114 EEPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



r.— THE DANGERS OF THE WHALE-FISHERY. 



Notwitbstanding the many perils encountered in this pursuit, perils 

 arising from the necessary exploration of new fields to replenish the sup- 

 ply which constantly fails in the old, perils arising from the nature of 

 the cruising-grounds themselves which include the stormiest, most laby- 

 rinthine, and most treacherous of seas, and those most subject to ty- 

 phoons, perils arising too from the very nature of their calling to the 

 men themselves, the casualties are no more at least than fall to the lot 

 of those who follow the sea in other pursuits. Shipwrecks there are, 

 dreary boat- voyages for hundreds of miles, with the terrible accompani- 

 ments of death from hunger and thirst, and men fall victims to the 

 strength and ferocity of the gigantic object of their pursuit. Ships sail 

 from port and are never heard of more, or if heard of, it is the casual 

 report of some passing vessel, ships to which the beautiful language of 

 Irving is most appropriate, that have too truly " gone down amidst the 

 roar of the tempest; their bones lie whitening among the caverns of 

 the deep. Silence, oblivion, like the waves, have closed over them and 

 no one can tell the story of their end." But with a greater risk there 

 seems to be no greater mortality than may be found in the lists of the 

 merchant service. 



No nobler class of men, no inore skillful navigators, ever trod any 

 deck than those who have shipped upon our whalemen. Those in com- 

 mand are brave and daring without recklessness, quick to act in an 

 emergency, but prudently guarding the lives of their men and the safety 

 of their ship ; self-reliant but self-possessed.* Every ship is fully 

 manned, and discipline is intended to be fully enforced ; hence when im- 

 mediate action is required by the exigencies of the storm or other 

 threatening circumstances, there is no lack of ready hands to execute 

 any order which may issue from those in authority.! 



It is appropriate, however, in a work of this nature, to notice some of 

 the many incidents and accidents which have occurred, and of which 

 an account has been transmitted. 



Classifying these somewhat chronologically, one of the earliest re- 



* " The highest testimony to the seamanship of our whalemen is that the rate of in- 

 surance on the American is just one-half of that on the British vessels engaged in 

 the service." — (Nimrod of the Sea, p. 56.) 



t Says the New York Journal of Commerce, in August, 1857 : " There lives in affluence 

 at Nantucket, in the eightieth year of his age, and in full possession of a sound intel- 

 lect, and the enjoyment of all the respect and affection which a well-spent life com- 

 mands, a retired whaling captain, the keel of whose ship never touched the bottom — 

 who was never at sea a day without going aloft except in a gale of wind — who never 

 lost a man by abandonment or otherwise, or bad one off duty more than a week by 

 sickness — who never lost but one spar, though distinguished for many short passages — 

 who never returned from a voyage without a full cargo of sperm-oil. He had sixteen 

 apprentices, mostly uneducated boys from the lower walks of life, whom he instructed 

 and trained to his own calling, and every one of these he has lived to see in respectable 

 standing, and several of them holding high rank as shipmasters." 



