TECHNIQUE 101 



hundred tons. The extent of her voyages would vary from 

 brief offshore cruises to an absence of more than two years be- 

 yond the Horn. Her crew would range from the few men 

 necessary in handling the smallest craft to the twenty-five or 

 thirty, or more, needed to man the vessel of four or five boats. 

 She might carry one boat; she might carry four or five. 



To assert that one thing or another was, or was not, done at 

 a given period in the history of whaling, and that the rule knows 

 no exceptions, is dangerous. Whoever ventures such assertions 

 is likely to be tripped up by the heels. It takes no great study 

 of the available documents to reveal that the number of excep- 

 tions to every such rule is liable at any time to become discon- 

 certing; and the fallacy of saying that customs not practised to- 

 day were never practised is obvious. The various forms through 

 which the cry of the lookout on sighting a whale has passed in 

 the years from the old Dutch ''Val! Val!" to the modem 

 ''Blo-o-o-o-ows!" afford an example of this. Every reader is 

 familiar with the traditional ''There she blows!" Scores of 

 unimpeachable authorities have testified to it. It has come 

 down through various combinations and abbreviations — -''Thar 

 blows!" ''She blows!" "There she blows!" "Blows! Blows! 

 Thar blows!" — to the familiar cry of the modern whaleman, 

 which begins in a rumbling bellow deep down in his chest and 

 rises to a wailing falsetto, where it clings and trembles, until 

 it is quite breathed out. Yet there are whalemen of brief and 

 recent experience who will say, on the authority of their own 

 observations, that the call with which they are familiar is the 

 only one that has ever been. 



The whaleship of the period would carry, besides her captain, 

 two, three, or four mates, according to her size and the number of 

 her boats, and from one to four boat-steerers. The mates lived 

 aft, the boat-steerers probably in the steerage, and all ate at the 

 cabin table. Except for the presence of those "warrant offi- 

 cers," if we may borrow the term, the boat-steerers or harpooners, 

 which were peculiar to the whaling industry, the personnel and 

 precedence of the cabin was exactly like that of any merchant- 

 man, although the whaler usually carried more mates in pro- 



