308 WHALING 



man, Waterloo, with a cargo of grain, was in the North Sea, 

 quietly and slowly keeping her course, when a large whale was 

 seen to windward, swimming rapidly. At about ten yards 

 from the ship he went under water and struck the hull with 

 great violence, so that she "heeled and cracked." He rose 

 again and '* turned flukes." Within two hours the Waterloo 

 began to settle, captain and crew took to the boats, and she 

 sank before their eyes. It required only the common love of 

 the picturesque and the dramatic to read into this incident a 

 guilefulness and craft that might more sensibly have been ex- 

 plained away. Certainly, when the whale saw any large obsta- 

 cle in his path the most natural thing he could do would be to 

 try to go under it. Obviously he failed in his first attempt at 

 this: naturally he "turned flukes" to assure success at the second 

 trial. 



In certain other cases, notably that of the ship Union, of 

 Nantucket, Captain Edward Gardner, the whale was the victim. 

 The Union "struck a whale" in this most unusual sense, one 

 dark night in October, 1807, started the planking of her star- 

 board bow and in spite of their desperate efforts at the pumps, 

 within two hours the crew all had to leave her then rapidly sink- 

 ing. They also were on the sea for a week with insufficient pro- 

 visions, and suffered torments both physical and mental before 

 they finally reached the island of Flores. 



But this was hardly tit for tat, as were the cases of the Essex 

 and the Ann Alexander, and, in effect if not in motive, that of 

 the bark Kathleen, of New Bedford, Thomas H. Jenkins master, 

 of which we have the captain's own account. The Kathleen had 

 always been considered a "lucky ship"; she had made many 

 good voyages before that 17th of March, 1902, when off the 

 Brazilian coast she raised "white water." And there was every 

 sign then that her luck was holding good, for the "white water" 

 proved to be coming from a goodly pod of sperm whales. The 

 mate soon struck a whale, "waifed" it and went after more, for 

 the other three boats were fast, too. Captain Jenkins came along 

 with the Kathleen, got the mate's dead whale alongside, and 

 went aloft to look for the other three boats which were reported 



