It’s a damn tough life,
full of toil and strife,
we whaler-men undergo…
~
Azore Islands
Sep. 20th 1851
“Dear Sister,
I suppose a little description of
the way we live on board the Cambria would
interest you a little. We sailed from New Bedford
on the 3d Sept. the vessel manned by 18 foremast
men, 4 boat steerers, cook, carpenter, steward,
cooper, 3 mates, and Captain…”
- Letter of Joseph A. DuBois to his sister Mary DuBois.
This is part two of a series. Read part one here.
The port of New Bedford was home to two religions, and monuments to both rose high above the rooftops of the town. As Joseph DuBois approached the first things he saw were white church steeples rising above the horizon: ubiquitous symbols of a protestant god who was worshipped every Sunday by New Bedford’s old New England families. By the time he had passed through town and reached the wharves the skyline had taken on an entirely different aspect, and the white steeples were long lost in a tangle of towering masts and rigging so thick that their shadows offered relief from the blazing noonday sun. Those masts rose to the heavens in adoration of the god Commerce, an ancient deity in whom the faith of the community rested the other six days of every week.
“The Whale Fishery” from a photograph by T. W. Smillie showing whale ships at New Bedford. Collections of NOAA.
Commerce wielded a terrible power, and the livelihoods of ship owners were made or broken by the waxing and waning fortune which Commerce bestowed on them. This is to say nothing of the sailors themselves; the vital components of the ships that were New Bedford’s lifeblood. These were brave men who died in the hundreds on distant seas in the name of the ships and owners they served, all drawn to service on the ocean for reasons as diverse as the seas they sailed. The protestant churches in New Bedford filled every Sunday with sailor’s widows whose lives were shattered in the name of profit, while in the pews ahead of them sat the ship owners who heeded only their profit margins when a vessel never returned from the other side of the world.
All of this was undertaken in the name of Light. Whale oil, a bright and clean burning combustible, illuminated the meteoric industrial progress of the antebellum United States. Beside the steady glow of lamps filled with New Bedford whale oil draftsmen completed designs of the nation’s great factories, engines, and furnaces; poets, scholars, and thinkers drafted their treatises and manuscripts in the lonely hours of the night; ships were guided home in the dark carrying the riches of international trade by newly constructed coastal beacons. America was aglow at all hours, and it was thanks to hundreds of ships from New England ports manned by thousands of men employed in one of the most high-stakes industries of their era. For those of stout constitution and steady conviction there was always work to be had on the deck of a whaler, and though the work was brutal there were also few better avenues to fortune and adventure.
Joseph quickly found a berth on board the Cambria, a successful whaler which had already made several voyages to the northern waters of the Pacific and returned much to the enrichment of the crew and her owners. Such voyages had become a necessity by the 1850s - overfishing of the North Atlantic had depleted populations of Right and Sperm Whale to the point that it was no longer economical to try hunting them there. The Pacific was virtually untouched though, and a lucky captain could fill his hold with enough whale oil that he could practically retire on the earnings. Thus, what had once been an undertaking of several months had transformed into voyages that lasted as long as four years, and the tolls and perils were too numerous to contemplate.
Captain William Cottle addressed the crew once the Harbor Pilot departed on the afternoon of September 3, 1851, leaving Joseph with the impression his new boss was a gruff but fair man of the sort particular to that line of work. Cottle’s First, Second, and Third Mates stood alongside him as he spoke:
“Now men, I suppose you know what you shipped for - you have shipped for the voyage.
Do your duty and you will be used well. You shall have enough to eat and drink as long as it is
in the ship. I will have no swearing or fighting. These are my officers [pointing to the mates],
see that you obey them.”
- Letter of Joseph A. DuBois to his sister Mary DuBois.
It then fell to the Mates to choose their watches. The Captain and First Mate had their pick of the most experienced sailors for the Starboard watch, the Second and Third Mates the remainder for the Larboard watch. Each watch alternated four hours above deck and four hours below deck for the duration of the voyage, sleeping when the opportunity arose or passing the hours mending clothing, writing or reading, and occasionally engaging in artistic pursuits unique to whalers of the era.
It should be stated that while the Cambria was owned by a New Englander and hailed from a New England port, the crew of it and whalers like it were often a curious mixture of ethnicities and languages, and there was no guarantee that the English spoken by the ship’s officers was the tongue of the men in the bows. Hawaiian Islanders, African-Americans, Scandinavians, and every nationality and creed in between found their homes between the decks of 19th century whale ships. The plurality of this culture of foremast men was something entirely foreign to green sailors like Joseph Dubois raised in the homogenous backcountry of the eastern seaboard. Richard Henry Dana, in his memoir Two Years Before the Mast, dwells on the topic at length noting the way in which this melting-pot culture was variously adopted by those who signed on ships bound for the Pacific. For Joseph Dubois, this first dose of culture shock was merely preface to the wonders he would witness over the next three years of his life.
The Cambria made short work of its voyage south along the coasts of North and South America, and Joseph wrote enthusiastically to his sister Mary of the routine he and his shipmates maintained at sea. Making good time and with ample provisions there was no need for the Cambria to call frequently at ports on that first leg of the voyage. As such, Joseph’s letters could not be posted regularly. Instead they were prepared with other mails of the crew to be passed along if a ship was encountered bound in the opposite direction - ideally a fellow whaler heading home to Massachusetts. Such encounters on the high seas were not infrequent, and for crews of whalers returning home from the Pacific after two years away the opportunity to get news as fresh as last month from New Bedford was cause for celebration.
At the sight of a fellow American whaler on the horizon the Cambria would spring to life - changes in heading were called out as the foremast men rose into the rigging. Sails were adjusted, and the anticipation would build as wind and tide slowly closed the gap between the vessels. Mile by mile this waiting would continue until the range had closed to the point where shouts of salutation could be heard over the breeze. Captains then exchanged pleasantries through speaking trumpets, crew members might recognize a familiar face on the opposite deck, and mail and news would be sent across if conditions permitted. Nearly every letter Joseph sent was prefaced by such a ceremony, and each was accompanied by the hope that the passing vessel to whom that mail was entrusted would return home safely.
Exterior fold of Joseph A. DuBois’ letter of 27 October 1852 mailed to his parents at Catskill from the island of Maui. Katharine Decker Memorial Collection, Vedder Research Library.
The sole reason the Cambria found itself so far from home was always foremost in the crew’s thoughts, and as the ship made its way from the Azores southward towards Cape Horn whale were spotted on a daily basis. These sightings precipitated a frantic mobilization of both the Starboard and Larboard watches, as any sighting of whale meant an opportunity to begin filling the Cambria’s hold. The quicker that hold was filled, the sooner the vessel could return home. Whale ships were really nothing less than floating factories designed for the production and packaging of whale oil, and Joseph wrote extensively in one of his letters home concerning the process by which the Cambria was transformed following the sighting of a whale:
“Aboard whale ships there is a man on the main and fore
royal mast on the lookout for whales…
…and hardly a day passes without a cry
from the mast head of ‘There she blows!’ ‘There she
breaches,’ ‘Whereaway’ yells the captain, ‘4 points off
the weather bow, sir.’ In a moment the captain is
aloft with his spy glass. The boat steerers spring into the
boats and clear away every thing in readiness for
lowering - ‘Let her luff’ sings out the captain from
the mast head, ‘Let her luff, sir’ says the man at the
helm. Then comes, ‘haul down main and fore top studding
sails, clew up main and mizen royals, brace the main yard,
brace the cross jack yard, brace the fore yard.’ The
ship is now standing for the spot where the breaches
were last seen, all hands looking eagerly over the
side. After waiting about an hour and no signs of any
fish, then comes the captain slowly down the rigging
singing out as he comes ‘square the yards,’ hoist
away main top gallant and fore top gallant studding
studding sails and in a moment the ship is again
on her course and all hands growling away at the
luck and wishing themselves every where else but on the
ship. The foremast hands are mostly green and it is fun
although I am as green as most any one of them
to see some of them perform.”
- Letter of Josep DuBois to his sister Mary DuBois
By the summer of 1852 the Cambria had reached the Northern Pacific and given successful chase to whales in the waters near the Bering Sea. In those instances, the whales sighted by the lookouts were still at the surface when the Cambria was luffed, and the boat crews (similarly divided among the boat steerers like the watches had been divided among the mates) were dropped into the water where the crews could give chase by oar. The Cambria carried four of these whaleboats on davits from which they could be lowered at a moment’s notice.
“American Whaler” by Currier and Ives, c. 1860, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Rowed by a diligent crew a whaleboat could rapidly overtake a recently spotted pod of whales, whereupon harpoons would be thrown in an attempt to secure the whaleboat by a long line to any whale presenting itself on the surface. This is where the chaos of the hunt ensued. When a whale was harpooned it generally sounded - diving deep in flight from danger - and it was a gamble by the whaleboat crews whether they had enough line attached to the harpoon that the whale would cease its dive before the line played out. If the whale drew it all up an inattentive crew could find their boat shattered and drawn underwater in these initial stages. If the whale didn’t sound too deep then the boat would be dragged across the surface, still connected to the whale, as far and as fast as the whale could muster in a circumstance known colloquially as a “Nantucket sleighride.” The idea behind such a gamble was that the stress of a forced flight would tire the whale out and bring it back to the surface exhausted, and it often worked perfectly. Once a whale came up, harpoons with lance-like blades would be used to finish the animal off, but the danger wasn’t necessarily over. In some instances a whale with fight left to give could smash unsuspecting boats as they came alongside, often killing boatmen and making good an escape.
Assuming this complex operation occurred in typical fashion, the carcass of a recently killed whale would then be brought back to the whale ship where the process of flensing would begin. If the smell of mountain tanneries was disagreeable to Joseph DuBois, then the sights and odors of flensing and trying a whale would have been downright offensive to the senses. It was terrible and dirty work. As sharks circled the floating carcass, made fast to the side of the hull with hooks and ropes, crewmen would use long blades to cut away the layer of blubber, a form of subcutaneous fat, that surrounded the whale’s body. These long strips would be brought on deck in a mess of blood and gore where they would be further cut up and dropped into try pots on top of a roaring oven. As the fat was rendered into oil, the ship’s cooper would make ready barrels in which the oil would be stored for the voyage home. In the 1850s a gallon of whale oil could fetch over $1.50, and it wasn’t uncommon for a whaler to return home with an $80,000 cargo if she was a larger ship.
“A Ship on the Northwest coast of America cutting in her last right whale” By Henry Wood Elliot, 1887. Via Wikimedia Commons.
Such work was exhausting, and it took a large number of successful kills to generate enough whale oil to make a pacific voyage marketable. Having sent no letter successfully since the end of December 1851, the next letter Joseph DuBois’ parents received at Catskill was from the Island of Maui dated the 27th of October 1852. After an arduous summer spent sequestered aboard the foul confines of the Cambria the island of Maui must have seemed doubly so the tropical paradise which the more seasoned crewmen of the Cambria had regaled their shipmates with stories about. Fresh provisions of all varieties in abundance, open space to walk, fresh air, and ships in the harbor bringing news from far and wide must have made Maui seem a mecca in the midst of the unending empty Pacific.
The Cambria remained at Maui from the 27th of October until the 12th of November before sailing to make good on fishing opportunities the South Pacific offered in the winter months. The smell of flowers and damp earth on the breeze lingered with the ship for a while after the island had disappeared from sight, a last reminder to the crew that their brief respite had not been a dream. In a letter Joseph sent home immediately prior to departure he said they anticipated arriving home in thirteen to fourteen months.
“Whaler off the Vineyard” by William Bradford, 1859. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Part Three will follow.
- Jonathan Palmer, Deputy Greene County Historian
Banner image is “La Baleine” by Ambroise Louise Garneray c. 1840. Public Domain.