30 WHALING 



less value than the other, as having a very disagreeable scent. 

 Each fish is computed to afford from sixty to one hundred 

 barrels of oil, at three or four pounds sterling the barrel, accord- 

 ing as the market goes. There are three harpuneers to each 

 ship, every one of whom has ten pounds for every whale that is 

 killed; and sometimes one ship catches ten whales in a voyage." 

 The 16th or 17th Century whaling vessel out of Amsterdam, 

 or Hamburg, or Bristol, or some Basque port, was strongly 

 built, a slow sailer presumably, but staunch and stiff and 

 capacious. Having, say, a dead weight of two hundred tons, 

 she would carry a crew of from twenty-eight to fifty men, or 

 even more, according to her size; and when she set out in the 

 spring she would have on board four and a half hundredweight 

 of ships' bread for each man — the list is taken from the pages 

 of a 16th Century whaling vessel that carried a crew of fifty- 

 five men — a hundred and fifty hogsheads of cider, six hundred- 

 weight of oil, eight hundredweight of bacon, six hogsheads of 

 beef, ten quarters of beans and peas, a "convenient quantity" 

 of salt fish and herring, four tuns of wine, and half a quarter of 

 mustard seed. For equipment she carried a quern, a grind- 

 stone, perhaps eight hundred empty shaken hogsheads, three 

 hundred and fifty bundles of hoops, six quintalines, eight 

 hundred pairs of heads for the hogsheads, ten *'estachas called 

 roxes, for harping irons," ten pieces of arporieras, two tackles, 

 two large hooks, six pulleys and a hawser twenty-seven fathoms 

 long to turn the whales, fifteen large javelins and eighteen small 

 javelins, with three pieces of baikens for the small javelins, 

 fifty harping irons, six machetos to cut in, and two dozen mache- 

 tos to mince blubber, three pairs of can hooks, six hooks for staves, 

 three dozen staves for the harping irons, ten large baskets, ten iron 

 lamps, five kettles (each holding a hundred and fifty li) and six 

 ladles, fifteen hundred nails (a thousand small nails for the boats, 

 and five hundred large nails or spikes for houses and wharf), 

 eighteen axes and hatchets, six dozen hooks and twelve lines, two 

 beetles of *'rosemarie," four dozen oars, six lanterns, five 

 hundred tesia, harquebusses with powder and matches, and 

 from five to seven boats. To the crew were to be added as 



