238 WHALING 



Midshipman John T. Mason of the Shenandoah, writing 

 many years later, attributed Captain Young's heroic conduct 

 to courage of the variety called Dutch. ''He mounted the 

 poop-deck of his ship, armed with a bomb-gun used in killing 

 whales," Mason says: ''and threatened to fire into the boat 

 which was about to board him. The officers in charge of the 

 boat, however, disregarded this threat, and pulled to the gang- 

 way and went on board with his crew. When the flag was 

 about to be hauled down, another scene of the same sort was 

 enacted; but by this time the boarding party had discovered 

 that the belligerent captain had been celebrating the occasion, 

 and was royally drunk. He was taken in charge after some 

 resistance, and refusing to leave his ship, had to be lowered 

 into the boat with block and tackle.'' 



At all events, once on board the Shenandoah, the old fellow 

 was put in irons in the top-gallant forecastle; and scandal has 

 it that "his unhuman captors robbed him of his money, watch, 

 and shirtstuds." 



From the captured whaler William Thompson, Waddell took 

 California papers of April 22, which told of the Assassination 

 of Abraham Lincoln, and confirmed the evacuation of Rich- 

 mond, but which contained the proclamation of Jefferson Davis 

 that the Confederacy would continue the war with renewed 

 vigour. It was not until August 2d, that the Shenandoah 

 having long since left the Arctic, got from the English barque 

 Barracouta, thirteen days out from San Francisco, definite 

 word that the Confederate Government had collapsed and the 

 war was ended. 



They struck the guns of the Shenandoah into the hold for bal- 

 last; they boarded up the portholes; they stowed the small arms 

 between decks. With a record of fifty whaling vessels captured 

 and forty-six of them destroyed, Waddell headed south round 

 the Horn and north to England. On November 6, 1865, 

 he let go his anchors in the Mersey and surrendered the ship 

 to the English authorities. 



