AND OF THE CREW. 27 



and in every clime, from the frozen north to the 

 frozen soutl], and, hitherto, had always been suc- 

 cessful. 



The boatsteerers were four in number, two of 

 whom had before steered boats and made voyages in 

 that position ; the remaining two had each sailed one 

 voyage before the mast — one of them in this same 

 good old barque, to the frozen realms of the Ice king, 

 in the Arctic Ocean, whence the vessel returned, in 

 the course of thirty months, with four thousand five 

 hundred barrels of oil ; these four, with the cooper, 

 occupied the steerage, an apartment directly forward 

 of the cabin. 



The foremast hands, eighteen in number, of whom 

 but four had ever been to sea before, were a youthful, 

 reckless, merry set, from all over the Union. We had 

 but two foreigners, Germans, in the ship — the cook, 

 and one of the crew. Many of the youngsters were 

 !N"ew Bedford boys, performing this voyage as ap- 

 prentices. With the exception of the Captain and 

 old Jack Miller, as hardy an old tar as ever stepped 

 a ratline, and who could spin a yarn to order that 

 would put Baron Munchausen to the blush, there 

 was not a married man, or one who was over twenty- 

 six years of age aboard the ship. To attempt, with 

 the exception of the Massachusetts men, to assign a 

 reason for any of our shipmates' choosing whaling 

 as a profession, would be mere conjecture. Any one 

 could see at a glance they were neither poverty- 

 stricken nor indolent; but on examining their features, 

 a roving unsettled expression might be detected by 

 a close observer, on the lineaments of each — a cer- 

 tain love of change, so all-absorbing with most young 



