[11] NOTES ON THE WHALE FISHERY. 215 



Instances are on record where, as soon as struck by the harpoon, they 

 have shown fight, and have attacked and crushed into kindling wood 

 one, two, and even three boats in turn, crushing and mangling in their 

 hugh jaws some poor fellow, or with one sweep of their monstrous tails 

 sending whole boats crews to a watery grave.* 



There are many living to day who bear the marks upon their jjersons 

 of wounds received in these terrible encounters. Some have lost limbs, 

 teeth, had broken bones, and received contusions upon various parts of 

 the body. 



Even ships have been attacked by whales, as was the case with the 

 Essex, Captain Pollard, in November, 1820. This ship was nearly full, 

 and about to sail for home. One day, all the boats being off in i^ursuit 

 of whales, a huge fellow was observed making for the ship, which he 

 struck full on the bow, making her reel and tumble about like a shell. 

 Making off to windward several miles, he turned, and made again for 

 the ship with great speed, staving in her bow. She reeled over and 

 sank to the water's edge. Of course the whole crew were obliged to 

 take to the boats. Their sufferings were incredible, being obliged, in 

 order to sustain life, to eat their own shipmates. Out of a crew of 

 twenty men five only arrived home, three having been left at 1 )ulPs 

 Island on the way to the coast of America. No other catastrophe upon 

 the deep ever so touched the hearts of our people. There remains now 

 but one survivor of this ill-fated crew, Gn^t. Thomas G. Nickerson, of 

 Nantucket.t 



Look, too, at the great number of our ships that have foundered at 

 sea, or been wrecked on the coral beds near the equator, or upon the 

 islands all over the Pacific, in some instances every soul on board per- 

 ishing. And the men who carried on the whale fishery, commanded 

 the ships, composed the crews ; what of them 1 They were inured to 

 every hardship known to sea life, and were heroes whom the world 

 should acknowledge as such. Among them was Capt. Jared Gardner, 

 half-brother to Jacob Barker, who was in command of John Jacob 

 Astor's old tea-shij), then of Hudson, N. Y., in 1834, and who, on the 

 day he was seventy j^ears old, killed and took to his ship a 75-barrel 

 sperm whale. James Josiah Coffin, in command of a ship from London, 

 England, in 1826, killed and took to his ship, on the day he was seventy 

 years old, an 80-barrel sperm whale. 



John Paul Jones had five of our men with him on the Bon Homme 

 Richard in the English Channel and North Sea. None were found 

 more worthy to take a prize to France than Lieut. Reuben Chase, whom 



* When a whale has been found to be bent on mischief a cask is sometimes taken in 

 one of the boats and, at the proper moment, thrown overboard. While the whale is 

 venting his fury upon this bubble the boat is rowed quietly up to the monster, an 

 officer takes the fatal lance and quickly and dexterously brings him to blood and 

 death. 



t The ships Union. Capt. Edward Gardner, 1807 ; Commerce, Capt. Jesse Bunker, 

 1813, and Ann Alexander, Captain Deblois, 1850, met similar fates. 



