VIII 



IN THE original papers of the Nantucket whaler Globe, 

 Captain Thomas Worth, which sailed from Edgartown, 

 Massachusetts, in December, 1822 (her registry and crew list 

 are in the Boston Custom House) you can see for yourself, if 

 you wish, the starkly simple outline of such a story as few re- 

 sponsible imaginative writers would dare set down in black and 

 white. On those authoritative, matter-of-fact pages are 

 scrawled, in faded ink, the name of each man in the crew, a 

 brief description of his person, an abstract of his life, and, 

 after certain names, the significant comment, "Dead, killed 

 Jany. 26, 1824." 



But the story of the Globe is more than a mere thrilling tale 

 of the mutinous exploit of a band of boys and young men, which 

 has stood for a hundred years as one of the grimmest in our 

 history: in the old narrative, written by Hussey and Lay, the 

 two survivors of all that happened at sea and ashore — and be- 

 tween its lines — there is a concrete and extreme example of such 

 sanguinary madness as sometimes occurred on board the old 

 whaling vessels, during their long voyages in distant seas. 



In many of their log books, cases of melancholia appear, 

 unnamed but unmistakable; and now and then one can find 

 in the stained pages strangely detailed accounts of suicides at 

 sea. There was scarcely a voyage that had not its mutinies; 

 there were floggings and desertions galore; and once in a long 

 while, as on board the Globe, the monotony and loneliness and 

 hard-handed discipline during years at sea resulted in down- 

 right mania. 



A hundred years ago, when thousands of square-riggers were 

 laying their courses to every point of the compass, and our 



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