410 The Story of the New England Whalers 



The story of the Oriole, mentioned above as 

 a ship that did not follow the fleet, gives a good 

 idea of what one may call the every-day work 

 and losses of Arctic whalers. Captain H. Hayes 

 commanded the Oriole that year, and Captain 

 Davis was his mate. Hayes was one of the most 

 enterprising captains of the Arctic fishery. He 

 put the Oriole into the ice ahead of all others, 

 and having found open water near the Siberian 

 coast, he reached away toward Plover Bay. 



"There, I guess we've got the best of them 

 all this time," he said as the Oriole cleared the 

 ice, and so he had, for there was not another 

 ship in the open water, nor likely to be for some 

 time. He expected to have the schools of whales 

 to be found near Plover Bay all to himself. 



As the day wore away a cake of ice, as big and 

 rugged as a New England pasture, was seen ahead, 

 and the captain pinched his ship up into the wind, 

 hoping to pass to windward of it. Finding, 

 after a time, that this could not be done, he told 

 the man at the wheel to "Let her go off." Off 

 she went as merrily as the bird whose name she 

 bore, and in a few moments she was ploughing 



