EARNINGS AND THE LAY 225 



entire voyage for payment. And at times the logic of cir- 

 cumstances was responsible for a resort to regular monthly 

 wages. If extra hands were needed to work a full ship which 

 was homeward bound, for instance, the impossibility of add- 

 ing further captures to an already overladen vessel rendered a 

 lay both valueless and meaningless, since it would have repre- 

 sented a share in zero. More common, however, were situa- 

 tions in which it was probable that oil and bone would be taken 

 on a small scale, rather than in significant quantities, while cer- 

 tain hands were on board. In consequence the masters were 

 sometimes compelled to offer a regular monthly guarantee in 

 addition to the ordinary fractional lay. Such combined time 

 and share payments applied to "seasoners," who were wanted 

 only for a short space of timej to hands who were shipped for 

 the purpose of helping to work a vessel from one port to an- 

 other j and to men aboard ships which were carrying freight 

 (usually supplies or products to or from other whalers) as well 

 as seeking to add to their own catches. 



The necessity for supplementing the lay under such circum- 

 stances appears clearly in a comparison of the earnings de- 

 rived from fractional shares and from regular wages j for it 

 was not unusual to have the latter outdistance the former by a 

 wide margin. Thus the ship WilUmn C. Nye, during the 

 course of a voyage extending from 1851 to 1854, carried a 

 number of hands whose lays yielded but negligible sums. 

 Eight men, shipped at lays of Mso plus twelve dollars per 

 month, received sixty dollars each in wages and only $5.05 

 each as laysj three others likewise secured $5.05 each as lays, 

 but fifty dollars each as wages j while a "short lay" of /45 

 yielded another hand only $8.76, in contrast to $73.20 re- 

 sulting from wages. Such extreme divergences, of course, 

 were not universal. At times, as on board the Canton in 1855, 

 a run of luck brought to certain hands lays which equaled or 

 exceeded their monthly wages. But the great majority of 

 hands who sailed under this double system of remuneration 

 found that their guaranteed wages were not only more depend- 

 able, but also appreciably larger than their lays. 



In principle (and for the most part in practice as well), the 

 sums due to these temporary hands, as well as the amounts 



