Herman Melville's Whaling Years

12. A Dead Whale or a Stove Boat

[82] chapter 12 A Dead Whale or a Stove Boat “Stern all!” exclaimed the mate, as upon turning his head he saw the distended jaws of a large sperm whale close to the head of the boat, threatening it with instant destruction; “stern all hands, for your lives!” —Wharton the Whale-Killer!  1 “Yes, there is death in this business of whaling—a speechlessly quick chaotic bundling of a man into Eternity”(7:37),Ishmael observes in Moby-Dick after describing the gloomy marble tablets of the whalemen’s conventicle at New Bedford, which recounted fatalities in the fishery. And in Chapter 45, “The Affidavit,” he remarks, Yet I tell you that upon one particular voyage which I made to the Pacific, among many others, we spoke thirty different ships, every one of which had had a death by a whale, some of them more than one, and three that had each lost a boat’s crew. (45:206) The first statement is completely valid, documented again and again by reports of whaling accidents in the period when Melville sailed the South Seas. Available evidence does not fully substantiate the second remark as an authentic recollection of Melville’s whaling years,but it cannot be summarily dismissed as dramatic exaggeration. “A dead whale or a stove boat,”the tune to which the men of the Pequod pulled when in their whaleboats (36:161), assumed only two conclusions to a fight with a whale,but there were other less dramatic possibilities.Harpooners missed their targets,and their quarry escaped without fatal incident.Many an iron darted into a whale “drawed” (pulled loose). And in order to avoid a boat’s being disastrously towed under by a deep-diving cachalot, many a mate ordered the line to be cut, the angry whale going off to windward with a barb in its black skin. Fatal accidents were not invariable concomitants of the staving of a boat by a whale. Boats were so frequently shattered by leviathans that a hardened mariner,unscathed in a vicious brush with a bull whale,might commit to his journal a merry commentary on the encounter such as the following: A Dead Whale or a Stove Boat   [83] Wednesday Sept 8th [1841]. Since my last attempt at literary composition . . . I’ll tell you what we’ve done—we’ve got a whale only think of it and I’ll tell you another thing we’ve done we fastened to another one a real buster one of the large ones all alone by himself but he slapped the Bow Boat side the chops twice he did and made a damn great hole in her and what with one thing and another . . . we missed getting him.2 But death was frequent enough in the fleet to remind whalemen constantly of the extra-hazardous nature of their occupation. The record of loss of life caused maliciously by ferocious whales or accidentally by “gallied” (frightened) ones during the period of Melville’s whaling career is gloomily impressive, as the following reports attest: A letter fm bk Pleiades, of Wareham, reports her May 1st [1841], with 1200,—had lost her 3d officer, killed by a whale.3 Heard from 24th [July 1841], Magnolia, Barnard . . . lost 3d officer, Mr Francis Luce, taken out of the boat by a line.4 Ar[rived] at Maui, Sept . . . 2d [1841], Elbe, Poughkeepsie . . . lost a man and had all her boats stove.5 [Spoken September 23, 1841] Franklin, Ray, Nan[tucket], no oil; had lost a boat steerer killed by a whale.6 [Brig Pearl, of Rochester], [l]ost a boat’s crew by a whale, 1841.7 these 24 hours begins Plesant wether went on shore while on shore saw whales came of[f] to the ship and lored the Boats Got one whale and got one Boat stove and the 2d mate killed by the whale [Saturday, January 1, 1842].8 At Callao . . .Nantucket,Gardner,400—Peter F.Swain,3d mate,lost,taken out of the boat by a line [on January 21, 1842].9 Captain Wood’s boat [of brig Emeline, New Bedford, during 1841–43 voyage] was stove by a whale, and he died from exhaustion before help reached [him].10 [M]ate, Alexander Swain [of the ship Henry Astor, Nantucket, during 1840–44 voyage], killed by a whale.11 [84]   Herman Melville’s Whaling Years A letter from on board bark Elizabeth...