Chapter VII: Section VI: Entrance on, and Progress in training in, the Greenland

Whale-Fishery._

After his exciting adventure in escaping from imprisonment in an enemy's country, my father retired, for a season, from his seafaring pursuits. He returned to the homestead of his fathers, where, assisting in the management of the farm, he remained about two or three years. During this interval he married; the object of his choice being Lady Mary, (viz. Mary, with the prefix of Lady, taken, not ostentatiously, but in rural simplicity, from the characteristic designation of the day of her birth, which was on _Lady-day_), the eldest daughter of Mr. John Smith, of Cropton,--a rural district about five-and-twenty miles from Whitby,--who resided on a small landed property which he had inherited from his ancestors.

By no means satisfied, however, with this retirement,--which recent hard and perilous service had, for a time, rendered congenial to his feelings,--and as little contented with the limitation of his unusual energies to such a contracted scope of employment, he turned his attention again to the sea. And in this object he at length found a congenial opening, in a region and employment admirably adapted to his physical constitution and adventurous spirit, the _Greenland Whale Fishery_; a trade which, at this period, the latter end of the eighteenth century, was pursued with considerable enterprise from the port of Whitby.

On this new species of maritime service he embarked in the ship Henrietta, Captain Crispin Bean, in the spring of the year 1785, as one of the seamen. Of the incidents of his training in this adventurous and stirring profession, we have, unfortunately, no special records. To the requirements, however, in every species of knowledge and duty connected with the Arctic navigation and the capture of the huge cetacea of the north, he gave himself with such tact and perseverance, that, on his sixth voyage, we find him to have risen over the heads of all his original associates, and occupying the position of second officer, the _specksioneer_ of the ship.[C]

A single incident, though of the most trifling nature, has been preserved in connection with this period of my Father's life, which I am induced to record, simply because there was something in it illustrative of character.

As the ships employed in the whale fishery in the spring and summer were usually _laid up_ during the rest of the year, it was the frequent practice of the officers, who were generally engaged from year to year, to embark as seamen in the coasting trade during the interval of winter. My Father, habitually energetic and industrious, and having now an increasing family to support, adopted this commendable course. On one occasion it so happened that he was employed in a vessel whose chief officer, the mate, was a young man possessing a full share of self-conceit, evinced by a not unfrequent exhibition of supercilious assumption of superiority--characteristics excessively obnoxious to my Father's manly disposition. But, notwithstanding the occasional exhibition of an offensive manner towards himself as well as others, such was always his high sense of the _duty of obedience to superiors_, and of the importance, in principle, of _proper subordination_, that he bore with restrained feelings in silence this youthful and vexatious folly. An occasion, however, occurred, in which he might legitimately suffer the fault to chastise itself, and it is to that to which my story refers.

The vessel was lying in port about to take in ballast. In this operation, which is often effected (as in this case) by the shovel of "ballast-heavers" out of loaded "lighters" laid alongside the ship, there is a liability to scatter a good deal of the shingle or other material, so as to fall overboard to the encumbrance of the harbour. To prevent this damage to the navigation, it is in many places a harbour regulation that a canvas screen or sail, called a "port-sail," should be placed below the small port-hole cut in the side of the ship for the reception of ballast, so as to catch the ballast-heavers' scatterings.

In the good ship, the ----, however, this canvas protector happened to be wanting when ballast was about to be taken in. The mate, with a manner (it is presumed) of excessive superciliousness, came to my Father with a _"bolt"_ (or roll) of canvas, asking him, as if doubting his capacity, whether he could make such a thing? and then requesting him to set immediately to work to supply the lack of port-sails. Assuming a look of meekest simplicity, which for such a just retribution my Father could well put on, he quietly asked, in reference to the order to make port-sails, "how _many_ he was to make?" Mistaking the look of simplicity for simpleness itself, the young officer, as he turned jeeringly away, replied, "_half-a-dozen_, to be sure."

One only, or two, at the most, could possibly be required; but, to punish arrogancy, the order was strictly regarded. Some hours subsequently the mate returned to the place where the work of the sail-needle was being actively carried on, when, to his astonishment and vexation, he found the deck covered with the breadths of canvas _cut out_ for the half-dozen port-sails, and some two or three of them already seamed together! His fierce demand, "Why have you cut up the whole bolt of canvas?" was responded to in the former quiet manner of simplicity, "Did you not order me to make half-a-dozen?"

Whilst thus justly chastised for his own folly, and biting his lips with vexation,--the vexation being the more exciting because _consciously self-earned_,--he could not refrain from resorting to abuse, where reason and justice must fail him. But singularly enough it happened, whilst the altercation which ensued was being carried on, and when it had been broadly intimated to him, I believe, that his further services could be well dispensed with, that a letter, just then brought by some one coming on board, was put into my Father's hand, offering him the unexpected appointment and preferment which constitute the subject of our next chapter. He was thus enabled, with no small advantage of position over the still fretted and abusive officer, to say, "If you are not satisfied with what I have commenced, I can leave you to do it yourself."

* * * * *

In concluding this chapter, it comes appropriately in connection, to mention something of the state of my Father's mind and feelings with respect to the grand object of this probationary state with man--the attainment and furtherance of a religious life.

On this topic I am the better enabled to write satisfactorily, because of the repeated references to it which I have heard my Father make in after-life. At all times, within my own recollection, he evinced a very marked regard for religion, with a clear apprehension of the great principles of our holy faith, and an ardent desire for the experience of its divine consolations. But he used to refer back, with a kind of longing regret, to the days of his youth, when he had _felt_ the consolations of godliness, and realized the happiness of heavenly meditations. Often (as I have heard him intimate) whilst pursuing his agricultural labours, and not unfrequently, too, when walking to and fro in his night-watch at sea,--he had been privileged to realize that enviable feeling of peaceful happiness, in the lifting up of the heart in pious meditations and communings heavenward, which constitutes at once an experimental evidence and present reward of the reception of the Gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. For, however it may fall short in the ardency of its perceptions, or however it may be liable to be confounded with the hasty and transient impulses of mere excitement, yet, in its nature, and according to its degree, the feeling thus realized belongs, I doubt not, to that truly enviable class of Christian experiences described by St. Paul, as "the peace of God, which passeth all understanding," and as the rejoicing "with joy unspeakable and full of glory."

FOOTNOTES:

[A] "Memoir of William Scoresby, Esq." by the late Mr. Samuel Drew, in the "Imperial Magazine," for 1822.

[B] Life of Captain James Cook, by the Rev. G. Young, of Whitby.

[C] The title "specksioneer," derived from the Dutch, is applied to the officer who has special charge of the fishing apparatus, and the conduct of the flensing operations in the fishery. He is also a principal harpooner.