Away Off Shore

by Nathaniel Philbrick

  Even amid the boredom and discomfort that was also a part of the whaling life, Folger is able to devise wonderful similes and metaphors. As his ship wallows in a jumbled sea, he writes, “It feels tiresome and tedious to lay by. So much rowling and tumbling very uneasily like the conscience of a wicked man. How many are the tedious cares and anxieties of human life. But I carry my discontent about with me for I cannot run away from myself.” Almost exactly 100 years before the publication of Moby-Dick, Peleg Folger was already extracting philosophical and poetic truths from the blubbery business of whaling.

  As is true with any great literary work, Peleg’s log tells us as much, if not more, about the times in which he was writing as it does about Folger himself. In fact, his log is probably one of the best sources we have for information concerning eighteenth-century whaling. At this time, sloops between forty and fifty feet were standard; two whaleboats were used, and the crew typically consisted of thirteen men, leaving only one man to tend the ship when both whaleboats (six men each) were in use. The first voyages that Peleg describes, made in the spring and early summer of 1751 and ’52, were to the south, where sperm whales frequented the edges of the Gulf Stream between the Carolinas and Bermuda. In these voyages there is no mention of trying out the oil; instead, the blubber was stored in hogsheads and then returned to Nantucket for processing. Due to the perishable nature of the blubber, these voyages never lasted much longer than six weeks, and after unloading the blubber, the sloop would head out once again. For example, in 1751 Peleg’s sloop the Grampus made three different voyages: April 10th–May 15th; May 18th–June 18th; and June 23rd–July 20th.

  Although this voyaging pattern meant that Nantucket whalers were never too far from home, it also required that they spend an inordinate amount of time amid some of the most dangerous shoals in the world, with which they became intimately acquainted. Simply by taking a “sounding,” which would indicate not only the depth of the water but also the nature of the bottom, a Nantucketer could determine his position with an amazing exactitude. For example, Folger notes in his journal,Last night at 8 o’clock we had 34 fathoms depth of water; fine black and white sand, so we kept her NW till 12 o’clock, then sounded and found 23 fathoms; half an hour after found 22 fathoms; so we kept our luff till we found 16 fathoms. To the eastward of the south shoal we found for the most part black and white sand. . . . So now here we are in the southward of Nobadeer and hope to be at our bar before sunset.

  The shortness of the voyages meant that whaling was a much less lonely occupation than it would ultimately become. Throughout the spring and summer, sloops were constantly going in and out of the harbor. In one entry Peleg notes: “We sailed from Nantucket May 6th in company with about 30 sail of whalemen and when we anchored under the east end of Nantucket we appeared like a forest.” During these southern cruises, fellow whalers were encountered on a daily basis. In one entry, Folger mentions that they “spoke with five whalemen”; in another, “We have seen almost one half our fleet, nay, more than half for ought I know; as also divers whalemen from Martin’s Vineyard, Cape Cod, Rhode Island, and Cushnet.” That these encounters were not purely recreational is indicated by Folger’s entry for May 16th, in which he launches into a typical rumination:About 12 o’clock we spoke with a Capeman who told us oil bore a very good price in Boston—140 pounds old tenor per tun to be paid in dollars on the spot; and the small pox which hath been in Boston some time still continues very great there. It seems to me as if there is nothing but fear and care and trouble on every side. No man can be born and live and die, without his share. . . . And yet how the fear of death will terrify poor mortals. So I conclude this day’s remarks hoping all are well at home, male and female.

  During this era, it was common practice for the crews of two whalers to combine forces or “mate” in their pursuit of whales. On April 27th of the same cruise referred to above, Folger records: “We concluded to keep company with Beriah Fitch and mated with him while we kept company. In the afternoon we struck a large spermaceti and killed her and cut off her body blubber the same day.” The following day, the two sloops once again assisted each other in finishing up with the whale’s head: “We got her between both vessels and got a parbuckle [a sling-like block-and-tackle system] under her and four tackles and runners to her and hoisted her head about 2 feet above water and through cut a scuttle in her head and a man got in up to his armpits and dipped out almost 6 hogsheads of clear oil out of her case besides 6 more of the noodle.”

  During this same voyage, Folger’s vessel also “mated” with a sloop captained by Charles Gardner, in whose company they kept throughout a particularly bad spell of weather. Note that Folger refers to the sails of what was most definitely a feminine ship in the masculine:This day a very hard gale of wind at the NE. We first carried a trysail, foresail, and jib. By and by the wind coming on, we hauled down our jib and reefed him through, set him again, but the wind soon tore him sadly so we hauled him down again and unbent him and got him into the cabin and mended him in order for a good time to bend him to again. So stood in under a trysail and foresail till night when the wind blowing harder and a very large swell rising, we were obliged to haul him down and stow him snug.

  Two days later, the wind shifted and moderated to the point that they were able to haul up a reefed mainsail, foresail, and jib, and with all three sails “perfectly” set, the Grampus ran before the breeze “like a blaze all night,” headed for home in the company of Gardner.

  In 1752, after a series of spring voyages to the south, Peleg signed on with “the good sloop Seaflower, Captain Christopher Coffin, Commander,” for what Folger describes as a voyage “to Newfoundland to kill some humpbacks.” This much longer voyage (they would not return until the end of August) was made possible through the development of a relatively new technology. By the late 1720s, Nantucket offshore whaling vessels began carrying their own portable tryworks, which they would set up and operate on a nearby shore. This worked well in and around Newfoundland, where the many islands provided the whalers with relatively easy access to shore.

  However, since the whalemen invariably left a putrefying whale’s corpse behind them, it was not long before they had begun to wear out their welcome with the Newfoundlanders. (Folger refers to one of their stopping points as the “Stinking Islands.”) In “Misketo Cove” the crew of the ironically named Seaflower had a run-in with an angry group of locals:There the Irishmen cursed us at a high rate for they hate the whalemen in this harbor. Here we lay till June 27th, and in that space of time bore many an oath of the Paddies and bogtrotters, they swearing we should not cut up our whale in the harbor. But, however, we cut up one or two and then on the 27th of June they raised a mob in the evening (one “Pike,” an Irishman, who called himself Captain of the harbor, being the Chief Head) and fired upon us, and the shot struck all round us, but through mercy hurt no man. So we towed our vessels out of the harbor, being 6 or 7 sail of us, and lay off in the Bay that night.

  Throughout this voyage, the Seaflower went from island to island in the company of three other Nantucket sloops, ultimately trying out “something better than 100 barrels of humpback oil.”

  The 1750s were a pivotal time in the whale fishery; by this point many vessels were being outfitted with on-board brick tryworks that enabled them to process the blubber at sea. This broadened their range to the extent that they could now voyage far beyond Newfoundland into the arctic waters of the Davis Strait. For the whalemen, this new technology was a very mixed blessing. Cutting into the whale and trying the oil in the midst of the ocean (as opposed to the island harbors around Newfoundland) was not only dirty and exhausting but could also be extremely dangerous on a vessel of only fifty feet in length when the sea kicked up. During a voyage to the Davis Strait in 1754, Peleg Folger describes a typical experience: “Still cutting our whale. A chopling sea agoing and but little wind. Our sloop girded most violently and we parted our runners twice and split one of our runner blocks and hurt on
e of our hands (splitting his fingers, one of them most sadly) and made most racking work. About 6 PM we unhooked our tackles and runners, not daring to cut any longer for fear of our lives and limbs.”

  With the advent of the on-board tryworks, the average length of a whaling voyage during the next ten years would jump from six weeks to four and a half months, dramatically increasing the level of boredom and loneliness. Although these longer voyages still offered the excitement of the hunt, whaling was no longer the varied and extremely social occupation it had once been. Instead of fishermen and sailors, whalemen were increasingly becoming ship-bound factory workers.

  As the technology of whaling began to change, so did the composition of the crews. By this time the number of Indians in the fishery had dropped significantly, from more than fifty percent of the workforce in the 1730s to less than fifteen percent in the 1760s. To fill this void, Nantucket whaling merchants actively recruited sailors from coastal towns throughout New England and New York. Since the vast majority of these recruits were white, the Nantucket fishery became much less racially diverse than it had once been (and would ultimately become in the years after the Revolution).

  That whaling was indeed entering into a new era is evident in Folger’s log, particularly his account of an almost five-month voyage to the Davis Strait on the sloop Greyhound, Richard Pinkham, Captain. While the irrepressible Folger cannot help but bring an eye for delightful detail to his material, his log describes a voyage with an altogether different pace from the sixweek jaunts to the Gulf Stream or the colorful island-hopping of his cruise to Newfoundland. Although the extreme northern latitude meant that, in Peleg’s words, “the daylight goeth not out of the sky during the whole 24 hours,” persistent fogs and icebergs kept the crew “uneasy.” A typical log entry: “Very thick and foggy weather. We saw some large cakes of ice and passed one about midnight but did not see it. Only heard it roar. There is need of a good watch upon these countries.”

  The months spent hunting spermaceti and right whales in the Arctic Circle did have, however, their pleasures. Despite the miserable weather outside, a good deal of camaraderie seems to have existed below-decks. At one point during the Davis Strait cruise, Folger states: “The weather is freezing cold. Days long. Nights short. Sea rowling and tumbling. The deck tedious. Our cabins our delight. The fire pleasant. Our allowance to every man aboard—his belly full and more too if he wants. Alas! if it was not for hopes the heart would fail.” Indeed, Peleg and his fellow shipmates seem to have been very well provided for throughout their cruise. Only a few days out from Nantucket, the Greyhound “spoke” with a trading schooner from Montserrat that provided them with “two bottles of rum and some limes and some sugar oranges.” Once in the northern latitudes, Peleg describes how the crew spent the morning “pouring some hot chocolate down our bellies” before being interrupted by the appearance of a whale. He also mentions meals of corned fish, pancakes, homecakes, “doboys,” plum pudding, and haglet pie.

  It is clear from Peleg’s log that these early Nantucket whalemen shared something more than good food and a common home port; they also shared a good deal of justifiable pride in their expertise. Among whalers, they were not only the new kids on the block, they were also the ones with the “Right Stuff” who succeeded where others failed. While most whalers in New England and Europe pursued the cow-like right whale, the Nantucketers were the first to specialize in the more bulllike sperm whale whose oil represented the “high end” of the market. At one point Peleg describes the sheepish response of a whaler from Glasgow soon after the Nantucketers killed a “large spermaceti”: “The Scotchman stood away till he had gotten out of sight, having no luck amongst the whales.”

  It was not just his expertise that set the Nantucketer apart. His religious beliefs also made him a different order of whaleman. And in 1758 Quakerism gave the Nantucketers a very tangible advantage over all others in the colonial fishery. During this period of the Seven Years War, a large number of men throughout the colonies were called upon to serve their mother country. However, since most Nantucketers were Quaker pacifists, the British authorities saw fit to award them an exemption, giving them the right to continue whaling even though an embargo had been placed on all other colonial fishing in the Grand Banks. Having this select status granted to an island that already enjoyed its share of advantages when it came to the whale fishery must have irked more than a few New Englanders, laying the seeds for a regional bitterness toward Nantucket that, as we shall see in the next chapter, would only grow in the years to come.

  So, while their fellow whalemen were pressed to fight the French, the Quakers of Nantucket continued to fight the sperm whale, a form of bloodshed for which these pacifists proved amazingly well-adapted. When in pursuit of their prey, the Nantucketers showed no mercy, using their ever-growing knowledge of the whales’ habits to their advantage. One common trick was to single out a mother and her calf; since the whalemen knew the mother would never abandon her child, they would first kill the calf and then have a relatively easy time of fastening to the mother. However, at one point this strategy backfired on Peleg and crew. After killing the calf, they harpooned the mother:In her flurry she came at our boat and furiously ran over us and overset us and made a miserable wreck of our boat in a moment. A wonder it was we all had our lives spared, tho’ the whale had divers warps over her and divers of us all were sadly puzzled under the water. Yet we were all taken up well and not one hurt. Praise the Lord for his mercies & for his wonderful works to the children of men.

  The final sentence of this passage goes to the heart of the fascinating paradox of the Nantucket whalemen. Although some of the deadliest, most conniving hunters the earth has ever known, they were Quakers, a sect that stood against war and conflict and anything that might excite undue emotions.

  Certainly it is unfair to apply our generation’s sensitivity to the plight of the whale to the Nantucket whalemen, whose Bible granted them dominion over the fishes of the sea. As Peleg expressed it in poetry:Thou didst, O Lord, create the mighty whale,

  That wondrous monster of a mighty length;

  Vast is his head and body, vast his tail,

  Beyond conception his unmeasured strength.

  But, everlasting God, thou dost ordain

  That we, poor feeble mortals should engage

  (Ourselves, our wives and children to maintain,)

  This dreadful monster with a martial rage.

  Since they were fulfilling God’s will, the Nantucket whalemen were able to kill, according to Obed Macy, “without brutal excitement.” But as Folger’s log makes clear, whaling could be as brutal and exciting as any war—a holy war in the case of the Quaker whalemen. No wonder they were better at it than anyone else.

  Peleg made his last recorded voyage in 1760, when he was twenty-six years old. The consummate observer, he may have been too brainy, too bookish to make it as a whaling captain. Apparently his peers viewed him as an unusual sort. Scrawled across a portion of Peleg’s log is this: “Old Peleg Folger is a Num Scull for writing in Latin. I fear Peleg Folger will be offended with me for writing in his book but I will intercede with Anna Pitts on his behalf for retaliation for the same. Nathaniel Worth.” Despite Worth’s efforts, Peleg never married, ultimately becoming a schoolteacher and clerk of the Monthly Meeting. According to Macy, “He was considered as a monitor in all his conduct through life; beloved by all good people, he commanded the respect and obedience of those who looked to him for support and protection, among whom were several fatherless children.”

  But, as Worth’s log entry also suggests, Folger was undoubtedly viewed as something of an eccentric on an island where “book learning” was a relative rarity; hence the reference to him as “old” even though he was less than twenty when Worth made the comment in his log. In the same vein is this slightly irreverent piece of doggerel concerning “Uncle Pillick,” passed down to us from the 1750s:Old Uncle Pillick he built him a boat

  On the ba-ack s
ide of Nantucket P’ int.

  He rolled up his trousers and set her afloat

  On the ba-ack side of Nantucket P’ int.

  In any event, Peleg’s ambitions inevitably lay beyond the harpooning of whales. On the occasion of his twenty-fourth birthday he wrote a long poem that includes this stanza:My flying time! How soon ’tis gone

  Full three and twenty fruitless years

  My work, alas, remains undone

  I may strive with prayers and tears.

  Whether or not Folger saw his whaling years as “fruitless,” they ingrained in him certain habits that he would maintain for the rest of his life. Just as he had once calculated a never-ending series of navigational problems in his logs, he would write out translation after translation of Latin poetry and prose. He also developed a remarkable expertise in not only mathematics but the natural sciences as well. According to Macy, he “was considered by judges to be far superior to . . . many who had had the advantages of a classical education.”