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- 1453
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- 2026-01-30T20:48:25.200Z
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- 1387
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- is proverbial, frequently extending over a period of four or five years.
Some long-haired, bare-necked youths, who, forced by the united
influences of Captain Marryatt and hard times, embark at Nantucket for
a pleasure excursion to the Pacific, and whose anxious mothers provide
them, with bottled milk for the occasion, oftentimes return very
respectable middle-aged gentlemen.
The very preparations made for one of these expeditions are enough to
frighten one. As the vessel carries out no cargo, her hold is filled
with provisions for her own consumption. The owners, who officiate
as caterers for the voyage, supply the larder with an abundance
of dainties. Delicate morsels of beef and pork, cut on scientific
principles from every part of the animal, and of all conceivable shapes
and sizes, are carefully packed in salt, and stored away in barrels;
affording a never-ending variety in their different degrees of
toughness, and in the peculiarities of their saline properties. Choice
old water too, decanted into stout six-barrel-casks, and two pints of
which is allowed every day to each soul on board; together with ample
store of sea-bread, previously reduced to a state of petrifaction, with
a view to preserve it either from decay or consumption in the ordinary
mode, are likewise provided for the nourishment and gastronomic
enjoyment of the crew.
But not to speak of the quality of these articles of sailors’ fare,
the abundance in which they are put onboard a whaling vessel is almost
incredible. Oftentimes, when we had occasion to break out in the hold,
and I beheld the successive tiers of casks and barrels, whose contents
were all destined to be consumed in due course by the ship’s company, my
heart has sunk within me.
Although, as a general case, a ship unlucky in falling in with
whales continues to cruise after them until she has barely sufficient
provisions remaining to take her home, turning round then quietly and
making the best of her way to her friends, yet there are instances when
even this natural obstacle to the further prosecution of the voyage
is overcome by headstrong captains, who, bartering the fruits of their
hard-earned toils for a new supply of provisions in some of the ports
of Chili or Peru, begin the voyage afresh with unabated zeal and
perseverance. It is in vain that the owners write urgent letters to him
to sail for home, and for their sake to bring back the ship, since it
appears he can put nothing in her. Not he. He has registered a vow: he
will fill his vessel with good sperm oil, or failing to do so, never
again strike Yankee soundings.
I heard of one whaler, which after many years’ absence was given up for
lost. The last that had been heard of her was a shadowy report of her
having touched at some of those unstable islands in the far Pacific,
whose eccentric wanderings are carefully noted in each new edition
of the South-Sea charts. After a long interval, however, ‘The
Perseverance’--for that was her name--was spoken somewhere in the
vicinity of the ends of the earth, cruising along as leisurely as ever,
her sails all bepatched and be quilted with rope-yarns, her spars fished
with old pipe staves, and her rigging knotted and spliced in every
possible direction. Her crew was composed of some twenty venerable
Greenwich-pensioner-looking old salts, who just managed to hobble about
deck. The ends of all the running ropes, with the exception of the
signal halyards and poop-down-haul, were rove through snatch-blocks, and
led to the capstan or windlass, so that not a yard was braced or a sail
set without the assistance of machinery.
Her hull was encrusted with barnacles, which completely encased her.
Three pet sharks followed in her wake, and every day came alongside to
regale themselves from the contents of the cook’s bucket, which were
pitched over to them. A vast shoal of bonetas and albicores always kept
her company.
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