JACK TAR RETURNS IN DEBT. 411 



confident of being able to pay his board for a week 

 or two, and have enough remaining to secure him a 

 passage home, he goes up to the owners and asks for 

 a small sum of money for present wants. They 

 refuse him, saying that nothing is coming to him. 

 He demands a settlement. On obtaining it, in the 

 first place he finds that twenty-five per cent, interest 

 has been charged on his outfitting bill, next he finds 

 a charge varying from ten to fifteen dollars for load- 

 ing and discharging the ship. In many cases, three 

 per cent, for insurance is packed on, and with these 

 additional items the poor fellow is brought in debt 

 and knows not what to do. Then the agent claps 

 him on the shoulder and tells him to cheer up, as 

 another ship will be ready to sail in a few days, and, 

 if he will sign his name upon her articles, money 

 and clothing will be advanced to him. Destitute 

 and hopeless, down goes his name, and a few weeks 

 afterward he is at sea again, bound on another three 

 or four years' voyage. 



The average number of barrels of oil taken by 

 sperm whalers, during a four years' voyage, is twelve 

 hundred; if the ship carries four boats, a green 

 hand's lay is the two hundredth part ; this will give 

 him six barrels of oil, worth about forty-five dollars 

 a barrel, amounting to two hundred and seventy 

 dollars. The ship's and outfitter's bills will amount 

 to at least two hundred and twenty dollars, leaving a 

 residue of fifty dollars or about a dollar a month over 

 and above personal expenses. 



Even if the ship should get full of oil and return 

 home in two years, which, by the way, would be a 

 miracle now-a-days, one of her crew cannot, at the 



