SHIPS DESTROYED BY WHALES. 203 



There is another instance of the immediate 

 shipwreck of a whaler by the shock of one of 

 those mighty leviathans, that of the Union, of 

 Nantucket, Captain Gardner, which was totally 

 lost, in the year 1807, between Nantucket and 



an observer placed almost perpendicularly above them at the 

 mast-head), to turn on their side in passing below the keel, 

 evidently with the purpose of viewing the strange object float- 

 ing on the surface. In such case, where the ship was lying 

 te, or tolerably quiescent, the whale would go on its track but 

 little, if at all disturbed, and might be seen quietly to rise for 

 respiration at no very great distance from the object which had 

 engaged its attention. 



The collision of the whale with the Essex, therefore, I 

 believe, in the first instance, to have been purely accidental. 

 The vessel was going moderately ahead, when the whale, ad- 

 vancing obliquely across her track, came into contact with her 

 on the weather bow. The succeeding stroke, not inconsis- 

 tently with the habits of the sperm whale, to give battle when 

 attacked or hurt, might be designed. The fatal result of the 

 double collision is very intelligible, when the class and build 

 of the vessel are considered. From the small number of her 

 boats, and comparative fewness of her crew, the ship appears 

 not to have been of large tonnage, and, probably, was but 

 slightly built. The southern fishery, indeed, does not require 

 the strength and solidity of ships which the formidable ices of 

 the north call for. A stroke from a whale, such as that des- 

 cribed in the narrative referred to, would, I am well persuaded, 

 have produced no serious effects upon an Arctic whaler, strength- 

 ened and fortified as these ships always are, which are perpet- 

 ually subject to heavy blows, and hard nips whilst navigating 

 the icy seas of the north. ED. 



