THE WHALE FISHERY. 



245 



times made of ivory the teeth or pan of the sperm whale ; the straps were nicely laid, covered 

 with canvas, grafted, and i'auciiully painted. The " boat gripes," about 8 feet long, are made of a 

 !2jj-inch rope, double, and seized together with canvas. The middle portion is covered with leather 



HKAD OV WHALE-BOAT, SHOWING GIG-TACKUS. 



to prevent chafing. One end is made fast to a hook on the side of the vessel, and the other, with, 

 a laniard attached, is passed around the boat and hauled taut.* 



From one to three spare boats are held in readiness to be lowered in case of accident to the 

 boats on the cranes, one on schooners and brigs, and two or three on barks. It is also customary 

 to carry duplicate parts of boats, such as keels, knees, gunwales, timbers, stem and stern posts, 

 and boat boards, as well as boat nails, for repairing boats which may be stove by whales or broken 

 when lowered or hoisted. During the voyage, as the boats are destroyed by accident, others may 

 be purchased at some convenient port where whaling supplies are kept, and usually at exorbitant 

 prices ; but they are of American manufacture, having been sent out to supply the demand, or 

 they may be obtained from homeward-bound ships. The manner of transporting the extra boats 

 on barks and ships is inboard on skids or deck-houses, and on.schooners outboard at the stern. 



The skids or gallows frames are merely a timber frame-work. Four wooden stanchions, 

 two on each side of the ship in the after part, resting upon the plank-shear on the outside of 

 the vessel, are bolted to the bulwarks. Two pieces of timber, extending athwartsbips, rest upon 

 the stanchions, and are held in position by a mortise-aud-teuon joint. To impart additional 

 strength, some of the frames are kneed at the junction of the overhead timbers and stanchions. 

 Such a frame is high enough above the deck to "clear the head of the longest man of the crew." 

 The spare boats are turned upside down, with their heads and sterns resting upon the transverse 

 timbers, and lashed. The skeleton frame is seldom found on the present New Bedford ships; and 

 it is my impression that it was one of the peculiarities of the craft belonging to Nantucket and 

 Edgartown. The storage-house, with which I am familiar, may be found on the largest vessels 

 hailing from the first-named port. It is a kind of shed called the " after-house," or " after-deck 

 house," built over the quarter deck. Its roof and sides are weather proof, and the ends are open. 

 It a fiords an excellent shelter for the after deck. On its top may be found the spare boats, har- 

 poons, laiices, boat- sails, rudders, oars, aud other articles of boat-gear; and under it, implements 

 with long poles, such as cutting spades, tinkers, porpoise irons, and grains. 



Although the spare boats are carried at the stern of brigs and schooners, they are never 

 lowered from the after part of the vessels, as, in heavy weather, great difficulty would be expe- 



* After the boats have thus been provided for, spreaders are, iu some instances, placed transversely in them. The 

 spreaders are merely wooden sticks, which, in the words of an old Provincetown whaleman, are "just as long as the 

 boats are wide," \vith shoulders or notches cut in each end to hold them in their proper positions on the gunwales, to 

 keep the boats from warping. They are used in the southern fishery only, where the boatt are exposed to the pow- 

 erful rays of a tropical sun. 



