Chapter XVII: Section IV: Unfortunate Voyage, and Adventure in the Greenland Ices

One of my Father's voyages in the Dundee, and but one in the various ships he commanded for a period of upwards of a quarter of a century, commencing with the year 1792, proved a failure. The failure, however, arose from one of those incidental circumstances of climate, on the one part, and neglect of a principal officer, on the other part, which no human foresight could have anticipated, or human skill or diligence have remedied, after the perilous character of the ice-entanglement became clearly apparent.

This misadventure occurred, singularly enough, when I happened, though only a boy of ten years of age at the time, to be of the number of the souls on board. On the invitation of my Father, who had landed from his ship in passing Whitby, on his progress northward, to take leave of his family, I had gone off with him, designing to return by the pilot boat, to see the ship. I was astonished with what I saw; I explored with unmixed delight every accessible compartment of the cabins and store-rooms below, and conceived an irresistible desire to remain where I was, and go out on the voyage. At length the call of the pilots for "Master William," as the day advanced to its close, put my desire to the test of practicability. For a while I remained silent below, and when silence was no longer likely to be available, I contrived the child-like device of hiding my hat, which, on ascending the companion ladder bare-headed, I let it be understood I could not find! My Father having noticed my delight, and interpreting rightly the little device, remarked to the pilots,--"Don't mind him; he will go along with us." A mother's anguish, however, who loved me with the tenderest and most ardent affection, flashed into my mind. It forced utterance in the expression,--"But what will my Mother say?" The reply, curiously enough regarded as being consolatory, sufficed to allay my scruples,--"She will love you better when you come back!" The pilots still urging haste in my embarkation, as the boat was thumping heavily against the ship's gangway, were at length made sensible of what they at first could not credit, that I was to remain behind; and they set out for the shore in no small condition of amazement, and with no slight feeling of sympathising embarrassment, on account of the report they must yield to one, whom they sufficiently knew as an anxious, susceptible, and affectionate mother!

But my own story must be here suspended, as it possibly may hereafter find a place, if Providence yield me health and life for the undertaking, in the series of the "Memorials of the Sea," which, sometimes, I venture to contemplate carrying on.

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The leading incidents of this disappointing enterprise, I am enabled to give with a satisfactory measure of confidence, from a record made of it, many years ago, in a private autobiography, from which, mainly, I extract the following details.

After touching at Lerwick (Shetland), for the completion of our supplementary crew of _boatmen_, we proceeded northward towards the usual whale-fishing stations. On arriving in sight of Spitzbergen, and finding the western coast accessible, with a vein of clear water running continuously along shore, we pursued the encouraging opening as far as the northern headland of Charles Island, in latitude 78° 53' N. Here, tempted by the clear water eastward, we reached into a wide inlet near King's Bay, when, by a sudden gale coming on from the northward and north-westward, we were driven, encumbered by ice of recent formation, and fragments of old ice, into the opening betwixt the foreland and the main, where the ship ultimately became closely beset in the _Bay of Birds_ of Barentz.

At first, the officers in general thought little of the entanglement, expecting that any favourable change of wind would serve to release us. My Father, however, watching the augmentation in the thickness of the ice, by pressure and frost, received, very early, a more anxious impression. He had observed, indeed, that the ice was not yet thoroughly sealed together and fixed into an immoveable mass. For, periodically, he perceived, that some relaxation in the compactness of the general body of ices took place, which he ascribed to the action of a tide; and, on one evening, before retiring to rest, when a fine breeze, favourable for promoting an opening seaward had begun to prevail, he rather confidently anticipated some relaxation which might be available for our escape at the period of the favourably acting tide. In this expectation, he gave special orders to the chief officer, who had formerly been a whaling commander, and ought to have well appreciated the importance of the instruction,--to call him when the hoped-for relaxation of the ice might take place. But, disappointingly enough, he awoke of himself after a rather long sleep, when, as his watch indicated, the time of favourable tide must be passed. He anxiously dressed himself and hasted upon deck; but, whilst much slack and navigable ice was yet visible at some little distance to the north-westward, all about the ship was close and impenetrable. His enquiry as to whether the ice about the ship had not also slacked? led to the mortifying admission, reluctantly extracted, that the ice had indeed slacked very near to the ship, but, as was intimated in excuse, "it was so _rank_ and difficult that nothing could be done without 'calling all hands,' and much trouble; and he," the chief mate, "thought it would perhaps be more cleared away, by the hopeful breeze, by the time the Captain turned out!"

The highly culpable folly of this conduct became too soon apparent to all. For when an easterly, and then a southerly wind blew, without inducing any repetition of the slackness that had been missed; when we found the whole of the accumulated ices frozen into a solid field, without crack, or opening of any kind to be seen from the mast-head; when we marked our position as deeply embayed within the projecting headlands, and the ice everywhere wedged up against and cemented to all the circumjacent shores,--every one became anxious respecting the success of the voyage, whilst some began to entertain the depressing apprehension that the ship might possibly be detained throughout the winter!

The story of our distressing detention, with the measures adopted partly for the employment of the men, but which became ultimately available, even beyond our utmost hopes, for facilitating our release, is too long,--consistently with the extent designed for this volume, and the completion hereafter, possibly, of some personal records,--for being given in detail. It may be sufficient, for our present purpose, now to say, that after the endurance of the misery of an eight weeks' besetment, release was happily attained, and the Dundee was again free (but not until the season adapted for the fishery had thus been all but wasted) to range through any part of the ordinarily accessible ocean.

Our course being directed towards the north-west, we soon fell in with ships, and learnt that the fishery had been tolerably good, and that two or three ships had already obtained almost full cargoes.

Shortly afterwards we met with fish, and all hands set forth in earnest anxious pursuit. But they were, in fact, too anxious, and, in part, discouraged by the idea that the season was about at an end. Their efforts, in consequence, were ill directed or inadequately followed up, and only mortifying failures resulted. Stimulated by the defects and failures of his harponeers, my Father was induced to try the chase himself. Forthwith taking his post at the bow of one of the boats, he soon gave evidence of his superior efficiency. He "struck" whale after whale to the amount of three; but not being adequately supported by the other boats, one of the first of these escaped from the harpoon, under circumstances such as, he considered, should have led to its capture. Excited by this failure, he changed boats, in one of the other cases, after the fish, under the first harpoon, had reappeared at the surface; and, as the harponeers generally seemed heartless and inert, he changed again, after fastening another harpoon, until he had planted no less than three or four harpoons, in the same fish, with his own hands!

The season, however, soon came to a close, and these two whales, with a dead one which was also discovered by himself, constituted the whole of the Dundee's cargo in this trying year,--a cargo yielding only five-and-forty tuns of oil, yet amounting, after all, to nearly two-thirds of the general average of the Greenland fishery.

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Notwithstanding this serious abstraction from the general average of his five years' adventures in the Dundee, my Father's general pre-eminence was, in the issue, still maintained. During these five voyages, ninety-four whales were captured, and an amount of 812 tuns of oil brought to market. The yearly average, _inclusive_ of the year of unavoidable failure, was no less than 18·8 whales, producing 162·4 tuns of oil, besides the fair proportion of whalebone, sealskins, etc.

Compared with the fishery from Hull and Whitby, and, as far as my materials go, elsewhere, this result was considerably beyond that of any other Greenland whaler. With respect to the Hull average for the same period, the Dundee's superiority was in the ratio of 162·4 to 77·5 tuns of oil, or more than two to one. In comparison with the success of any other individual ship, the Dundee still stood at the head of the list,--the nearest approach in Hull being that of the Ellison, a ship commanded, during four years out of the five, by the same enterprising and talented officer, Mr. Allan, as we had occasion to notice, so favourably, in a former comparison. The Molly, Captain Angus Sadler,--a hardy adventurous and able commander, who, in subsequent years, became chief amongst his competitors from Hull,--obtained, during my Father's command of the Dundee, the next highest amount of cargoes,--the total, in the five years, being 689 tuns of oil. The Egginton, Wray, (one voyage under another captain) obtained, at the same time, 508 tuns; the Symmetry, Rose, 481 tuns; the Fanny, Jameson and Taylor, 460 tuns; the Manchester, Matson, 417 tuns, etc.;--the Dundee's cargoes, as has been shewn, being, in the same period, 812 tuns.

But, besides these comparisons, in all respects so favourable, we may again venture, up to the end of eleven years of consecutive adventures, to take the severest test of competition; viz. a comparison betwixt the Dundee's cargoes, and that of the select cargoes, for the five corresponding years, of the most prosperous Greenland-man, from Hull, of each year. And under this amount, being 806 tuns of oil, the Dundee is found still to stand the first.