THE GOLD RUSH 193 



May 1, 1849, approximately twenty-five hundred stranded 

 enthusiasts seeking for just that sort of passage to the "gold 

 diggins." Some of them were penniless and some of them were 

 sick, but there was enough money among them to tempt many a 

 whaling captain from his cruising, and on that very May Day 

 three American whalers — the Sylph of Fairhaven, the Niantic 

 of Warren, and the Norma of Nantucket — were accepting pas- 

 sengers bound north to California. 



Of course the news travelled in other directions too. The 

 schooner Kamehameha, from California, sailed into Honolulu 

 harbour and threw the town into riotous excitement by the 

 news that gold had been discovered at Sutter's Mills. Soon 

 every kind of craft was taking provisions on board and accepting 

 passengers for San Francisco, at exorbitant prices. The streets 

 and rumshops were in a ferment, and wild tales of fortunes made 

 in a month or two were everywhere rife. 



In the harbour was an ordinary seaman named John D. 

 Whidden on board the ship Tsar, which was loading oil for New 

 Bedford. And Jack Whidden caught the gold fever. He held 

 council with a pair of boat-steerers from the Samuel Robertson, 

 a Fairhaven whaler, and they promised, if he would desert the 

 Tsar the night before she sailed and come on board their own 

 ship, to stow him away. 



The Tsar sailed without him, and lucky she was to lose no 

 more men than she did! Jack Whidden tried for days to get 

 passage for California, but failed because he hadn't the price. 

 So he shipped on board the Samuel Robertson for the remainder 

 of her whaling cruise and the voyage home. 



Whaling and the seamanship of whalemen, as usual, when seen 

 through the eyes of a sailor trained in the merchant service, 

 impressed him none too favourably. Sixty years later he wrote 

 of the slack discipline on board the Samuel Robertson; but he 

 gives ample testimony that the discipline tightened with a snap 

 when whales were seen. For to his dying day he never forgot 

 the stars he saw when, his boat having pulled so close to his 

 first whale that he could hear the "choo'o, choo'o, choo'o," 

 as it spouted, he turned round to look at it and the mate fetched 



