THE PERILS OF WHALE-FISHING.
Mr. Cheever, the American missionary, tells the following exciting stories of adventures of whalers' boats. On the 28th of May, 1817, the "Royal Bounty," an English ship, fell in with a great number of whales in lat. 70° 25' N., and long. 5° E. There was neither ice nor land in sight. The boats were manned and sent in pursuit, and after a chase of five hours, one of them, which had rowed out of sight of the ship, struck one of the whales. This was about four o'clock in the morning. The captain directed the course of the ship to the point where he had last seen the boats, and about eight o'clock got sight of one which displayed the signal of being fast. Soon after, another boat approached the first, and struck a second harpoon; and by mid-day, two more harpoons were made fast.
But such was the astonishing vigour of this whale, that although it constantly dragged through the water from four to six boats, together with sixteen hundred fathoms of line, yet it pursued its flight nearly as fast as a boat could row, and whenever one passed beyond its tail it would dive. All endeavours to lance it were therefore vain, and the crews of the loose boats moored to those that were fast, the whale all the time steadily towing them on.
At eight o'clock in the evening a line was taken to the ship, with a view of retarding its flight, and topsails were lowered, but the harpoon drew. In three hours another line was taken on board, which immediately snapped. At four in the afternoon of the next day, thirty-six hours after the whale was first struck, two of the fast lines were taken on board the ship.
The most dreadful display of the whale's strength and prowess yet authentically recorded, was that made upon the American whale-ship "Essex," Captain Pollard, which sailed from Nantucket for the Pacific Ocean, in August, 1819. Late in the fall of the same year, when in lat. 40° of the South Pacific, a number of sperm whales was discovered, and three boats were manned and sent in pursuit. The mate's boat was struck by one of them, and he was obliged to return to the ship in order to repair the damage.
While he was engaged in that work, a sperm whale, judged to be eighty-five feet long, appeared about twenty rods from the ship, on her weather bow. He was going at the rate of about three knots an hour, and the ship at nearly the same rate, when he struck the bows of the vessel just forward of her chains. At the shock produced by the collision of two such mighty masses of matter in motion, the ship shook like a leaf. The seemingly malicious whale dived and passed under the ship, grazing her keel, and then appeared at about the distance of a ship's length, lashing the sea with fins and tail, as if suffering the most horrible agony. He was evidently hurt by the collision, and blindly frantic with instinctive rage. In a few minutes he seemed to recover himself, and started with great speed directly across the vessel's course to the windward. Meantime, the hands on board discovered the ship to be gradually settling down at the bows, and the pumps were ordered to be rigged. While the crew were working at them, one of the men cried out, "God have mercy! he comes again!"
The whale had turned about one hundred rods from the ship, and was making for her with double his former speed, his pathway white with foam. Rushing head on, he struck her again at the bow, and the tremendous blow stove her in. The whale dived under again and disappeared, and the ship foundered in ten minutes from the first collision. But five souls out of the twenty were saved.
In another authentic instance, when a boat was chasing a whale, he suddenly turned to windward, and made directly for his pursuers, who were so excited by the chase as to be blind to danger. On, therefore, they madly rushed, without trying to avoid the infuriated monster, so eager were they to plunge their irons into him, till the boat struck with such force upon the whale's head as to throw the oarsmen from their thwarts. At the same moment, the boat-steerer let fly his two harpoons into the mammoth body, which rolled over on its back; and before the boat could get clear of danger, being to the windward, a heavy sea struck it, and threw them directly into the whale's mouth. All of course sprang for their lives; and they had barely time to throw themselves clear of the boat before it was crushed to pieces by those ponderous jaws, and its ejected crew were, providentially, all picked up by another boat. At length, near eight o'clock, after forty hours of incessant exertion, this tenacious asserter of his vast animal vigour and territorial rights was killed.