“Nowadays, the whale-fishery furnishes an asylum for many romantic, melancholy, and absent-minded young men, disgusted with the carking care of earth, and seeking sentiment in tar and blubber.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, Ch 35: The Mast-Head
I spend a lot of time reading the journals of whalers. I’d be lying if I said it was for research, rather than a deep compulsion I have to try to know them. And one thing that strikes me again and again is the particular sort of self consciousness that a number of them seemed to carry over how they fit in with the world and the other people in it.
“But how shall I describe a whaleman?” Asks Charles Nordhoff in his uncharitable whaling travelogue Whaling and Fishing, aimed at dissuading young men from going to sea. “His most marked peculiarity is a certain uncertainty in his gaze, which seems to betoken a lack of self-confidence. He moves along with a spiritless dawdle, which is quite in unison with his general expression of listlessness. He evidently feels but ill at ease in shoes and stockings. He speaks in an undertone, as though not judging it worth while to talk louder. His appearance is thoroughly unprepossessing and calculated to give the impression that he is quite the reverse of ‘smart’. This is the whaleman, ashore.”
This self consciousness of where whalers stand with others and with larger society manifests in their journals across those of all ranks and roles.
Asa Copeland, Captain of the Arab, hailing a clipper ship to ask if they could take home some letters, and worrying about how to assuage the merchant captain should he be “angry that his meditations were interrupted by the captain of a ‘blubber hunter’”.
William Buel, greenhand on the Wave sharing his anxieties on the first page of his journal, “Look forward with strange mixture of feelings - Hope of getting a ship; fear of not being accepted[…]Six years of my life have passed for nothing—Would I could blot their occurrences from my memory!” Buel, wondering what sort of man the voyage will make of him as he fled a sense of purposelessness ashore, to ultimately die at sea at 21 years old.
Silliman Ives, steward on the Sunbeam expressing surprise and dismay over a rumor the mate shared with him that Nantucket girls would refuse to dance with “filthy whalemen”. On Christmas day he thinks about if the “dear ones at home have a thought for their wild and reckless though still loving son, and brother, and cousin, who to day is separated from their hearths and homes by leagues and leagues of blue water.”
“No letters, what does it mean can’t help but hope that all is right,” Benjamin Boodry, 2nd mate of the Arnolda lamenting in a particularly messy, distressed scrawl. “After all the promises to write I have not got one letter yet it tastes of old voyage[‘s] neglect”. Eventually long-delayed letters reach him, but still many an entry is filled with the question of “does anyone spare a thought for poor Ben?”
William Chappell, cooper aboard the Saratoga keeping his wife and “little ones” in his mind constantly and, after 260 days at sea eagerly awaiting letters from home in the first port they touched since landing. “I had thought I should not be able to sleep that night without knowing our success” [in obtaining letters ashore], only to find that there was not a single one for him. “My folks had probably forgotten me”. Like Boodry, he’s later relieved with many delayed letters, but at each empty port visit the uncertainty still remained.
Mary Brewster, whaling wife on the Tiger being met with her adoptive mother saying that she “would in no way assist” her and that “her house would never be a home [for Mary] again” if Mary proceeded with her plan of joining her husband aboard his ship.
Marshall Keith 3rd mate of the Brewster in an unsent letter to his sweetheart ashore, opening with “Once again with feelings of deep humility I seat myself as this is an opportunity for sending you a few imperfect lines and thinking that they may meet you with a warm reception though poorly spelt and ill written.” Winding his way to closing with “I know how wholy unworthy I be of having you so fair when I cast a glance of my many faults and failures and shortcomings. but my conscience runs to clear me when I think that I never tried to hide them from view.”
Joseph Dias, first mate of the Ocmulgee closing his voyage with “and all that saved me was a cat. If it hadn’t been for her I don’t know how I should have come out.”
Joseph Gelett, 3rd mate of the ship Brewster on another voyage writing “do they miss me at home do they miss me at home do they miss me” in a light hand at the top of an otherwise blank page.
So many asked ‘do they miss me’ ‘do they think of me’ in the margins of their journals, unsure of whether or not their absence was even felt among their family and friends.
Young men of so many different backgrounds and motivations that absolutely created moments of tension and violence, but also bound them together in a specific fraternity that came with the shared identity of ‘whaleman’. Engaged in an occupation unlike any other, living in a self-contained community that for the majority of the time was cut off from the society of others and the surety of the land for years. Whalers gammed with whalers, united in an mutual understanding of a ship so solid in its horrors, its brutal work, in the visceral closeness of sharing the space with so many others for such an extended period, as well as the strange camaraderie that could also come from those things, despite those things. And this was balanced against the idea that as far as the rest of the world was concerned, they were liminal men. Distant sons and brothers and fathers and friends and lovers who existed but also didn’t exist. They connected with those left ashore only in the form of a letter written two years prior, or a newspaper report of a ship’s last known location several months old, until they finally did come home—if they lived to see home. Home to a place they hadn’t been for three or four years and maybe hadn’t even heard word from over that time. To stumble out of the unique culture of a whaleship and reconcile where they fit ashore again after it all.
I think that’s why I find myself caring so much about them because—at least while at sea—many seemed so uncertain if anyone did.