HAZARDS AND COMPENSATIONS 201 



had inquired, rather sharply, why the consular expenses for 

 sick and destitute seamen were proportionately greater at 

 Paita, frequented largely by American whalers from the Off- 

 Shore Ground, than they were at such a port as Liverpool, 

 crowded with merchant shipping. In his reply Consul C. F. 

 Winslow, who had had a formal medical education, pointed 

 out that the long cruises and general conditions of whaling 

 life gave rise to a set of diseases which were distinct from those 

 suffered by merchant seamen. "During these long confine- 

 ments on shipboard, subsisting upon coarse salt beef, fat pork, 

 and hard biscuit, without a system of constant and uniform 

 labor (hard labor going by snatches of luck and short spells 

 in whaleships) many chronic complaints are engendered — 

 such as scurvy, gastritis, affections of the liver and kidneys j and 

 the habits of whalemen, when in port, add another category of 

 complaints which, generally badly treated by mercury at sea, 

 leave the system racked with neuralgia, rheumatism, carious 

 bones, and a class of diseases which it takes a long time, and 

 great care, to eradicate." 



Such cases, "even occurring in officers," and either ignored 

 or subjected to the crudest treatment, were kept on board for 

 weeks and months until, in due course of time, the vessel again 

 made port. If the patient had become incapacitated, he was 

 then either discharged with three months' extra pay, as the 

 law required, or he was "stealthily put ashore in some hut to 

 save this extra pay, and to come upon the Consul's hands after- 

 wards." Whaling hands were often forced to desert, the 

 consul added, because their captains refused to admit that they 

 were sick enough to merit a discharge.^ 



But in spite of its triple threat against life, health, and char- 

 acter, whaling had its compensations. Gamming, scrimshaw- 

 ing, and "skylarking" deserve to be ranked, perhaps, as but 

 incidental and inadequate recreations in a life of unutterable 

 boredom and hardship. But in the opportunities for travel 

 and in the excitement of the chase many whalemen, at least, 



6 These statements were taken directly from the original manuscript, which 

 is incorporated in the files of the Consular Letters in the Library of the De- 

 partment of State at Washington. Reference to these Letters is by port and 

 date. 



