“This was the first time I ever saw a right whale breach, and certainly it is a grand sight to see the enormous body of such a monster shoot up out of the water almost as these did, then come down with a splash which makes the water fly in all directions. But admiration soon gave place to action and three boats were started off in pursuit of them.”
- William Stetson, whaler aboard the Arab, 1855
Watercolor of a right whale spouting blood, by whaler John Martin aboard the Lucy Ann, 1840s. Digitized by the New Bedford Whaling Museum
How did 19th c. commercial whalers view their quarry?
In 1842, writer John Ross Browne signed aboard an unnamed whaleship for 4 years, and afterwards published a book about his experiences, Etchings of a Whaling Cruise. It’s a favorite of mine largely for the sketches he does of the men he sailed with, and the specificity in which he records their voices and cadence. Here, he asks a whaler from Maine named ‘Mack’ about his opinion of whales and whaling:
“Do you think whales are fish?” said I, rather balked in my attempt to quiz him.
“Why, some folks says whales isn’t fish at all. I rayther calculate they are, myself. Whales has fins, so has fish; whales has slick skins, so has fish; whales has tails, so has fish; whales ain’t got scales on ’ em, neither has catfish, nor eels, nor tadpoles, nor frogs, nor horse-leeches. I conclude, then, whales is fish. Every body had oughter call ’ em so. Nine out of ten doos call ‘em fish. If whales live on small fish, they’d drive a smashin’ business up the Kennebeck. I never see none up thar’. If I was a whale, I’d try them diggins. There ain’t better fodder for whales no whar’. This may be a good place, for all I know; but it looks dreadful blue and lonesome. I’d want to be in fresh water, if I was a whale; and then, if I wanted to season the vittles Natur gave me, I’d pile the salt on rayther more moderate. I’d salt ’ em to suit me. I don’t like to be forced to eat salt vittles now, and I ain’t a whale. Whales is cannibals. I’ve a bad opinion of ’ em my self. I don’t like the looks of ’ em, no how. Gosh! what a jaw! I’d rayther let 'em be, and do business on a smaller scale. Folks that doos business on a small scale ain’t so likely to git bu'st. Fishin’s a fishin’. I like fishin’ as well as any body; but catchin’ of whales is a leetle too extensive. It’s orfully alarmin’ work. I don’t want to be swallered jest yet; not in the whalin’ line, I don’t!”
By the mid 19th century whaling was the 5th largest economic sector in the United States, a significant part of the country’s energy consumption, and connected to many products in a way similar to plastic today. One way to get a sense of the cultural attitudes towards commercial whaling in the 19th century was the cognitive dissonance when it came to Quakers dominating the whaling industry in the beginning of the era. A core of nonviolence, but exceptions made for whales.
Some moral objections to whaling existed at the time, but they were very much outliers. One exceptional article written in 1850 was published in a Quaker magazine called ‘The Friend’. It was published anonymously (which could perhaps speak to the unpopularity of the idea that someone was shy to put their name to it). They write on the industry from the perspective of a bowhead whale:
“Editors note: All attempts to discover the means by which this communication reached our office will doubtless be vain. Should it become known, it might lead to serious consequences! We are somewhat surprised that a member of the whale-family should condescend to make his appeal through our columns, inasmuch as we have ever aimed to direct whalemen to the best cruising grounds. We feel honored by the compliment, and shall feel bound on no consideration to betray the confidence thus reposed in us: —
A Polar Whale’s Appeal
Anadir Sea, North Pacific
The second Year of TroubleMR EDITOR,—In behalf of my species, allow an inhabitant of this sea, to make an appeal through your columns to the friends of the whale in general. A few of the knowing old inhabitants of this sea have recently held a meeting to consult respecting our safety, and in some way or other, if possible, to avert the doom that seems to await all of the whale Genus throughout the world, including the Sperm, Right, and Polar whales. Although our situation, and that of our neighbors in the Arctic is remote from our enemy’s country, yet we have been knowing to the progress of affairs in the Japan and Ochotsk seas, the Atlantic and Indian oceans, and all the other “whaling grounds”.
We have imagined that we were safe in these cold regions; but no; within these last two years a furious attack has been made upon us, an attack more deadly and bloody than any of our race ever experienced in any part of the world. I scorn to speak of the cruelty that has been practiced by our blood-thirsty enemies, armed with harpoon and lance; no age or sex has been spared. Multitudes of our species (the Polar) have been murdered in “cold” blood. Our enemies have wondered at our mild and inoffensive conduct; we have heard them cry, “there she blows” and our hearts have quailed as we saw their glittering steel reflecting the sun beams, and realized that in a few moments our life-blood oozing out, would discolor the briny deep in which we have gamboled for scores of years.
We have never been trained to contend with a race of warriors, who sail in large three masted vessels, on the sterns of which we have read “New Bedford”, “Sag Harbor”, “New London”. Our battles have hitherto been with simple Indians in their skin canoes. We have heard of the desperate encounters between these whale killing monsters and our brethren the Right whales on the North-west coast. Some from that quarter have taken shelter in the quiet bays of our sea, others of the spermeciti species form Japan, have also visited us and reported their battles and disasters; they have told us it is no use to contend with the Nortons, the Tabers, the Coffins, the Coxs, the Smiths, the Halseys, and the other families of whale-killers. We Polar whales are a quiet inoffensive race, desirous of life and peace, but, alas, we fear our doom is sealed; we have heard the threat that in one season more we shall all be “cut up” and “tried out”. Is there no redress? I write in behalf of my butchered and dying species. I appeal to the friends of the whole race of whales. Must we all be murdered in cold blood? Must our race become extinct? Will no friends and allies rise and revenge our wrongs? Will our foes be allowed to prey upon us another year? We have heard of the power of the “Press”; pray give these few lines a place in your columns, and let the go forth to the world. I am known among our enemies as the “Bow-head”, but I belong to the Old Greenland family.
Yours till death,
POLAR WHALE
P.S. I send this by the ——— of ———
Do’nt publish the name of the vessel. P.W.
A fringe opinion at the time, to be sure. Still, there were some whalers who—if not outright objecting—at least approached it in a kind of complicated way.
Melville is interesting as a (brief) whaler, weaving his ideas of both the Nobility of Whalemen and the Nobility of Whales together. In Chapter 105 in Moby Dick, he mused on the fate of whales beneath man’s warfare upon them.
“But still another enquiry remains; one often agitated by the more recondite Nantucketers. Whether owing to the almost omniscient look-outs at the mast-heads of the whale-ships, now penetrating even through Behring’s straits, and into the remotest secret drawers and lockers of the world; and the thousand harpoons and lances darted along all continental coasts; the moot point is, whether Leviathan can long endure so wide a chase, and so remorseless a havoc; whether he must not at last be exterminated from the waters, and the last whale, like the last man, smoke his last pipe, and then himself evaporate in the final puff”
He concluded with the assertion that whales would outlast us all,
“He swam the seas before the continents broke water; he once swam over the site of the Tuileries, and Windsor Castle, and the Kremlin. In Noah’s flood he despised Noah’s Ark; and if ever the world is to be again flooded, like the Netherlands, to kill off its rats, then the eternal whale will still survive, and rearing upon the topmost crest of the equatorial flood, spout his frothed defiance to the skies.”
Clifford Ashley, while not a whaleman himself, was deeply connected to the world—in his exploration of the whaling industry, he mentioned the altruism of whales coming to the aid of a struck whale and their ability to communicate with each other about such danger. Numerous whalers noted the ‘maternal instinct’ of cows with calves, their refusal to leave them, attempts to protect them, and their absolute aggression if the calf was harmed or killed. Teenage foremasthand William Stetson often humanized the whales he hunted. At times he called them poor fellows, reflecting on and understanding the pain they were in. But still, he ultimately wanted them dead. He was ultimately excited to lower for them. Because that was his livelihood. Some men approached whales with a curious sympathy and vague understanding of their circumstance, but still they were whalers at their heart.
The journal of William Chappell, who served as both cooper and a boatsteerer aboard the Saratoga 1853-56, at one point expressed highly unusual language for a whaleman—I haven’t come across any other whaler so far who overtly described themselves as a murderer and the whale as a victim. Granted, I think part of it came from regret that in this circumstance the whale would die AND the whalers wouldn’t get the benefit of any oil, but it speaks a bit to a potential moral conundrum in killing them.
“He ran to the windward and as he passed the ship at the distance of 3/4 of a mile I heard him roar in his agony and could not suppress a sigh for the unfortunate victim as he drew the boats through his own blood made by awful gashes of the irons and spades and although they cut him horridly he still rushed on drawing his murderers at a fearful rate by the irons sunk deep into his flesh but it was no use he bid defiance to their cutting his body so they cut their line and it set in to blow and rain and reached the ship at 3 PM and left this wonder of nature to die of his wounds.”
Drawing from whaler Rodolphus Dexter aboard the Chili. Four pilot whales labeled with the boats that captured them. Via NBWM.
In the 19th century, whalers tended to pursue right whales and sperm whales and, in the latter half of that century, bowhead whales. Right whales and bowheads were sought after because they were rather slow moving and peaceable, (😢) and had a lot of blubber and baleen. Sperm whales were far more aggressive, but had much more valuable spermaceti in their head case. Those three also tended to float when killed, though that wasn’t always the case. Whalers also lowered for 'blackfish’ (pilot whales), but only for practice because there wasn’t much oil to make the labor worth it. Humpbacks were hunted but weren’t particularly popular compared to the other three because their baleen was too short to be of commercial value and they often sunk when killed. 'Mussel diggers’ or 'devil fish’ (grey whales) were also not hunted often because they had a reputation of being very aggressive and also had a tendency to sink when killed—the exception to them being left alone was in their nursery grounds in Magdalena Bay in Baja, which, in my opinion, has some of the most dreadful examples of the violence of the industry. 'Sulphur bottoms’ (blue whales) were avoided almost entirely because they were Way Too Big and Way Too Fast and sank. And 'finbacks’ (fin whales) were avoided as well, because they were too fast and sank. Many a logbook complained about seeing nothing but 'humpbacks, mussel diggers, sulphur bottoms, and finbacks’ and often didn’t bother them much. Whalers only lowered for these whales when things were particularly desperate, and they usually ended up regretting it.
Because they were whalemen, when speaking about the size of whales they always referred to them in terms of ‘barrels’, meaning how much oil they imagined they’d yield. Many are the laments of losing a '100 barrel whale’. This would be quite a massive animal indeed, and was very rare to see (though not unheard of). The largest whale I’ve read of a log capturing was a right whale taken by the Baltic in 1856, amounting to 200 barrels. This sample from the back of the logbook of the bark Osceola II, 1866, shows some of the typical sizes of the whales it caught:
Digitized by the NBWM.
The average size of whales taken ranged from 30-60 barrels, from sperm and right whales. And the average length of a sperm whale is 35-50ft and 13-50 tons depending on if it’s female or male, and for a right whale around 45-55 ft and 45-80 tons. So the rare 100 barrel whale seen here was likely a very large bull. They’d also take calves (😢), hence the smaller numbers too.
A whaleboat was about 25-30ft long. Whaling museums like installing whale skeletons alongside whaleboats to show the scale. Here’s the exhibit in Nantucket’s museum:
The diaries of whalemen can also reveal what it feels like to be alongside such an animal wanting to break free. 25 year old Benjamin Boodry, 2nd mate of the Arnolda, 1852, drew an image of the experience of almost having his ‘brains knocked out by a whale’. He nicknamed the whale here as 'Head breaker’, and also called it ‘Moby Dick’ (one of the few whalemen I’ve come across who made any mention of said novel).
He wrote,
“I do not think I should stand a chance of haveing my brains knocked out by a whale as I did yesterday but they say that a man that is born to be hung will not be killed by a whale so there is some chance for me yet Middle part strong breezes from S.E. employd in mending the waist Boat only put in 9 streaks into her split up the remains of the old starboard Boat coiled the lines and fitting craft 3 men sick cold baths did not agree with there constitutions and I do not think that whaling will agree with mine that is if they are a going to Bite as Close to me as they did yesterday this being knocked 15 feet right into the air and coming down alongside of his jaw by a whales rooting is not what it is cracked up to be.”
Via NBWM.
Stetson also described the power of a whale against the boats and men preying upon them,
“Looking over my shoulder I could observe the whale thrashing about the head of the boat at a terrible rate. But all our sterning was of no avail; the boat was doomed and bound to “catch it”. the whale, as it seemed, drew himself quite slowly by the head of the boat and just as his flukes were opposite it, when we all thought we were clear, he raised them out of the water and with a quick motion put them down on the head of the boat so suddenly and with such force that the bow was cut off almost as straight as it could have been by the carpenter. Everything in the boat was disarranged, every oar was unshipped, and the mate who was at the steering, knocked overboard. The bow oarsman immediately jumped aft to the mate’s assistance saying at the same time that he did not know what the boatsteerer was killed. The latter I had not observed before, but leaving the rest of the crew to help the mate in, who was uninjured, I stepped forward and found the boatsteerer lying in the bottom of the boat with his head wedged in under the bow athwart so that I had some difficulty in extricating him but when this was accomplished I perceived that he still breathed but he was completely insensible, and evidently very badly injured although we could see no external mark of violence.”
J.E. Haviland, 22 year old greenhand aboard the Baltic described the tenuousness of a whaleman’s life after reflecting on the news of another ship experiencing two deaths and a serious injury while hunting a whale:
“Truly every time we lower from the ships side we have our lives at our fingers end.”
He himself had nearly been drowned due to a stove boat, after being entangled in the whale line in the water. A shipmate came to his rescue and cut him free, saving him from a ‘truly fearful Death’.
1913 Whaleman’s Memorial sculpture at the New Bedford Public Free Library.
“A dead whale or a stove boat” became the whaleman’s motto. At any lowering either man or whale could meet a terrible end, and best hope it not be oneself. In any outcome, it was an absolutely brutal endeavor–there was no way to kill an animal of that size quickly or cleanly. Some logs are perfunctory in their reports of whales captured; some, like Stetson’s, can be quite difficult to read.
On a successful voyage, a ship might take 40 whales over the trip, though there were many voyages that didn’t kill that many. Regardless, with hundreds of voyages every year, those numbers added up to the point that those whale populations are still in recovery today. Bowheads still alive today are swimming with 19th century harpoons in their sides, and surely they remember. Surely they have their stories about us. But it can’t all be attributed to 19th century whalers. 20th century commercial whaling had an even greater devastation on wider populations of whales, as well as boat strikes, fishing line entanglement, fracking, chemical and plastic and noise pollution, etc. that continue to harm those populations today. But most importantly, there are also folks working to heal both old and continuing harm dealt to whales.