240 WHALING 



mism which distinguishes Captain Clothier Peiree from any 

 other sea captain of whom I have ever heard. The men 

 fitted the boats for the business before them and the officers 

 chose their boat crews. The drunk got sober. The green 

 hands got their sea legs. And all went on exactly as it would 

 have gone on board any other New England whaling vessel. 

 But on the fifth day out, remarking in the log book that there 

 are two sails in sight but no sign of whales, Captain Peiree 

 adds, in the keynote of his voyage, the parenthetical remark, 

 ''poor old Minnesota.'' On the sixth day he laments the head 

 winds. And, taking my departure thence, I quote word for 

 word and letter for letter from one of the most remarkable 

 examples of cumulative gloom that a victim of melancholia 

 ever set down with pen and ink. 



Day by day and month after month Captain Peiree wrote 

 it in his own hand, with an unconscionable seriousness, a total 

 lack of humour, that, as the book itself indicates, drove officers 

 and men to the verge of mutiny, if not of madness. It seems 

 that the man's obsession sapped whatever strength he may have 

 had. Of the doddering Down East skippers who roll through a 

 certain humorous type of sea fiction, not one ever weakly swal- 

 lowed greater affront without pretending to retaliate than did 

 this melancholy master in a service that required the full 

 strength and vigour of the toughest old skippers that sailed the 

 seas half a century ago. 



Remarks on Board the Unfortunate ''Minnesota" 



Wednesday, July 1st, 1868 

 Morderate Breeze from Eastward Heading N. E. by the Wind 

 Variously Employed No signs of LIFE here Nothing for 

 us June has passed & we get Now-wheir No chanc for us 

 this season I fear three seasons in the North Atlantic to get 

 One Whale in this Unfortunate Vessel. A. M. Very 



light Breeze Heading about N. E. on Barren Water Nothing 

 to be seen. 

 Lat 39, 30 Long 63 23 



