42 WHALING 



scurvy away. A contemporary historian of a German whaling 

 voyage, who for the most part exerted dihgently the undeniable 

 forecastle right to complain of his food, has left an ecstatic 

 comment on the merits of ''seal's heart with liver and lights/' 



Of the forty-two men in the crew of the Greenland, German 

 though she was, all but five were Danes, Dutch, or Jutlanders. 

 They were divided into three watches, and so had eight hours off 

 duty for each four hours on duty; but their quarters were ill 

 lighted and ill ventilated, the vessel shipped much water when 

 a sea was running, thus the men, seldom having enough clothes 

 to change at decent intervals, were liable to be wet and uncom- 

 fortable, and skin diseases and scurvy abounded. 



There is an ingenuous charm in Kohler's unaffected pleasure 

 at the escape of the first whale they attacked, which departed 

 in haste just before they came near enough to harpoon it. Re- 

 garding his fear of the great beasts, Kbhler had no false shame. 

 He writes frankly of how his heart thumped with apprehension 

 as they neared it. But the captain, considering that the in- 

 cident represented the loss of eight thousand thalers, was a sad 

 and angry man. 



It is told of the English whaling vessels that when they met 

 other vessels and the invariable question, how many whales 

 they had taken, was asked, the English would make the others 

 tell their catch first, and would then, regardless of facts, rep- 

 resent themselves as having caught one or two more. When 

 the Greenland, with three whales to her credit, met an English 

 vessel, Kohler stood on the poop ready to answer their question. 

 "Give the number ten,'' the German captain said, "and you 

 will see that the Enghsh ship will announce eleven or twelve." 

 And he was right. 



But the ten were a bit of strong local colour, for they took 

 only three whales in all the season, and one of them stove 

 three boats and fought for more than twelve hours before they 

 killed it. Kohler has recorded for posterity his fears and his 

 hunger on that great occasion. The stench of a dead whale that 

 they found and cut in afforded him the text of another diatribe. 

 Hejived, I imagine, to regard his whaling experiences as one 



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