Going Whaling

Chapter 5
Man Overboard

In Honolulu, Adam and I again lived aboard the Angela with the rest of the crew while my parents, Jessica, and Daniel lived with the missionaries. Every night we were able to enjoy each other’s bodies.

Father had decided to refit the Angela with new sails and rigging, so again we had plenty of time to explore the island. But this time there was a new and vexing problem.

Jessica was now eleven while I was sixteen. Mother decided that Jessica was old enough to accompany us on our ramblings. Neither Adam nor I was very happy about the decision, for Mother made us responsible for my sister, who had a way of not doing what she was told to do.

How was Jessica going to ride a horse to Diamond Head in her long skirts? The stable on the island had no sidesaddles. Mother said that perhaps we just couldn’t ride during this visit to the island. This made both me and Adam even more unhappy.

“Why does Jessica have to tag along on everything we do?” Adam complained to me.

“Because Mother said so, and I cannot go against her. Of course, you could go alone.”

But Adam would not even consider that idea. “Whatever I do, I do with you,” he said.

While we complained, Jessica was thinking. She solved the problem by taking one of my old pairs of pants and cutting them down to fit her. From a distance she looked like a young boy. At first, Mother did not approve, but Jessica begged and Mother finally gave in.

So, Adam, Jessica, and I rode to Diamond Head on a lovely, clear, hot day. Even though Jessica had only ridden sidesaddle in the past, she adapted quickly. Most of the sailors believed that they too could ride horses. Although many of them had never been on a horse, they thought that riding looked easy, so there was quite a group of us heading out. But the sailors, whose bottoms quickly became sore, soon tired of riding or falling off their horses and dropped out one by one, and we cheerfully left them behind.

There were formal gardens at Diamond Head where visitors could play billiards or lawn bowling. The three of us tried both games. Adam and I were embarrassed when Jessica beat us at bowling.

On other days, we took a picnic lunch and walked out beyond the town towards the mountains. I could see that sometimes Adam’s peg leg hurt him when we were walking, but he never quit or complained or asked to stop and rest. Farther from the harbor, brilliant flowers of all colors and sweet perfumes as well as trees wearing every shade of green lined both sides of our path. Many of the trees bore fruit, and we were able to pick some bananas to enjoy as we walked. Until this voyage we New Englanders had never seen or smelled such a variety of flowers and trees. At home, bananas, oranges, and other fruits were rare treats.

When it was time for the Angela to set sail once more, I wondered just what my position on the ship would be. Would I continue to sleep in Adam’s cabin as I hoped, or would I again be in my parents’ cabin? Would I still be a member of a whaleboat crew, or had I been replaced? As the pilot guided us out of the harbor, I asked my father these questions and he said, “Well, Jeremiah, you can still live in Adam’s cabin if you wish, and you will also continue to be a member of the third whaleboat’s crew. Does that suit you?” I was thrilled because I knew that going after sperm whales could be much more exciting, not to mention dangerous, than going after right whales.

Father set a course south towards the whaling grounds off the coast of Australia. He told me and Adam that we would not actually stop at Australia itself because gold had been discovered in 1851 and there was a gold rush on there. “I’m rather concerned that some of our crew would desert the ship to join the search for gold,” he said, “so we will not stop there. To restock the ship’s food and water we will stop at a South Pacific Island before heading home around Cape Horn.”

Day after dreary day we sailed with no sightings of whales. Occasionally we saw porpoises or finbacks, but neither was what we were after. It was summer in the South Pacific, so many days were very hot and humid. Jessica, who was back in girls’ clothes with long skirts and petticoats and long-sleeved blouses suffered from the heat. She begged Mother to be able to wear fewer clothes, but Mother insisted that would not be proper.

As I mentioned earlier, Jessica did not always do what she was told to do. She loved to climb over the railing into one of the whaleboats which hung on davits to fish, although she had been instructed several times by Father that she should not get in a whaleboat.

One day, after she had caught several fish, she began to make her way back onto the deck. To do that she had to pull herself up onto the ship’s rail and then drop down on the deck. That day she tripped on her long skirt and fell into the water. Fortunately, the man at the wheel saw her and shouted, while a man at the masthead yelled, “Man Overboard!”

The crew immediately leaped into action with much shouting and racing about. It is not easy to stop a sailing ship in the middle of the ocean, but it can eventually be done. Men hauled back on the sails, so they were no longer catching the wind and turned the wheel, so the ship was headed into the wind.

When we heard the cry, Adam and I raced to the rail and saw Jessica, her skirts billowing up around her as the ship moved away. Without hesitating, Adam removed his peg leg and his boot and dove at once into the water. I removed my boots and dove in right behind him. Even though Adam had lost most of one leg, he was still a powerful swimmer, his strong arms making up for his missing leg. We raced towards where we had last seen Jessica, who was by then more than a half mile away. We didn’t know it until later, but Steward, who was very fond of Jessica, had jumped into the water although he could not swim!

Meanwhile, the crew had lowered a whaleboat and were racing towards Jessica as fast as they could row. Another boat was lowered to pick up Steward.

As we neared her, my sister was just coming up from having gone underwater. She coughed and spluttered as she tried to stay afloat.

When we reached her, Jessica grabbed Adam around the neck and held him tightly. Adam suddenly realized that he could not be much help to her. He needed his arms to stay afloat as his leg wasn’t much help. He had no way to hold her up, so it fell to me to dive below them and hold her above the surface. I don’t know whether you have ever tried to do that, but rest assured it is very tiring.

When the whaleboat arrived, the men first had to pry Jessica’s fingers from around Adam’s neck before they could lift her aboard. Then they helped Adam and me climb in.

By the time we returned to the ship, Steward was already aboard, and Jessica had begun to recover from her near drowning. Adam and I helped put her in the gamming chair to lift her aboard. Mother and Father laid her on the deck. For some time, she lay on her side coughing and spluttering and vomiting. She was certainly alive, but she was just as certainly very miserable. Finally, she tried to sit up and Father helped her to stand. Mother and Father hugged her and hugged her, over and over, calling her their little mermaid. Then they took her below to get into some dry clothes and to rest. Adam and I stayed on deck and let the hot sun dry us.

Soon the ship was headed south once more, and the crew went back to work if it was their watch or talking and working on scrimshaw if it was not.

That night, Father invited Adam to join us for dinner, and we all talked about the adventure.

Jessica said that as she floated and watched the Angela sail away, she wondered if she would ever see it again. She talked of seeing the sun low on the horizon, but she must have been spinning slowly in the water for the ship and the sun both seemed to disappear. She tried to swim for a time although her clothes pulled her down. Eventually she began sinking below the surface and struggling back up again. By the time Adam and I reached her, she believed she had come up to the surface for the last time. She knew that she had been taught never to grasp the person saving her around the neck, and she thought she was holding him very gently. She told us she was never afraid, even though she knew she might drown. She simply did as much as she could to save herself and left the rest to God. She said, however, that she had learned a lesson about obedience.

Mother had been afraid that she had lost her only daughter forever. She and Father, who could not swim, had watched helplessly from the stern of the ship as we swam and the crew in the whaleboat rowed. In time they could not make out Jessica so far away in the choppy water and feared that she was already gone.

Father waited until Mother was finished talking when he quietly said, “Thank you, Jeremiah and Adam for helping to save her.” Clearly, he was proud of us, and for that matter, we were proud of ourselves.

Sometimes afterwards, I wondered if we did it because Jessica was my sister and we had grown close to her on our jaunts in Honolulu, or whether we would have done it for anyone who fell overboard. I could never really make up my mind, but fortunately, nobody else fell in so I didn’t have to decide.

There are several groups of islands in the South Pacific. Some of these islands were said to be full of cannibals, although that could perhaps have been a rumor. We did know that sometimes, when ships put into an island, the crew was attacked and everything moveable stolen from the ships.

Father knew of an island reported by other whaling captains to be safe. It was in the Caroline group and named Ponape, although whalers often called it Ascension. As we approached the island, we became aware of the wonderful, welcoming scent of flowers as much as five miles away. The island was perhaps 30 miles long and 10 miles wide. It was surrounded by a coral reef two or three miles from the shore.

We dropped anchor outside the reef and watched as several outrigger canoes put out from shore and paddled towards us. The canoes were made from the trunks of breadfruit trees which had been hollowed out by the women using fire and stone tools. They were carved with intricate designs as well as strange creatures, and the carvings were colored blue, red, and yellow.

One of the canoes brought the king or chief (I never knew exactly what his title was) with his two sons. They brought nothing with them except a few coconuts. Father bargained to trade tobacco and cloth for yams, fowl, coconuts, and bananas, which were all brought aboard in the next two days.

In the morning, many more canoes came out. The islanders clambered aboard and swarmed over the ship. They were especially interested in anything made of metal, for they had no metal and had only recently seen it on other ships. Our crew members were assigned to watch carefully so that none of our visitors could take items which they ‘found’.

The next day, we made a raft of water kegs. Using two boats, one of them Mr. Shaw’s, we towed it through a small gap in the reef towards the island. Adam was allowed to ride as a passenger. That night we were invited to the chief’s house to be fed and entertained by the people. They danced, sang songs, and had mock wrestling and boxing contests. We stayed in the chief’s house overnight. In the morning there was a strong wind blowing and the Angela could not safely get close enough to the island because of the reef, so we had to remain on land for another day. The following morning the wind had calmed, and we towed the raft of water out to the ship.

Then we were off again, toward the Australian whaling grounds. We sailed about aimlessly for another two weeks before the welcome cry, “She blows!” rang over the deck. Soon the whaleboats were in the water pulling towards a small pod of whales. Mr. Shaw managed to take us close to an enormous sperm whale, but just as he ordered the harpooner to stand and strike, it dove below the surface. Mr. Shaw steered the boat near where he thought the whale would come up, and there we waited for nearly an hour. It never appeared.

By that time, the other boats had caught whales and the pod had become alarmed and disappeared. I was disappointed as we rowed back, for I was afraid I had lost my only chance of being in on catching a sperm whale.

We tried out the blubber of the two whales, which made about 170 barrels of oil. Father said that if we caught a few more like that, we’d be full and could head for home.

At night, as usual, I told Adam about our aborted adventure and we gently loved each other.

It was another two-and-a-half weeks before we spotted whales again. Once more we lowered the whaleboats and rowed toward them. Again, they disappeared. Was I never to get my chance?

Finally, five days later, the lookouts spotted a large pod of sperm whales some miles off. We sailed as close to them as we could without alarming them and lowered our boats. We pulled hard on the oars until Mr. Shaw positioned us beside a giant of a whale. The harpooner stood, threw both his harpoons, and we were off on a Nantucket Sleigh Ride. To some people, the sleigh ride might sound like fun, but it really was very uncomfortable, for the boat bumped along on the tops of the swells at a rapid pace bouncing us up and down on the seats. My heart was beating so hard I thought it might burst. I had never traveled so fast in my life.

The ride went on for over two hours before the whale began to tire. We pulled our boat towards him, being careful to coil the line again as it came aboard, for if the whale began to run again and the uncoiled line spun out, it could quickly snarl and pull a man over the side.

Finally, the whale slowed and stopped. By that time the harpooner and Mr. Shaw had changed places. Mr. Shaw was able to kill the whale with only two strokes. I had finally helped to catch a sperm whale!

By that time the ship was miles away. Mr. Shaw knew the general direction, and we began to tow the whale back. Towards evening, we saw the Angela slowly approaching us. We brought the whale to the ship’s stern because the other two boats had also caught whales and the trying out had begun.

Days later, the trying work was finished and all the barrels of oil stowed either below decks or lashed together on the main deck. Father gathered the crew together and said, “Well, men, we’ve a full ship and it’s time to head for home.” The men gave a joyful cheer and eagerly set the sails. Our ship was at last headed east towards Cape Horn and home.

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