The Boy Whaleman

When we were well out at sea the vessel began to pitch and roll so that I found it difficult to keep on my feet. I would find myself in the lee scuppers only to be thrown back a...

When I was a boy, New Bedford was not, as it is now, a great manufacturing city, but the best known and largest whaling port in the world. The wharves were then busy places; the...

We arrived at the Okhotsk Sea in the early summer; and one has only to visit that inlet to learn how extensive it is. The weather was not so severe as that of the Arctic, and so...

I have said little about the cook, who was so kind to me the first morning at sea. He was always pleasant and obliging, and he used to say that he only regretted that he couldn’...

Otaheite, generally called Tahiti, was originally the garden of the world. After the white man came there were great changes, but not for the better. The soil remained as fertil...

And now came the trying-out. The try-works were placed between the foremast and mainmast. The timbers underneath were of great strength and capable of sustaining a mass of brick...

And now for Honolulu! Every one was good-natured and happy. Few vessels in the history of whaling could beat our record of fifteen months. It was the opinion that if our good fo...

Business was now carried on both day and night, or, more properly speaking, all the time, as there was no night. There was always some one in the crow’s nest. To increase the ch...

From early morn, when the men took their places in the hoops, to look for whales, there followed the regular order of the day. If the weather were good, the captain took his obs...

“I want to tell you about the prizes. Every man who sights a whale that is captured gets a prize. If the whale makes fifty barrels or less, a flannel shirt; if over fifty barrel...

I have said that there is a wide difference between a merchantman and a whaler. A ship that carries a cargo that is to be delivered must make the port of delivery with all possi...

While our voyage had been a successful one, our outfits were not all exhausted; we had material enough for the capture of a few more sperm whales provided we could see them. The...

We saw no whales as we went south, and we approached the Strait of Magellan under what seemed to be favorable auspices. The weather was fair, the sea was tranquil and the scener...

We were due in the Arctic Ocean the last of June, and were to touch first at Honolulu, where most of us expected letters from home. It was not our fortune to take a right whale...

One would think from the name “Coast of Japan” that whalers cruised off the land. In truth they cruised generally some distance from it, for, as has been said, sperm whales do n...

We left the Okhotsk in September, with twelve hundred and fifty barrels of whale oil and thirteen thousand pounds of bone, besides the sperm we had taken. When it was learned th...

On the following morning, my attention was called to an article in the local newspaper declaring the voyage of the _Seabird_ to be the most remarkable, if not the most profitabl...