Sketches Afloat with the Whalers 245 



crews. Later it was necessary for the captains 

 to reach out to the near-by towns to complete 

 their crews. 



"Captain Isaiah West, now eighty-six years of 

 age, tells me that he remembers when he picked 

 his crew within a radius of sixty miles of New 

 Bedford; that oftentimes he was acquainted, 

 either personally or through report, with the 

 social standing or business standing and qualifi- 

 cations of every man on his vessel, and also that 

 he remembers the first foreigner, an Irishman, 

 that shipped with him, the circumstance being 

 commented upon at that time as being a remark- 

 able one/' (James Templeman Brown.) 



Later still neither the whaling ports nor the 

 near-by towns could furnish men, and the whaler 

 captains perforce applied to the crimps (men who 

 made a business of supplying crews to ships) 

 of all the Atlantic ports for men. They sailed 

 short-handed and touched at the Azores or the 

 Cape de Verdes for Portuguese sailors, all of 

 whom were whalers accustomed to an alongshore 

 fishery. They reached down on the coast of 

 Africa and gathered whom they could find, such 



