Author's note
Attitudes towards whaling have made a cosmic turnaround in the last 150 years. This story is set in the early 1850s. It does not seek to glorify whaling, but the courage of the men who followed the whales cannot be denied. In those days, men did not know either that they were depleting the whales to the point of extinction or that whales had sensibilities and suffered fear and pain.
Like any historical fiction, the story needs to be read with the customs and the knowledge of the times in mind.
Father was home! At long last he was home! When he left New Bedford, I was seven years old! Now I was thirteen. Father, the captain of a whaling ship, had been hunting whales in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans for five years.
A ship which entered New Bedford Harbor the day before brought word that Father’s ship would be arriving in New Bedford the next day. Mother said that Jessica and I could stay home from school for the day, so early in the morning the three of us climbed to the widow’s walk, which topped our house. The widow’s walk was a platform on the roof with a railing around it. From there we could see all the ships coming and going in New Bedford Harbor.
It was a lovely, warm fall day. Jessica, who was 7, grew bored. Mother gave her a book and some toys which she had brought because she knew our wait might be a long one. In the early afternoon I finally spied a ship just entering the harbor. It was yet too far away for us to make out which ship she was, since there were hundreds of whaling ships which sailed in and out of New Bedford. We would simply have to wait until it got closer. Soon Mother was quite sure that it was Father’s ship, but I did not believe it until I could see Father on the deck through my telescope. The good ship Angela, named after the ship owner’s daughter, was safely home at last.
When the Angela dropped anchor there was no more for us to see for a while. I wanted to run down to the docks, but Mother said that Father would be very busy just then, and I should not bother him, so we returned downstairs and we waited. And we waited. And we waited.
Mother did not wish to serve supper until Father arrived, but she gave us some food while we waited, which she almost never did. She usually said that snacks would spoil our appetites, but that day she gave us little cakes and buttered bread with sugar on it.
I stood watching out the front window as evening came on and the light began to fade. Just as it was growing nearly too dark to see anything, I made out a figure coming through our front gate. I ran to the door and threw it open. Striding up the sidewalk was one of the most enormous men I had ever seen. When I was seven, I had thought he was huge, but even now I could see he was big. He was very tall and very broad. His black hair was tied in a short tail behind him. His smile was warm and friendly. Over his right shoulder he was carrying a wooden chest so easily I imagined it must be nearly empty.
“Is that my Jeremiah?” His voice boomed.
It was so loud that for a minute I was afraid, but then I ran to him and gave him a big hug.
“Let me put this sea chest down in the house and I’ll hug you back,” he said. He strode up the walk with me right behind him. Mother and Jessica were standing in the doorway. Jessica stood silent, overcome with awe. Mother was so happy she was crying.
Father put down his sea chest and hugged Mother tightly. Then he bent over and said, “And this must be Jessica. You don’t recognize me, do you?” She shook her head but said nothing.
“Well, the last time you saw me you were only two years old, so I’m not surprised.” He bent over and gave her a gentle kiss on her cheek. Then he turned to me and grabbed me in a bear hug, completely lifting me off the floor. Jessica and I both giggled while Mother and Father laughed.
Finally, Mother said to him, “Come in and get yourself cleaned up. We’ll eat as soon as you’re ready.”
Father said that he should have a bath, but for now he would just clean his face and hands. While he was washing up, I went back into the hall and tried to lift his sea chest, the wooden chest which held all Father’s belongings. I could not pick up even one end of it and right then I knew that Father was very strong.
Supper that night was a special celebration, and even though we called it supper it was really a dinner, a meal we usually ate at noon. Mother lit the spermaceti candles. Mother and Father even had a glass of wine with the meal. We had duck with orange sauce and stuffing, along with mashed potatoes, carrots, and onions. We talked and talked as we ate. Mother had made an apple pie for dessert. By the time we finished, we were all stuffed.
Soon after dinner, Mother sent Jessica and me upstairs to bed. I tried to say that I wanted to stay with Father, but she was firm, and I knew enough not to challenge her. Our house was big enough that Jessica and I had separate bedrooms. Not all of my friends were as lucky. In fact, some of them slept in the same beds as their brothers and sisters.
I was so excited I thought I would never get to sleep, but I must have slept right away because in the morning I could not remember going to bed at all.
When I awoke I could hear Father in the bathtub. He was singing a sea song about somebody named Stormalong at the top of his lungs. No wonder I woke up!
After breakfast, Father had to return to the ship to oversee the unloading of the whale oil, spermaceti, and whalebone. I asked if I could go with him. He let me walk to the wharf with him but not onto the ship, which had been pulled up to the dock, so I sat on a cask on the dock and watched the men busily working.
I never tired of watching the activity in the harbor. Ships were constantly coming and going. Men of every race and color were working on the ships and the docks. There were several whaling ships at the wharves. Men were unloading the Angela and another ship was being loaded for a new voyage. Everywhere I looked, men were unloading barrels full of whale oil from our ship and loading new barrels on the other ship. The barrels were so big I could easily have fit in one. There were all sorts of other items ‒ casks, ropes (which on a ship are often called lines), sails, food, harpoons, tools… The list seemed endless.
As the men worked, they talked cheerfully in many languages. Besides English I could hear Portuguese, French, German, and languages which I could not identify, but were probably from the Pacific islands. The crew sang sea songs called chanteys, which gave a rhythm to their work and made it easier for them to work together.
I breathed in deeply, enjoying the smells of salt water, whale oil, and all the other smells of the seaport. At the same time, I gazed longingly at these men, wishing I too could go whaling. But I knew that would not happen until I was fifteen or sixteen. Meanwhile, I would have to stay at home, go to school, and learn things which I found not at all interesting, like adding and subtracting, spelling, and reading boring books. Soon I would also have to learn Latin.
The only subject that interested me was geography, for from it I could learn about maps and places in the world that the Angela had visited. I learned about San Francisco, which was a small port in a territory called California. I also learned about ports in South America like Rio de Janeiro, and I even learned about the Hawaiian Islands. How I longed to visit these romantic and mysterious places! Why did I have to wait to grow up?
At noon, Father and I returned home to dinner. Then we walked back to the docks where I continued to watch the work. Occasionally, Father would ask me to take a message to someone, which I always did at a run.
Supper was another merry meal, and when it was over and we had finished talking, Mother sent us to bed.
Soon I was in bed, stroking my cock. I had always played with it when I was in bed, but recently things had changed. One night as I held it in my hand, I felt that I really needed to pee, so I got the chamber pot and tried to go. My cock was hard and there was a little throbbing but no pee. Over the next few months, I felt that way every night, but the throbbing got stronger. One night a little whitish liquid shot out. I had no idea what it was. At first given the color, I wondered if I had an infection, but then I realized that I really liked the feeling I got, so every night I stroked my cock, and every night I shot the fluid. Months went by and I still had no idea what was happening, but I was certainly too embarrassed to ask my parents.
That night after supper I fondled my cock as usual and then went to sleep, dreaming of all the places I wanted to visit.
The next morning, Mother said I had to return to school. I groaned and looked at Father, but he simply said, “Mind your mother.” So, off I went, with Jessica tagging along behind.
One good thing about going to school that morning was that I would be seeing my friend Adam Moore. He was two years older than me, but we had become fast friends in the schoolyard. Our friendship began when I was in third grade and he was in fifth, and we both discovered that we liked to play with marbles. By the time I was ten, I could beat just about any of the boys my age or younger. Sometimes I could even beat older boys. One day Adam, who had been watching me, challenged me to a game. I lost rather badly, but he simply smiled and gave me back my marbles. And that was the beginning of our friendship.
It was sealed a few days later when I was playing Billy Marsden, an older, bigger boy, and I won all his marbles. I think he was embarrassed that a little kid could beat him, but he was also angry. “Give me back my marbles!” he ordered.
“No. I won them fair and square!” I answered.
Again he insisted and again I said, “No!”
Without warning, Billy rushed towards me and punched me in the stomach. I bent over in pain, trying to get my breath back. I fell to the ground and he knelt and hit me all over – my face, my arms, my chest.
Suddenly, I heard Billy yell, “OW!” and his weight was lifted off me. Looking up, I saw Adam holding Billy from behind and bending his arm up behind his back.
“OW!” Billy yelled again.
Very calmly and quietly, Adam said in Billy’s ear, “Next time, pick on someone your own size.” Then, with an extra little upward push of Billy’s arm, Adam let him go and Billy went racing off to the far corner of the schoolyard.
After school that day Adam invited me to his house to trade marbles. In those days, parents did not worry if they didn’t know where we were every minute. I had known who Adam was since I had begun school, but I did not know him well because he was older. As we sat on his bed sorting marbles, I noticed he had the most beautiful green eyes, and I fell in love immediately. We had a good time, and from then on we often visited one another’s homes. I was always welcomed in Adam’s home and became almost a member of his family, while Adam was also welcomed in my home and became nearly one of my family as well. When I was with him, I noticed that my heart seemed to beat faster, but I had no idea what that meant.
Sometimes, one of us would stay overnight at the other’s house. In bed we snuggled under the covers in our nightshirts. We discovered that it was fun to pull up our shirts and examine each other’s cocks. Of course, at that age there was not a lot to see, but what we were doing seemed very daring. We would talk and giggle long into the night until our parents told us to be quiet and go to sleep. By the time Adam was thirteen, he had grown more modest, and our sex play stopped. I wondered why.
Finally one night, when I was thirteen and Adam was fifteen and we were in bed together, I got up the courage to ask him if he ever played with his cock and shot stuff out.
He grinned and said, “Of course.”
“What is that stuff?” I asked.
“It’s baby juice,” he replied. “When a man and a woman want to have a baby, they lie down together, and the man shoots his baby juice into the woman. Then she has a baby.”
That seemed like an incomplete explanation to me, but at least I learned I was not the only one shooting liquid in bed.
“Aren’t we wasting the juice if we do not use it to make a baby?”
“Naw, there is plenty of it and it just keeps coming.”
I thanked him and then we stroked our cocks together until we shot. It was the first time we had done so together. I was very satisfied, knowing more of what was happening. After that, whenever I did it, I pictured Adam in my mind, and I found that arousing, my cock getting hard very quickly.
Fall passed and winter came with its outdoor sports of sledding down the hills and skating on the ponds. We also built snow forts and had snowball fights, which were more free-for-alls than two sides battling. We never skated on a pond until a parent told us it was safe, because if we broke through the ice with our wool winter clothes on we would quickly sink to the bottom and drown.
I loved the winter. I loved the cold air on my face, the skating, and the sledding. I loved building snow forts and having wild snowball fights. We boys never tired of our winter battles, which always ended with us chilled to the bone and going to one of the boys’ homes for hot drinks and to warm up. Then it was back out again where we played until it grew dark, when we rushed to our homes for supper.
On one calm and not-too-cold day, Father asked if I would like to row with him across the harbor to Fairhaven to see what the workers were doing on the Angela. I agreed of course, so we bundled up and trudged to a dock where Father had a rowboat. We rowed across the harbor, although I am sure he was actually doing most of the rowing.
We pulled up on shore near the Angela, which had been dragged up out of the water on rails and tilted on its side. Men were busily at work. Some were caulking the seams between the planks of the hull so the ship would not leak. Others were removing the old wooden planks from below the waterline on the hull and putting on new, clean ones, for the old ones were so covered with barnacles that they had slowed the ship down on her way back to New Bedford. Father explained that the planks being replaced were a false bottom on the hull, put there to protect the inner planks of the hull from barnacles.
Father told me that after the men were finished re-caulking the hull and putting on all the new planks, they would raise new masts and then put the ship back in the water and tow it to the New Bedford side of the harbor, where other men would replace all the spars and rigging. Then the ship would be ready to sail out on another voyage. How I wished I could go!
Spring came slowly, and with it, my birthday! I was finally fourteen! That morning, as soon as I was dressed, I raced downstairs. I was hoping I would get some presents of course, perhaps some new clothes or, if I was lucky, a new pocketknife. I discovered Mother and Father and Jessica in the parlor with what looked like a pile of old clothes. Why would they pile old clothes in the parlor? I wondered. Father suggested that I pick up the clothes. I did, and beneath them was a brand-new sea chest. I was spellbound!
“Mine?” I’m sure my voice quavered.
“Well,” Father replied, “won’t you need one when you go on the Angela?”
“I…I…I’m going?” I stammered.
“Can I go too?” Jessica pleaded.
“We all are,” Mother said. “Father and I decided that we did not want to be apart for another four or five years, so we are all going on the next voyage.” As Jessica danced around the room singing, “I am going! I am going!” I opened my new sea chest. In it I found seagoing clothes including pants, shirts, a warm jacket, a hat, and boots ─ all new and all for me! I leaped up and hugged Mother and Father hard, trying to hide the tears in my eyes, but I do not think I was very successful.
“I think we all need to have breakfast now,” said Mother. I was sure I could see a tear in her eye as well. I was so excited, I did not eat much breakfast before I raced off to school with Jessica yelling behind me to slow down.
I quickly found Adam in the schoolyard.
“I am sailing on the Angela,” I blurted out breathlessly.
I could see that, just for a moment, he was jealous, but that quickly passed and he slapped me on the back, saying, “Wonderful!” The next morning when I went to school, there was Adam with a huge grin on his face.
“Guess what,” he said joyfully. “I am going with you!”
“Really?” I asked. “How?”
“Yesterday while we were at school, your father asked my parents if I could go on the voyage as the cabin boy. Of course, I will probably be working while you are larking about, but we can surely get time together.”
I was overjoyed by the news and hugged him, right there in the schoolyard. He looked around, a little embarrassed and said that maybe we should save the hugs for when we were alone together.
At supper that night I again hugged Father, thanking him for taking Adam. Father said that he and Adam’s parents thought that Adam was old enough now to go on a voyage and begin to learn whaling, which was what he really wanted to do.