Chapter XV: War and the Whalers

If we had come across a northern whaler in the early Victorian days, we should have found she was a full-rigged ship of not more than 450 tons; and if we had come across her at sea with her maintopsails backed and her courses clewed up and a number of birds swooping around her, we should know even from a distance that she was just cutting up the whale which had been recently caught. And as you came nearer you would have heard the men at the capstan heaving away to an old whaling chantey:

’Tis well nigh sixty years ago,
On March the twentieth day,
When we set sail from Yarmouth Roads,
And bore due North away.

And, after a few narrative verses concerning the whaling operations, there would come the final cheery words:

Singing “Aye, lads, give way, lads,”
We’re bound to the north countree,
Where icebergs grow and whales do blow,
And sunsets you never see.

Dreadful doggerel it all seems to the modern sailor, with his extra master’s ticket and scientific knowledge: but those were the days of simple ships and plain seamen. So you would hear the song end abruptly as that long strip of blubber was hauled up from the whale’s carcase alongside. The “blanket-piece” they used to call it. And then you would be able to watch those busy men on the whale’s back working away with their spades and cutting another piece. That was before the days of steam affected these vessels. But even those Arctic whalers of about 1870 were still fully rigged, their engines were of very small horse-power, and just useful for getting the ship out of some awkward surrounding ice. Otherwise they were sailing ships and practically did all their passages under canvas. They went out with coal in their oil tanks, which were cleaned out on reaching the grounds and then filled with the whale produce. But their fuel consumption was very small.

As one examines the lines of such a vessel, one notices that this three-master has not a straight stem, but a moderately rounded forefoot with a straight keel and a very short counter. Her sides were about as solid as one of Nelson’s wooden walls, and her bows were protected with sheets of iron to resist the ice. The total complement was about fifty, the men being berthed forward and the officers aft. The single funnel was immediately abaft the mainmast, and as you walked along the raised poop deck you would have noted the engine-room skylight, sometimes a light flying bridge, then the companion-way to the saloon and the officers’ cabins leading out of it. The steering wheel was right aft, there was a pump wheel just behind the mainmast; while forward there were the capstan and fo’c’sle hatch, and then came the big hold for the whale produce. In lieu of a figure-head you would notice that she carried a carved harpoon.

The Norwegian whalers of this period were small and built of their native fir with a few sheets of iron sheathing, hoping to avoid being seriously caught in the ice. The Norwegian steam-whalers were both ancient and slow; but there were also some ketch-rigged craft of about 40 tons with a crew which varied from nine to seventeen. This smaller type sometimes used her squaresail for driving the ship astern, if she got caught in the ice and saw an opening clear astern.

But during the American Civil War there came an additional peril to those whalers which used to sail from the western coast through the Bering Straits into the Arctic. And the destruction of whaling ships by those Confederate cruisers _Shenandoah_, _Alabama_ and _Florida_ was one of the biggest shocks that ever came to the industry. “The whaling industry of New England,” says Mr. Arthur C. Watson, “saw the handwriting on the wall during the Civil War. Petroleum had been discovered, and the ship merchants and captains knew what the consequences were to be. They realized that the decline in their business was permanent, and that, as the years came on, more and more of their craft would be forced out of the running. It was merely a coincidence that the war and the mineral oil discovery should be contemporary events, but the war had a part of its own to play in the decay of the industry--a dramatic part, in fact, which made the port of New Bedford shudder for its future far more than did the news about petroleum.”

When the _Shenandoah_ in June 1865 came up the Bering Straits she was rewarded for her trouble by capturing and burning five whaling vessels. But on the next day she captured at anchor quite a fleet of whalers, with the exception of the _Favorite_, commanded by Captain Young, who resisted the Confederate’s officer coming on board not merely with words, but with a display of guns and fire-arms. But the _Favorite’s_ crew got frightened and deserted, so that after removing the ship’s ammunition they took to the boats and left Captain Young by himself. The latter, when the _Shenandoah’s_ next boat came off, had no alternative but to surrender when he found there was nothing for his guns to fire, and on being taken prisoner he was put in irons. On that day nine whaling ships were lost to their enemy.

But during that same month the _Shenandoah_ made numerous other attacks on whaling fleets, burned thirty-four fine ships, and employed four others for taking the captured whaling crews back to the shore. These losses to this section of seafaring were such that ship-owners were pretty well ruined. Nor were these by any means all. Everyone knows the daring story of the _Alabama_, how she was built by Messrs. Laird of Birkenhead as a wooden barquentine-rigged screw steamer of 1,040 tons under her yard designation as “No. 290,” and that on July 29, 1862, under the pretence of doing her trial trip she slipped down the Mersey out to sea and made for the Azores, where she was met by two other vessels which brought her armament. But many readers will have forgotten the blows she struck at the American whaling ships.

Her commanding officer was Captain Raphael Semmes, and she at once began to show what she could do. “I resolved to strike a blow at the enemy’s whale-fishery, off the Azores,” he wrote. “There is a curious and beautiful problem--that of Providence feeding the whale--connected with this fishery.... It is because of that problem that the Azores are a whaling station. The food which attracts the whale to these islands is not produced in their vicinity, but is carried thither by the currents--the currents of the ocean performing the same functions for the finny tribe that the atmosphere does for the plants. The fishes of the sea, in their kingdom beneath the waters, have thus their highways and byways, as well as the animals upon the land, and are always to be found congregated where their great food-bearers, the currents, make the deposits.”

The American whalers had been fond of this ground and found it profitable, the season usually ending about the beginning of October, when the first gales began to blow and the whales migrated to other feeding grounds. But here was the _Alabama_ off here by the beginning of September, so she had several weeks in which she could hope for success. It was that old area, of course, where English ships in the sixteenth century used to lie in wait for the richly laden carracks making for Spain and Portugal. And so on the night of September 4 we find the _Alabama_ hove-to off Fayal under her topsails, and the next day the light easterly weather with a cloudy sky came as ideal conditions for the cruiser to begin.

She had not long to wait, for a ship was sighted lying to, and then the cruiser made sail, hoisted United States colours and ran down to within a few hundred yards of her. The strange ship also hoisted United States colours and revealed herself a whaler. She had that very day harpooned a whale, and a big one at that. She had just got the animal alongside and the yard tackles in the usual way were hoisting him partially out of the water to be flensed, when the _Alabama_ sprang a ripe surprise by now hoisting true Confederate colours.

The name of the whaler was the _Ocmulgee_, of Edgartown, Massachusetts, whose master Semmes described as “a genuine specimen of the Yankee whaling skipper; long and lean, and as elastic, apparently, as the whalebone he dealt in. Nothing could exceed the blank stare of astonishment that sat on his face, as the change of flags took place on board the _Alabama_. He had been engaged, up to the last moment, with his men, securing the rich spoil alongside. The whale was a fine ‘sperm,’ and was a ‘big strike,’ and had already been denuded of much of its blubber when we got alongside. He naturally concluded, he said, when he saw the United States colours at our peak, that we were one of the new gunboats sent out by Mr. Welles to protect the whale fishery. It was indeed remarkable that no protection should have been given to these men by their Government. Unlike the ships of commerce, the whalers are obliged to congregate within small well-known spaces of ocean, and remain there for weeks at a time, whilst the whaling season lasts. It was the most obvious thing in the world that these vessels, thus clustered together, should attract the attention of the Confederate cruisers and be struck at.”

For at that time there were not more than half a dozen important whaling stations in the world, and as already mentioned, the _Shenandoah_ was able in the North Pacific to repeat the successes of the _Alabama_ in the Atlantic. During the Great War it became necessary latterly to send armed craft to protect the British fishing fleets in the North Sea, but, as Semmes says, “the whalers, like the commerce of the United States generally, were abandoned to their fate.” It thus became perfectly easy to strike a blow at American whaling with such force that it never recovered. It has been estimated that these cruisers did damage to the extent of £310,000, including £100,000 worth of oil lost. In addition to that sum must be reckoned the loss of twenty-three fine New Bedford whaling ships which were intentionally sunk at the entrances to Confederate harbours in order to block them up. Thus the unfortunate owners and fishermen seemed to have been dealt blows right and left. Who could expect that with such circumstances whaling could ever become again what it once was?

But to return to the _Alabama_: there were taken out of the _Ocmulgee_ not merely the thirty-seven unhappy people but meat and stores, by which time night had come on. It was too late to think of burning her, for the flames against the nocturnal sky would only scare the other whalers somewhere in the vicinity. “I had now become too old a hunter to commit such an indiscretion,” remarked Semmes humorously. “With a little management and caution, I might hope to uncover the birds no faster than I could bag them. And so, hoisting a light at the peak of the prize, I permitted her to remain anchored to the whale, and we lay by her until the next morning, when we burned her; the smoke of the conflagration being, no doubt, mistaken by vessels at a distance for that of some passing steamer.”

Later on, after capturing a Boston schooner, the _Alabama_ chased a whaling brig, which by her number of boats and other characteristics showed her occupation unmistakably. But she was eventually allowed to go, for she proved herself a genuine Portuguese; and this was the only foreign whaler that the _Alabama_ came across, for the whaling monopoly was so thoroughly in American hands by this date. But in that same afternoon Semmes gave chase to a vessel in the north-west and came up to her about sunset. She was flying American colours and her master unsuspectingly presumed the steamer had been sent to act as escort. The American vessel was found to be the New Bedford whaler _Ocean Rover_, and already she had been cruising about the world, true to her name, for three years and four months, and had sent home one or two cargoes of oil, but was now going back there with eleven hundred barrels after her long voyaging, having determined to visit the Azores grounds in order to fill up what empty casks remained. But the _Ocean Rover_ was now to end her last voyage of all. Semmes had her hove-to until morning about four miles from the land, and the whaler’s captain asked permission to land in his own boats. Semmes suggested that this was rather a long distance to pull, to which the Yankee skipper replied, “Oh! That’s nothing. We whalers sometimes chase a whale, on the broad sea, until our ships are hull-down, and think nothing of it.”

So, the sea being smooth, the six whaleboats were allowed alongside the _Ocean Rover_, and for two hours the men worked hard transferring provisions, personal effects and whaling gear as well as the ship’s cat and parrot. The whaler’s skipper declined Semmes’s suggestion that the boats were too heavily laden to be safe. “No,” insisted the whaler, “they’re as buoyant as ducks, and we shan’t ship a drop of water.” And he was right, for they got to the Flores shore all right.

By morning the _Alabama_ had captured the _Alert_ of New London, whose stores were extremely welcome as she was only sixteen days out of her home port. And now after burning the schooner _Starlight_, the _Ocean Rover_ and _Alert_, the _Alabama_ drew close to a large schooner which had to have a blank cartridge fired before she would heave-to. She was boarded and found to be the whaler _Weathergauge_ of Provincetown, Massachusetts, six weeks out. Semmes said that American sailing ships were notable for the whiteness of their canvas, which was made out of American cotton, so the cut of the sails and the taper of the spars usually showed the nationality: but on one occasion the _Alabama_ had a good chase all for nothing, the vessel being a Dane although she seemed a real Yankee.

After the _Weathergauge_ whaler had landed her crew in the ship’s boats, she was burned, and presently steering off to the north-west the _Alabama_ tried fresh ground, and sighted the New Bedford whaler _Altamaha_, five months out. She had not had much whaling luck and was comparatively “clean.” She was now burned, but owing to absence of oil did not burn so furiously. It was now the middle of September, and on the night after the capture of _Altamaha_ there was an exciting chase. About half-past eleven a large sailing ship passed to windward, and visible in the bright moonlight. Both ships were close-hauled on the starboard tack, the strange vessel being about three points on the _Alabama’s_ weather bow, and evidently realized that the _Alabama_ was now pursuing, for the stranger set both her royals and flying jib. This suited the Confederate perfectly, as her best sailing was when she was on a wind, and few ships could beat her under that condition. The stranger had got a good start, but the _Alabama_ was footing so quickly that within a couple of hours she was on the other’s weather quarter, having both fore-reached and got to windward of the stranger. When the range came down to a mile, Semmes had a blank fired to cause the fleer to heave-to. But the latter now bore away a little, eased her sheets and began getting out her stuns’l booms preparatory to setting more canvas.

The _Alabama_ therefore eased sheets also, and was so well handled that before the pursued could get her foretopmast stuns’l set, she was at point-blank range. Semmes fired a second blank and then the stranger hauled up her courses and steered up into the wind. Was she a neutral or a prize, after all? Semmes sent his boarding officer to her with instructions that if she were the latter he was to hoist a light as soon as he got aboard her. Followed a brief lull as the oars quickly rowed the boat away from the cruiser. But now up went a light to the stranger’s peak, and so the two vessels remained near to each other till morning. She was found to be yet another whaler, the _Benjamin Tucker_, eight months out of New Bedford, with 340 barrels of oil. After her crew had been taken off and some of her stores salved, such as tobacco, she was set on fire.

And so matters went on, for the next vessel to be caught was the whaling schooner _Courser_ of Provincetown, Massachusetts, with a young man as skipper. The difficulty now was exactly that which confronted the German raiders during the Great War: in fact, Semmes’ tactics are so similar to those of such ships as the _Moewe_ and _Seeadler_ that one can only suppose that German naval officers must have paid considerable study to the Confederate _Alabama’s_ operations. When the auxiliary sailing ship _Seeadler_ in the South Atlantic had sunk so many vessels away from land she found all those survivors a nuisance: for they had to be fed and they took up a great deal of space. Von Luckner, her commanding officer, got over this difficulty by capturing one more ship and sending the other crews away in her with strict orders to make for the nearest South American port. Semmes now ran back towards the Azores, anxious to get rid of all this crowd, which was seriously inconveniencing the ship, for he had the crews of three vessels. Towing eight whaleboats he approached Flores and sent seventy shipless seamen in the oared craft to the land, and as they pulled away from the cruiser it seemed as if a regatta were being held in the Atlantic. After they had gone, and just before the _Courser_ was set on fire, Semmes used her as a target, and gave his men practice in gunnery.

Resuming now her north-west course, which had been interrupted, the _Alabama_ with a fine south-west wind sighted, chased and overcame a large ship which turned out to be the whaler _Virginia_, twenty days out from New Bedford. After three and a half hours the contest was over. Semmes says the master of the ship was greatly surprised at the _Alabama’s_ speed. Fortunately there still exists in America the statement of Captain Shadrach R. Tilton, then in command of this whaling ship, and Mr. Arthur C. Watson, who has had access to it, says that Tilton told of Semmes with his heavy black moustache waxed by a servant every morning and of how the Confederate’s captain always wore white kid gloves. These little touches of personal pride exactly agree with Semmes’s somewhat bombastic tone of writing, very much after the manner of certain German naval officers who published their experiences of the Great War.

Tilton stated that “the pirate ship overtook us in latitude 39° 10′; longitude 34° 20′. She first showed British colors, but when a quarter of a mile from the _Virginia_ she set Confederate colors and sent an armed boat’s crew aboard. I was informed the vessel was a prize to the _Alabama_, and ordered to take my papers and go aboard the steamer. The pirates then stripped the ship of all valuable articles, and at 4 p.m. set fire to her. I went on the quarterdeck of the _Alabama_ with my son, when they sent us into the lee waist with the crew. All were ironed except two boys, the cook, and the steward. I asked if I was to be ironed, and the reply was that the vessel’s purser had been in irons aboard the United States vessel, and his head shaved. He proposed to retaliate. We were put in the lee waist with an old mattress and a few blankets upon which to lie. The steamer’s guns were run out, the side and the ports could not be shut. So when the sea was rough and the vessel rolled, the water washed the decks and we were wet all the time. Often we would wake at night with a sea pouring over us. Our food consisted of beef, pork, rice, ham, tea, coffee, and bread. Only one of our irons was taken off at a time. We were always under guard. On October 3rd we fell in with the schooner _Emily Farnham_, to which we were transferred, after signing a parole.”

Semmes as a matter of fact had the torch applied to _Virginia_ rather late in the afternoon, so the wreck was still visible whilst she burned after nightfall. But a still more exciting chase was to take place the next day when it was blowing hard. The look-out man at _Alabama’s_ masthead reported a barque in sight. The latter saw that the cruiser wore round and thereupon made off at once under all sail. Running down before the wind, _Alabama_ held on to t’gallant sails although the masts whipped as if they would go over the side; and it was the same with the other ship. There was a nasty sea running, but the cruiser leaped along so quickly that within three hours the barque was within range. The cruiser was employing that ancient and perfectly legal ruse of flying false colours, but Semmes does not explain whether he lowered these English colours down before opening fire, as he unquestionably should.

After _Alabama_ fired, the barque hoisted her flag and clewed up her t’gallant sails, hauled up her courses and waited. The former took in his t’gallants, furled his courses and reefed his topsails. It was blowing so hard now and the sea was so bad that Semmes even hesitated to lower his boats: but it was evident that presently the wind would be of gale force, and unless the barque were captured at once she would be able to escape in the darkness and tempest of the night. Therefore he ordered two of his best boats to be lowered, whilst the cruiser lay hove-to but to windward of the prize, so that the boats could row down to leeward. The _Alabama_ would then run down to leeward so that the boats could again have a favourable chance. This, of course, is the recognised manœuvre approved by every expert in seamanship, and it was accomplished successfully. The boats with their human loads of prisoners went rushing down the sea valleys and over the crests, came under the lee of _Alabama_, who threw them a rope, and so the captors and captives got aboard. The ship had been set on fire before shoving off and was found to be the whaler _Elisha Dunbar_, twenty-four days out from New Bedford.

But the wind and sea prevented Semmes from sailing this crew back to the Azores, where quite a Yankee population was now being congregated. Under close-reefed topsails the _Alabama_ remained for several days, and the wind coming north she drifted some distance south. It may be mentioned here that Captain Gifford of the _Elisha Dunbar_ afterwards stated quite definitely that the _Alabama_ had “fired a gun under our stern, with the St. George’s cross flying at the time. Our colours were set, when she displayed the Confederate flag ... there were sixty-five barrels of sperm oil on deck.”

The break-up of the weather had put an end to the whaling season rather sooner than would ordinarily have been the case, so Semmes resolved to change his cruising ground and make towards the Newfoundland Banks. After capturing other merchant ships he came up with the New Bedford whaler _Levi Starbuck_, bound on a thirty months’ voyage to the Pacific, and she, too, was captured and then burnt. In like manner, too, the Confederate cruiser _Florida_ in 1864 was operating in the Atlantic, and among others she sank the New Bedford whaler _Golconda_. For the latter it was particularly hard lines as she had been away from home for most of five years, she was just ending her cruise, and had even thrown overboard the previous day her “try-works” used for boiling the last whale down, and there was no intention now but to sail home as quickly as possible with the oil cargo. It was just as the whaler was passing through the Gulf Stream that she was caught by the Confederate, whose officer came aboard, took a few barrels of sperm oil, set her on fire in the cabin, at the main hatchway and forecastle, and left her to burn. The unfortunate crew were subsequently put aboard a schooner.

Thus in this Civil War those American whalers which had built up such an interesting section of history, and brought so much wealth into North America, received a terrible setback. We may well sympathize with owners and skippers and crew, for it was the breaking of a fine tradition which will ever be remembered. But all over the world whaling was, with the advent of steam and the diminishing of the sperm whale, now to undergo a change from those days when long voyages of several years were the rule, and the ship was the floating peregrinating factory and open boats were the whale-catchers. Those ancient methods have gone never to return.