Harpoons, Lances, Guns, and Boats 237 



whale sounds, the strain on the line lifts the stern 

 high in the air while the bow is depressed until 

 the rail is just awash. After the racking of a 

 cruise of forty months, no one cares to use the 

 boats for a new voyage. 



The original deep-water Nantucket whaler was 

 a sloop of thirty to forty tons, a vessel of the 

 size of the oyster sloops that are to be seen in the 

 Atlantic ports. Such vessels as these, and even 

 larger ones, were built back in the woods, at times 

 a mile from the water. When ready they were 

 lowered down on huge sleds and drawn by a 

 hundred yoke of oxen to the water side. The 

 men who built the ship manned it. Nantucket 

 men (or women) also wove the canvas for their 

 sails, beginning in 1792, and a newspaper item 

 of that time says that the looms employed more 

 hands than the five ropewalks that were then in 

 existence on the island. The cost of the small 

 whale ships of the eighteenth century was nomi- 

 nally from 3 to 5 per ton register. 



During the nineteenth century the Pacific 

 whalers were from 200 to 450 tons register, usually. 

 A ship like the Charles Phelps, built at Westerly, 



