254 WHALING 



other services as an inferior branch of sailoring, the whaHng 

 firms had to go inland to recruit their foremast hands; they drew 

 them from small towns, from farms, and from the back woods, 

 by specious advertisements that have become proverbial in 

 some parts of the country. Now and then they got thus a real 

 whaling captain in the embryo and brought him up to the trade, 

 but most of their masters came from the old whaling families 

 that lived in the old whaling towns and sent their sons, one 

 generation after another, into the business on which the family 

 fortunes depended. 



Dana, in "Two Years Before the Mast,'' shows, how real 

 sailors regarded the whaler — man and vessel. 



"A 'spouter' we knew her to be, as soon as we saw her, by 

 her cranes and boats, and by her stump top-gallant-masts, and a 

 certain slovenly look to the sails, rigging, spars, and hull; and 

 when we got on board, we found everything to correspond — 

 spouter fashion. She had a false deck, which was rough and 

 oily, and cut up in every direction by the chines of oil casks; her 

 rigging was slack, and turning white, paint worn off the spars 

 and blocks, clumsy seizings, straps without covers, and 'home- 

 ward-bound splices' in every direction. Her crews, too, were 

 not in much better order. Her captain was a slab-sided 

 Quaker, in a suit of brown, with a broad-brimmed hat, bending 

 his long legs as he moved about decks, with his head down, like a 

 sheep, and the men looked more like fishermen and farmers than 

 they did like sailors. 



"Though it was by no means cold weather (we having on 

 only our red shirts and duck trousers), they all had on woollen 

 trousers — not blue and ship-shape, but of all colours — brown, 

 drab, gray, aye, and green — with suspenders over their shoul- 

 ders, and pockets to put their hands in. This, added to Guernsey 

 frocks, striped comforters about the neck, thick cowhide boots, 

 woollen caps and a strong, oily smell, and a decidedly green 

 look, will complete the description. Eight or ten were on the 

 fore topsail yard, and as many more in the main, furling the 

 topsails, while eight or ten more were hanging about the fore- 

 castle, doing nothing. This was a strange sight for a vessel 



