V 



TECHNIQUE 



WHALING out of American ports at the end of the 18th 

 Century was much the same as Greenland and Spitz- 

 bergen whaling. It had passed through the various earlier 

 phases of the industry. Blunt-bowed deep-water vessels, slow 

 but capacious, pursued it; a great force of mechanics got their 

 livelihood by keeping the fleet fit and equipped for sea; the grow- 

 ing business of the chandlers in whaling towns had already 

 reached an impressive bulk. And at the same time the cost of 

 outfitting a whaleship was still not prohibitive. 



An 18th-century whaling schooner out of Edgartown carried 

 the following supplies for a cruise:^ 



''Five barrels of beef, six barrels of pork, twelve hundred 

 pounds of bread, sixty pounds of butter, three small cheeses, 

 five hundred pump-nails, six hundred board-nails, fifteen hun- 

 dred shingle-nails, twenty-four deck-nails, thirty spikes, one 

 mallet, two wine glasses, one dipsy-line, two scrapers, one 

 adze, two axes, five spades, one tunnel, four barrels of flour, 

 twelve bushels of com, fourteen bushels of meal, a hundred 

 pounds of rice, two barrels of rum, fifty-five gallons of molasses, 

 twenty pounds of candles, three hundred and fourteen feet of 

 boards, two hundred and thirty feet of boat boards, six hundred 

 fathoms of tow line, a hundred and thirty fathoms of main 

 ways, twenty-eight guns, twelve lances, three cod-lines, two 

 log-lines, six gimlets, three skeins of twine, six bowls, six 

 knives and forks, six plates, four pounds of tea, five pounds of 

 chocolate, fifteen pounds of coffee, a hundred pounds of sugar, 

 fifty pounds of hog's fat, five bushels of beans, one platter, two 

 brooms, two hour glasses, one lantern, fifty pounds of spun . 

 d<^'^ 



^Alexander Starbuck. History of the American Whale Fishery, p. 110. \y^ ,^, 



