Obligatory disclaimer that the whaling industry was terrible and cruel and decimated populations of an amazing animal that has yet to recover almost 200 years later.
But it is just so fascinating to me. The only sea occupation where your destination was literally just THE SEA. That’s it. You go out there and you don’t come back until it’s somewhat worth it, however long that takes. There are familiar grounds one would go to first, yes, but no routes, no schedules, no final destinations, no sense of when one comes back if one ever comes back. Just going to lonelier and lonelier places that no other ship is going to nor has need to go to. And when one finally happens to see another whaler it was a cause for an extended social event in ways that other maritime jobs just DID NOT have time for.
Highly diverse crews that were, of course, not without racism and inequity by any means (the entire job was…rife with inequity since idle agents ashore were already taking around 60% of the cut), but also one where one’s rank was ultimately determined by ‘can you kill a whale?’. And where the social component was so closely intertwined the fact that one would be at sea likely 3-4 years and if there was ANY surviving it and ANY success of it everyone had to more-or-less get along with each other.
And over the course of those years and years staring down aimless stretches of boredom you get the most fascinating folk art. And folk art that is so often tied to domestics. Making yarn swifts and pie crimpers and valentines for your girl outta BONES. Bones that came from the moments where that boredom was punctuated by Complete Terror.
An industry that was just like…SO violent and bloody and brutal, all for the aim of bringing back materials to make things that were so staid and domestic. Lamp oil. Candles. Corset Stays. Perfume Bases. Soaps. Just…candles paid for by so much blood from people, from animals. And was something that for such a fleeting moment was one of THE American industries, before settling, mercifully, into obscurity.
IT’S REALLY FASCINATING TO ME and so unlike any other maritime professions. I feel like piracy is the thing that comes closest to whaling in terms of all of the componants above, in a weird way, but whaling is such a thing of its own. UNIQUE AND TERRIBLE CREATURE.
Since we just talked about unlucky people on board a ship. Here I have someone who has really leased the bad luck. Captain George Pollard Jr. was first captain on the infamous Whaler Essex, which was first rammed twice by a Sperm Whale and then sank.
Pollard were in poor mental health (dissociative) after 93 days at sea in the whaleboat. They were transferred to Two Brothers another whaler which was heading to Valparaíso, Chile.
The whaleship “Essex” leaves Nantucket, August 12th, 1819, by A.D. Blake (x)
After recovering, he actually became captain of a ship again, of the previously named Two Brothers, he was joined by Thomas Nickerson
Essex former cabin boy
and now boatswain. She set sail for the Pacific in November 1821, where she remained until February 1823.
On the 11th of the month she was caught in a storm together with the Martha, another whaler. Both ships tried to stay within sight of each other, but lost each other during the night. Soon the Two Brothers ran aground and sank on a reef near French Frigate Shoals. Captain Pollard did not want to abandon ship, but his crew pleaded with him, and they clung to small boats through the night. The next morning they were rescued by Martha. Pollard’s reputation was already tarnished because of the cannibalism that had set in after the Essex incident and the fact that Pollard’s mental health was not the best, which the Two Brothers incident may have reinforced. He gave up his career, made only one more trip with a merchant vessel and then became a night watchman on Nantucket, until he died in 1870.
focsle
clove-pinks
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