as well 

 as of many other whaling mishaps, see especially the following works: Star- 

 buck, A., "History of the American Whale Fishery" ; Brown, J. T., writing in 

 Vol. VII of "Fisheries and Fishery Industries of the U. S." ; Davis, W. M., 

 "Nimrod of the Sea"; Macy, Obed, "History of Nantucket"; Ricketson, D., 

 "History of New Bedford" ; Cheever, H. T., "The Whale and His Captors" ; 

 and Nordhoff, Charles, "Life on the Ocean." The same happenings, together 

 with others, were also repeated in many contemporary accounts of whaling 

 life. Several of the most spectacular disasters, too, were recounted in narra- 

 tives written by the survivors. William Lay and Cyrus Hussey published "A 

 Narrative of the Mutiny on Board the Ship Globe, of Nantucket, in the Pacific 

 Ocean, Jan. 1824, and the Journal of a Residence of Two Years on the Mul- 

 grave Islands." Owen Chase, the first mate of the Essex, wrote a similar 

 "Narrative of The Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the 

 Whaleship Essex, of Nantucket." Jenkins, T. H., published a pamphlet en- 

 titled "Bark Kathleen Sunk by a Whale." And only recently the diary of the 

 surgeon of the Diana, edited by the author's son, C. E. Smith, appeared under 

 the title, "From the Deep of the Sea: An Epic of the Arctic," 



