210 : The Atlantic 



In 1640 a ship, while running before a gale, stove a hole in her side 

 by running onto a whale. The same thing happened in 1796 to the 

 ship Harmony which hit a whale off the coast of Brazil and sank 

 with all its cargo, but the crew escaped in the boats. 



In 1859, the ship Herald of the Morning came into Hampton Roads, 

 in Virginia, leaking badly, having struck a whale off Cape Horn. 



In 1807 the ship Union of Nantucket was twelve days out on a 

 passage in the direction of Brazil and was sailing along comfortably 

 at seven knots when there was a collision so great that those aboard 

 believed that they had run on a rock. When the rock moved and 

 swam away they knew that they had hit a whale. This was at ten 

 o'clock at night. By midnight the ship was sinking so that it was no 

 longer of any use to work the pumps. By this time a storm had blown 

 up and a high sea was running. The sails of the boats were blown 

 away. After that, two of the boats were lashed together. These boats, 

 after eight days, finally reached the island of Flores in the Azores, 

 having traveled 600 miles. 



Strange accidents happened in the whale fisheries. In 1802 Peter 

 Paddock was in command of the ship Lion. He threw an iron into 

 a whale which escaped. Thirteen years later, when he was captain of 

 the Lady Adams, cruising thousands of miles away in a different part 

 of the Pacific, he captured the same whale — with the Lion's iron still 

 embedded in its hide. 



This was a coincidence without particular meaning. For example, on 

 more than one occasion whales were taken in Arctic waters near the 

 Alaskan shore having in them irons marked with the names of ships 

 which never hunted in the Pacific but confined their activities to 

 Davis Straits and west Greenland waters. 



This showed, therefore, that there was such a thing as a northwest 

 passage between the Atlantic and Pacific — at least a passage big 

 enough for the navigation of a right whale and probably, therefore, 

 big enough to take a small ship. 



A number of cases are known of "fighting whales," who built up 

 reputations for ferocity. Melville's Moby Dick is not entirely a ficti- 

 tious animal. Sometimes whales killed men and smashed a succession 

 of boats before being finally captured. 



Though it may seem odd that a big ship should run down a whale, 

 it is still more extraordinary that a whale should run down a ship, 

 but accidents of this kind did, indeed, happen. On November 20th, 

 1819, the ship Essex, George Pollard, Jr., captain, came among a 



