Bab Bab 101 · The Decanter.

Ere the English ship fades from sight, be it set down here, that she

hailed from London, and was named after the late Samuel Enderby,

merchant of that city, the original of the famous whaling house of

Enderby & Sons; a house which in my poor whaleman’s opinion, comes not

far behind the united royal houses of the Tudors and Bourbons, in point

of real historical interest. How long, prior to the year of our Lord

1775, this great whaling house was in existence, my numerous

fish-documents do not make plain; but in that year (1775) it fitted out

the first English ships that ever regularly hunted the Sperm Whale;

though for some score of years previous (ever since 1726) our valiant

Coffins and Maceys of Nantucket and the Vineyard had in large fleets

pursued that Leviathan, but only in the North and South Atlantic: not

elsewhere. Be it distinctly recorded here, that the Nantucketers were

the first among mankind to harpoon with civilized steel the great Sperm

Whale; and that for half a century they were the only people of the

whole globe who so harpooned him.

In 1778, a fine ship, the Amelia, fitted out for the express purpose,

and at the sole charge of the vigorous Enderbys, boldly rounded Cape

Horn, and was the first among the nations to lower a whale-boat of any

sort in the great South Sea. The voyage was a skilful and lucky one;

and returning to her berth with her hold full of the precious sperm,

the Amelia’s example was soon followed by other ships, English and

American, and thus the vast Sperm Whale grounds of the Pacific were

thrown open. But not content with this good deed, the indefatigable

house again bestirred itself: Samuel and all his Sons—how many, their

mother only knows—and under their immediate auspices, and partly, I

think, at their expense, the British government was induced to send the

sloop-of-war Rattler on a whaling voyage of discovery into the South

Sea. Commanded by a naval Post-Captain, the Rattler made a rattling

voyage of it, and did some service; how much does not appear. But this

is not all. In 1819, the same house fitted out a discovery whale ship

of their own, to go on a tasting cruise to the remote waters of Japan.

That ship—well called the “Syren”—made a noble experimental cruise; and

it was thus that the great Japanese Whaling Ground first became

generally known. The Syren in this famous voyage was commanded by a

Captain Coffin, a Nantucketer.

All honor to the Enderbies, therefore, whose house, I think, exists to

the present day; though doubtless the original Samuel must long ago

have slipped his cable for the great South Sea of the other world.

The ship named after him was worthy of the honor, being a very fast

sailer and a noble craft every way. I boarded her once at midnight

somewhere off the Patagonian coast, and drank good flip down in the

forecastle. It was a fine gam we had, and they were all trumps—every

soul on board. A short life to them, and a jolly death. And that fine

gam I had—long, very long after old Ahab touched her planks with his

ivory heel—it minds me of the noble, solid, Saxon hospitality of that

ship; and may my parson forget me, and the devil remember me, if I ever

lose sight of it. Flip? Did I say we had flip? Yes, and we flipped it

at the rate of ten gallons the hour; and when the squall came (for it’s

squally off there by Patagonia), and all hands—visitors and all—were

called to reef topsails, we were so top-heavy that we had to swing each

other aloft in bowlines; and we ignorantly furled the skirts of our

jackets into the sails, so that we hung there, reefed fast in the

howling gale, a warning example to all drunken tars. However, the masts

did not go overboard; and by and by we scrambled down, so sober, that

we had to pass the flip again, though the savage salt spray bursting

down the forecastle scuttle, rather too much diluted and pickled it to

my taste.

The beef was fine—tough, but with body in it. They said it was

bull-beef; others, that it was dromedary beef; but I do not know, for

certain, how that was. They had dumplings too; small, but substantial,

symmetrically globular, and indestructible dumplings. I fancied that

you could feel them, and roll them about in you after they were

swallowed. If you stooped over too far forward, you risked their

pitching out of you like billiard-balls. The bread—but that couldn’t be

helped; besides, it was an anti-scorbutic; in short, the bread

contained the only fresh fare they had. But the forecastle was not very

light, and it was very easy to step over into a dark corner when you

ate it. But all in all, taking her from truck to helm, considering the

dimensions of the cook’s boilers, including his own live parchment

boilers; fore and aft, I say, the Samuel Enderby was a jolly ship; of

good fare and plenty; fine flip and strong; crack fellows all, and

capital from boot heels to hat-band.

But why was it, think ye, that the Samuel Enderby, and some other

English whalers I know of—not all though—were such famous, hospitable

ships; that passed round the beef, and the bread, and the can, and the

joke; and were not soon weary of eating, and drinking, and laughing? I

will tell you. The abounding good cheer of these English whalers is

matter for historical research. Nor have I been at all sparing of

historical whale research, when it has seemed needed.

The English were preceded in the whale fishery by the Hollanders,

Zealanders, and Danes; from whom they derived many terms still extant

in the fishery; and what is yet more, their fat old fashions, touching

plenty to eat and drink. For, as a general thing, the English

merchant-ship scrimps her crew; but not so the English whaler. Hence,

in the English, this thing of whaling good cheer is not normal and

natural, but incidental and particular; and, therefore, must have some

special origin, which is here pointed out, and will be still further

elucidated.

During my researches in the Leviathanic histories, I stumbled upon an

ancient Dutch volume, which, by the musty whaling smell of it, I knew

must be about whalers. The title was, “Dan Coopman,” wherefore I

concluded that this must be the invaluable memoirs of some Amsterdam

cooper in the fishery, as every whale ship must carry its cooper. I was

reinforced in this opinion by seeing that it was the production of one

“Fitz Swackhammer.” But my friend Dr. Snodhead, a very learned man,

professor of Low Dutch and High German in the college of Santa Claus

and St. Pott’s, to whom I handed the work for translation, giving him a

box of sperm candles for his trouble—this same Dr. Snodhead, so soon as

he spied the book, assured me that “Dan Coopman” did not mean “The

Cooper,” but “The Merchant.” In short, this ancient and learned Low

Dutch book treated of the commerce of Holland; and, among other

subjects, contained a very interesting account of its whale fishery.

And in this chapter it was, headed, “Smeer,” or “Fat,” that I found a

long detailed list of the outfits for the larders and cellars of 180

sail of Dutch whalemen; from which list, as translated by Dr. Snodhead,

I transcribe the following:

400,000 lbs. of beef. 60,000 lbs. Friesland pork. 150,000 lbs. of stock

fish. 550,000 lbs. of biscuit. 72,000 lbs. of soft bread. 2,800 firkins

of butter. 20,000 lbs. Texel & Leyden cheese. 144,000 lbs. cheese

(probably an inferior article). 550 ankers of Geneva. 10,800 barrels of

beer.

Most statistical tables are parchingly dry in the reading; not so in

the present case, however, where the reader is flooded with whole

pipes, barrels, quarts, and gills of good gin and good cheer.

At the time, I devoted three days to the studious digesting of all this

beer, beef, and bread, during which many profound thoughts were

incidentally suggested to me, capable of a transcendental and Platonic

application; and, furthermore, I compiled supplementary tables of my

own, touching the probable quantity of stock-fish, etc., consumed by

every Low Dutch harpooneer in that ancient Greenland and Spitzbergen

whale fishery. In the first place, the amount of butter, and Texel and

Leyden cheese consumed, seems amazing. I impute it, though, to their

naturally unctuous natures, being rendered still more unctuous by the

nature of their vocation, and especially by their pursuing their game

in those frigid Polar Seas, on the very coasts of that Esquimaux

country where the convivial natives pledge each other in bumpers of

train oil.

The quantity of beer, too, is very large, 10,800 barrels. Now, as those

polar fisheries could only be prosecuted in the short summer of that

climate, so that the whole cruise of one of these Dutch whalemen,

including the short voyage to and from the Spitzbergen sea, did not

much exceed three months, say, and reckoning 30 men to each of their

fleet of 180 sail, we have 5,400 Low Dutch seamen in all; therefore, I

say, we have precisely two barrels of beer per man, for a twelve weeks’

allowance, exclusive of his fair proportion of that 550 ankers of gin.

Now, whether these gin and beer harpooneers, so fuddled as one might

fancy them to have been, were the right sort of men to stand up in a

boat’s head, and take good aim at flying whales; this would seem

somewhat improbable. Yet they did aim at them, and hit them too. But

this was very far North, be it remembered, where beer agrees well with

the constitution; upon the Equator, in our southern fishery, beer would

be apt to make the harpooneer sleepy at the mast-head and boozy in his

boat; and grievous loss might ensue to Nantucket and New Bedford.

But no more; enough has been said to show that the old Dutch whalers of

two or three centuries ago were high livers; and that the English

whalers have not neglected so excellent an example. For, say they, when

cruising in an empty ship, if you can get nothing better out of the

world, get a good dinner out of it, at least. And this empties the

decanter.