100 WHALING 



yarn, four pump-bolts, three pump-brakes, six upper boxes, 

 four lower boxes, one pump-hook, one draw-bucket, two cedar 

 pails, one hand-pump, two finishing planes, one pound of pep- 

 per, one speaking-trumpet, two half -minute glasses, one punch 

 bowl, six tea cups and saucers, one and a half pounds of powder 

 and shot, one drawing knife, one candle-stick, three skeins of 

 marling, three skeins of housing, eight spare blocks, one cat- 

 block, forty fathoms of spare rigging, one sounding-lead, one 

 boat-hook, twelve sail needles, eighteen yards of mending cloth, 

 one pare knife, one Jackknife, ten pounds of chalk, one bung- 

 borer, three chisels, one hand saw, one large hammer, one pump- 

 hammer." 



Besides all this, the one small whaling vessel about to sail on 

 a short cruise required the services of riggers, sailmakers, car- 

 penters, and smiths. Thus equipped for sea, she might be worth 

 ten or twelve thousand dollars. Now consider that the men 

 who worked on her, outfitted her and officered her — even, pos- 

 sibly, some of those who manned her — ^very likely owned shares 

 in her and thus shared directly as well as indirectly in the profits 

 of the voyage. One thing that sent American whaling forward 

 with such vigour that it soon overtook its far older European 

 rivals was the common interest, in every voyage, of all upon 

 whom the success of the voyage depended. The intense local 

 pride of particular communities in their whaling fleets, which 

 survives to this very day, is in large part the result of that com- 

 plete cooperation. 



A Nantucket ship setting out on a sperm-whaling voyage of a 

 year and a half into the Pacific carried a crew of seventeen and 

 included in her equipment four hundred iron-hooped casks and 

 fourteen hundred wooden-hooped casks, forty barrels of salt 

 provisions, three and a half tons of bread, thirty bushels of beans 

 and peas, a thousand pounds of rice, forty gallons of molasses 

 and twenty-four barrels of flour. During her voyage she bought 

 in addition, two hundredweight of bread. She was a vessel of 

 two hundred and forty tons and, including her outfit, she cost 

 $10,212. In size she might be anywhere from thirty to three 



