SINGULAR FATALITY OF THE WAIST-BOAT. 241 



ceding pages, that a singular fatality has attended 

 all the operations of this boat since we left home. 

 When under the management of Mr. Edwards, (our 

 former second officer, and as good a whaleman as 

 ever stepped into the head of a whaleboat,) she was 

 capsized. Under her present manager, she had her 

 line taken by a whale, ofl' Cape Chatham, where she 

 was also capsized. In the Bight, the whale was only 

 Baved by the timely arrival of the bow-boat with its 

 line. The large whale that went off spouting blood, 

 was fastened to from her ; the whale of yesterday, 

 that capsized her; and that of to-daj^, that parted 

 her line — go to make up a catalogue of misfortunes 

 that the annals of whaling-voyages can scarcely 

 equal. And all her disasters — capsizing, losing her 

 whale, losing her line, and being stoven — arose, 

 not from incapacity on the part of her officers, but 

 from a combination of unforeseen circumstances, 

 which it would have been in vain for the most 

 experienced whaleman to guard against. 



On the last day of December we experienced the 

 initiation of a gale, which lasted, in incessant vio- 

 lence, until the 6th of January, '58, but doing no 

 injury to us, further than shipping a heavy sea that 

 cleared away our gangway, and deluged our decks, 

 fore and aft, without so much as saying, " By your 

 leave." We kept on one tack, heading constantly 

 to the north and westward. 



On the 10th we sighted Baldhead but a short dis- 

 tance off. We stood in for it ; and in the evening 

 the captain lowered away, and proceeded, through 

 Frenchman's Bay and the Sound, to the town of 

 Albany : the ship standing off and on, with the cable 

 21 Q , 



