A Year with a Whaler

As soon as we were under sail, the crew was called aft and the watches selected. Gabriel was to head the starboard watch and Mendez the port. The men were ranged in line and the...

Two boats were sent to secure the whale. I lowered with one. As we came up to the whale, I marveled at its immense bulk. It looked even larger than when it had breached and I ha...

The ship's prow was turned northward after work on the whale had been finished. I expected we would soon run into the ice again. We sailed on and on, but not a block of ice big...

On a bright, sunshiny morning a few days later, with a light breeze just ruffling the harbor, the brig with her sails laid back and her head pointed seaward was drifting with th...

We slipped out of Turtle bay one moonlight night and stood southward. We were now in sperm whale waters and the crews of the whale boats were selected. Captain Winchester was to...

The crew called Tomas Mendez, the acting third mate, the "Night King." I have forgotten what forecastle poet fastened the name upon him, but it fitted like a glove. In the day w...

At midnight after the burial, we raised the volcanic fire of Mauna Loa dead ahead. Sailors declare that a gale always follows a death at sea and the wind that night blew hard. B...

One damp morning, with frequent showers falling here and there over the sea and not a drop wetting the brig, Captain Winchester suddenly stopped pacing up and down the weather s...

The brig _Alexander_ was a staunch, sea-worthy little vessel. She had no fine lines; there was nothing about her to please a yachtsman's eye; but she was far from being a tub as...

Before leaving the islands, we shipped a Portuguese negro boat-steerer to take the place of the Night King. He was coal black, had a wild roll to his eyes, an explosive, splutte...

We were cruising in open water soon afterward with two whaling ships in sight, the _Reindeer_ and the _Helen Marr_, both barkentines and carrying five boats each, when we raised...

With the first breeze, we set sail for Port Clarence, Alaska, the northern rendezvous of the Arctic Ocean whaling fleet in early summer. There in the latter part of June or the...

A lone whale, in plain view from the deck, was sporting lazily on the surface about a mile and a half off our starboard bow. The three boats were hurriedly lowered and the crews...

From Unalaska, into which port we put to have the captain's leg attended to, the brig stood northwesterly for the spring whaling on the bowhead and right whale grounds off the S...

When the brig _Alexander_ sailed out of San Francisco on a whaling voyage a few years ago, I was a member of her forecastle crew. Once outside the Golden Gate, I felt the swing...

Soon after taking our third whale, we saw our first polar bears--two of them on a narrow floe of ice. When the brig was within fifty yards of them the mate got out his rifle and...

The whaling fleet divided soon after entering the Arctic Ocean. Some of the ships went straight on north to the whaling grounds about Point Barrow and Herschel Island. The other...

We had hardly washed clear of the ice in the heavy seas when "Blow!" rang from the crow's nest. A school of whales close ahead, covering the sea with fountains, was coming leisu...

It was the heart of the Arctic summer and the high hills that rose all about the town were green with deep grass--it looked as if it would reach a man's waist--and ablaze with w...

We noticed that several of our Eskimo guests appeared at times to be slightly under the influence of liquor and thought perhaps they had obtained gin or rum from some whaling ve...

Our fourth and last whale gave us quite a bit of trouble. We sighted this fellow spouting in a choppy sea among ice islands two or three miles off the edges of the polar pack. A...

From Unalaska, we headed north for the Arctic Ocean. For one day of calm, we lay again off the little Eskimo village of St. Lawrence Bay and again had the natives as our guests....

It was on October tenth that we broke out the Stars and Stripes at our main gaff and squared our yards for home. Everybody cheered as the flag went fluttering up, for everybody...