Here I am scribbling nonsense [in] when I should be engaged in the more useful [and] occupation of washing out some very dirty clothes of which I am the happy owner so with the permission of the reader if I am so fortunate as to have one I will once more haul taut + belay.”
- William Douglass Buel, whaler on the bark Wave, 1856
It could be hard to keep clean on a ship! J.E. Haviland of the Baltic, 1856, complained of besmirching his journal pages with the grime that he was unable to scrub off his hands after tarring the rigging, self consciously saying:
“My hands + clothes would look beautiful for a ladies Parlor. I see they even collor the paper but I cannot get the tar out. The Old Man says he intends to have me tar down the rigging a few days before we get in New Bedford so that I shall not forget too soon that I have been a sailor.”
General ships’ work such as tarring could be messy, but a whaler’s work was even messier. Whalemen were often disparaged by those in other maritime professions for their hygiene. In 1839, naval Lieutenant Charles Wilkes said of the crew of the whaleship America, “I have seldom seen at sea a more uncombed and dirty set of mariners than his crew.” As always, the nature of the work made it particularly difficult to keep clean. As Charles Nordhoff wrote in his 19th c. narrative designed to discourage boys from taking up whaling:
“Moreover, everything is drenched with oil. Shirts and trowsers are dripping with the loathsome stuff. The pores of the skin seem to be filled with it. Feet, hands and hair, all are full. The biscuit you eat glistens with oil, and tastes as though just out of the blubber room. The knife with which you cut your meat leaves upon the morsel, which nearly chokes you as you reluctantly swallow it, plain traces of the abominable blubber. Every few minutes it becomes necessary to work at something on the lee side of the vessel, and while there you are compelled to breathe in the fetid smoke of the scrap fires, until you feel as though filth had struck into your blood, and suffused every vein in your body.”
When trying out blubber it was futile to attempt maintaining any semblance of cleanliness during the process. William Abbe of the Atkins Adams, 1859, said that during boiling, a watch would turn in to their bunks a few hours rest, merely ‘after wiping off your bare body with oakum to take off the thickest of the oil”. And when the oil was gone, there was sometimes still the faint vestiges of rot that hung about one’s person, as described by Robert Cushman Murphy on the brig Daisy, 1912:
“For some minutes, here in the lee of the mainsail, a faint putrescent odor has been wafted to my nostrils. I now discovered that it is essence of a blackfish long deceased, and that it comes from my own hands and forearms. I have been cleaning up macerated bones during the day, and the ripe smell has survived soap and water. Perhaps I used too little of the latter.”
But the gore and grease wasn’t forever. After the particular job was done the ship would be meticulously cleaned, and the whalers would tend to themselves too. In this, they had to contend with new domestic roles that 19th century western society had hardly forced them into ashore, specifically, doing their own laundry. As William Chappell, boatsteerer and cooper aboard the Saratoga wrote:
“The worst of all my work is washing clothes well my wife has done it for me a great while it is my turn…
I have just been a washing in a few clothes and I find it very inconvenient and after all they are hardly half washed. I find it is a great disadvantage to be without a wife men seldom realize what a woman has to do and beside the hard work there is many little things she does to make life pleasant and agreeable and we too often overlook them and she does not get the praise that she so modestly deserves. I have not just found this out for I often thought of it while at home and thus I the better appreciated them.”
I always wonder if he ended up picking up some of the laundering duties when he returned home…the process of how Chappell washed his clothes on board a whaleship would differ from what his wife did ashore, however:
First, whalers soaked their dirty clothes in the communal urine barrel, as the ammonia content of stale urine was one of the few things strong enough on board to start to cut through all the grease. Sometimes the clothes would be towed behind the ship afterwards to rinse them, but that wasn’t always the case. Rainwater was also collected in anticipation of wash day to have fresh water to rinse with. With this fresh water, a lye was also made using the ashes and crispy blubber scraps from the trying out process. The clothes would then be hung in the rigging to dry. As John Martin wrote of his ship on laundry day in 1842, “A person unused to the sight of the ship would take the Old Lucy Ann for a ready made clothing store, the rigging being hung full of wet clothing.”
The deck would be washed in a similar way after trying out a whale, often using a combo of urine, lye, and sand. J.E. Haviland, of the Baltic in 1857 described the laundry work that he had never expected to be doing himself:
“Tomorrow all hands are to wash out their clothes with the ashes made from the scraps These ashes are put in a cask and then pour fresh water in the cask + this makes a very strong Lye which might take all the grease and slush out of the clothes without applying any soap. I have some 12 pieces to wash but I think I can do it as quick and as well as any wash woman. If any one had of told me two years ago I should be obliged to wash my own clothes, say nothing about mending then I should have thought them a fool. But man proposses + God disposses.”
Haviland was increasingly proud of himself in being able to do his own laundry, always making note of laundry day and how many pieces of clothes he managed to wash each time.
Whaling wife Almira Gibbs, who accompanied her family (Captain and young son) aboard more than one whaler had her own recipe for soap, despite Haviland’s assertion that it wasn’t necessary:
“1 lb castile soap
1 ¼ lb soda
6c worth borax
add 5 pts water and let it simmer till it is all dissolved, take it off and add 9 pts water and let it cool.”
Whaling wives aboard also complained about laundry and the difficulty of doing it on a ship. The moldering of clothes in such a damp environment, the constant roll of the vessel sometimes overturning one’s tub or making ironing dangerous, having to wait for rainfall for fresh water, and a sunny day for actually performing said wash, were constant features in wives’ laments. Mary Lawrence, aboard the Addison in 1860 sarcastically wrote about her laundry attempt thwarted by the weather one July.
“July 30 A wonderful circumstance. When we were called this morning, the sun was shining bright. “Now for a washing day,” thought I, “if it is Saturday.” So I went to work; had a large wash, it being four weeks since I had had one before. Just as I got about half through, the fog came thicker than I ever saw it before. I was obliged to put my white clothes in soak and dry the colored clothes in the cabin.”
She also mentioned her young daughter Minnie who “took her little tub and washed her dog’s bedclothes, for Jip has had a bed all the season that had to be made up like anybody’s bed”.
Sighting whales at any point would also put an interruption to the wash. This photo taken aboard the Sunbeam by Clifford Ashley in his brief 1904 research trip shows men hoisting up the whaleboats after taking a small whale, their Sunday laundry still hanging between the davits.
Mary Brewster also described a wash day following the trying out of a whale on her husband’s ship Tiger, one winter day in Magdalena Bay 1847. Throwing a shirt overboard rather than bother washing one more feels…relatable.
“Calm pleasant weather. Employed in sewing till 4 this afternoon, when I went on deck, where I found every part, and everything about, very nice and clean. The sailors all washing up their dirty clothes, both trypots full boiling in ley [lye] and the rigging hung full. A few garments floating which had taken flight overboard to save washing. All presented a lively spectable and I could say with all hands, farewell to Greybacks [lice].”
For all the grumbling about washing, there was still a real joy among many men in being able to feel like a person again, after all was clean.
Haviland expressed gratitude in getting a chance to get clean after all the work of boiling blubber was done:
“I feel much better to day I have given myself a good wash + a clean shave + got in all clean clothes. You would not have known your own son if you could have seen him yesterday. I was nearly black with smoke + dirt. (with shame) I say it was the accumulation of 2 months dirt + 4 months beard. Everything looks as clean + bright as it did before we took the whale”
Being able to bathe was such a highlight that Abbe titled one of his journal pages “Washing myself!!” With TWO exclamation points!
“I write with pride in my fastidious journal that this morning I washed my face + hands with castile soap + fresh water — when shall I do the like again? When shall I write the pleasant and comfortable fact that I have shaved? The future and fair weather only can tell.”
The ship’s slop chest—its general store—had toiletries for sale, often at a very high premium. Whaling account books show men buying pounds of oil soap for their own personal stores. The fresh water was often rainwater collected for this purpose, rather than the casks set aside for drinking.
“This has been a rather squally day,” wrote Mary Lawrence, whaling wife who accompanied her husband on his ship Addison in the 1850s. “Considerable rain has fallen, and everybody on deck is using an abundant supply of rainwater for washing purposes.” She also added, “Having stopped up the scuppers, the use the whole deck for one grand washtub.”
They’d use the sea, too. John Martin of the Lucy Ann, wrote of bathing via rain and sea whilst near the equator on January 24th, 1842.
“Towards noon the rain came down in torrents. The weather being sultry the watch on deck shipped off their shirts to it. John the boat steerer went entirely naked with the exception of a handkerchief tied around his privates. In the afternoon it cleared away, when I asked permission from the Captain for the crew to take a bathe over the side. He said we might do it if we rigged a studding sail over the side, which was soon done & all hands that could swim were to be seen jumping from different parts of the ship. Some went out to the end of the flying jib boom & jumped off there. Even the dog was thrown overboard & got his share of washing. I like bathing at sea but for one thing, and that is sharks. I always have a fear that one might be hovering about and give one a nip before he was aware of it.”
Herman Melville devoted some words to the transformative and restorative reward of a bath after the messiness of whaling:
“The crew themselves proceed to their own ablutions; shift themselves from top to toe; and finally issue to the immaculate deck, fresh and all aglow, as bridegrooms new-leaped from out the daintiest Holland. Now, with elated step, they pace the planks in twos and threes, and humorously discourse of parlors, sofas, carpets, and fine cambrics; propose to mat the deck; think of having hanging to the top; object not to taking tea by moonlight on the piazza of the forecastle. To hint to such musked mariners of oil, and bone, and blubber, were little short of audacity. They know not the thing you distantly allude to. Away, and bring us napkins!”
However, even when the voyage was said and done, a mark of ‘uncleanliness’ was often societally stamped on whalemen. This was happening at a period of time when Victorian ideals inextricably conflated cleanliness with morality (and frankly connected it to a standard of hygiene that was difficult to maintain for anyone who wasn’t wealthy). Even when this industry was lighting the genteel homes of those who espoused such ideas, was creating the structure for their corsets, was added to their perfumes and pomades, many whalemen felt they were regarded with contempt or avoidance on shore. Silliman Ives wrote in his journal aboard the Sunbeam 1868 about comment he heard from the mate:
“He knew of a young lady in Nantucket who refused to dance with filthy whalemen […] Oh, Nantucket mother of whaling! and has it come to this that thy fair daughters — they who erst did delight to honor the hardy sons of Neptune who go down upon the mighty deep and beard the leviathan on his own cruising ground and convert him into gold, or more correctly speaking greenbacks, can it be possible that in these latter days thy fair women have soured on these brave men?”
It all left its mark even once the blood and oil was scrubbed off. But when the opportunity came to scrub off that blood and oil on a voyage, whalers truly reveled in it. For many of them it was more than just a bath; it was a symbolic return to a home they were long away from, or to the man they perceived themselves to be back on shore, or of a society that they felt cut off from in their line of work.