252 FOLLOW THE WHALE 



brick try- works containing two or more huge metal pots in which 

 the oil was boiled. The rest of the vessel below decks was hold space, 

 the main deck usually being about six feet below the upper and all 

 below free. Stores and provisions were kept between decks; the lower 

 hold took the oil in casks which were fashioned aboard by the 

 cooper; these were made from bundles of staves and rings shipped 

 from the home port. 



When whales were sighted, three to eight small, open, double- 

 ended shallops, hardly different from those of the Basques, were 

 lowered and manned by the usual complement. As always, the har- 

 pooner changed places with the steersman if he struck and made fast 

 to a whale. Then the oft-told procedure of burning lines rushing be- 

 tween the cleats, entangled human limbs, desperate backing and pull- 

 ing on the oars, lancing, shouting, cursing, bloody foam, flailing tails, 

 and miraculous escapes took place. But when all was over, the dead 

 whale was either towed to the mother ship or flagged and picked up 

 by her, and then the really hard work began. The crew went over- 

 board upon the corpse and started cutting-in. A bewildering assort- 

 ment of knifelike tools on long pole handles was used to cut the blub- 

 ber from nose to tail in a variety of prescribed manners. The long 

 strips, about twenty-four inches wide, were then hauled aboard by 

 block and tackle and winches. There, they were chopped into square 

 blocks and fed to the try-works. The fires were started with wood, 

 but were kept going with the "crackling" that came out of the pots 

 themselves after the oil had been melted out. The work continued 

 round the clock until all the blubber and, in the case of the right 

 whales, the baleen were aboard; then the corpse was cut free and 

 abandoned. 



Despite a fairly regular quota of deaths by accident and a lot more 

 by disease and ship jumping on exotic, girl-infested islands, the fish- 

 ing continued inexorably throughout the years. A few mutinies oc- 

 curred and quite a number of ships were wrecked or foundered; a 

 slightly larger percentage were lost to privateers or took to one form 

 of piracy or another, though usually of a milder variety in this in- 

 creasingly settled and enlightened era. Some just took up general 

 trading. But, still and all, the slaughter of sperm whales went on 

 throughout the oceans of the world, the profits piled up, and the 

 street lamps of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and other great, new 



