Part 5 (1/2)
This h, when I happened, though only a boy of ten years of age at the time, to be of the number of the souls on board On the invitation ofWhitby, on his progress northward, to take leave of his fa to return by the pilot boat, to see the shi+p I was astonished hat I saw; I explored with unht every accessible compartment of the cabins and store-rooms below, and conceived an irresistible desire to reth the call of the pilots for ”Master William,” as the day advanced to its close, put my desire to the test of practicability For a while I reer likely to be available, I contrived the child-like device of hidingthe companion ladder bare-headed, I let it be understood I could not find! My Father having noticed htly the little device, re with us” A uish, however, who loved me with the tenderest and most ardent affection, flashed into my mind It forced utterance in the expression,-”But illconsolatory, sufficed to allay my scruples,-”She will love you better when you co haste in ainst the shi+p's gangere at length made sensible of what they at first could not credit, that I was to remain behind; and they set out for the shore in no s of sy embarrassment, on account of the report they must yield to one, whom they sufficiently knew as an anxious, susceptible, and affectionate mother!
But my own story must be here suspended, as it possibly may hereafter find a place, if Providence yield , in the series of the ”Memorials of the Sea,” which, so on
The leading incidents of this disappointing enterprise, I aive with a satisfactory o, in a private autobiography, fro details
After touching at Lerwick (Shetland), for the completion of our supplementary crew of _boatmen_, we proceeded northward towards the usual whale-fishi+ng stations On arriving in sight of Spitzbergen, and finding the western coast accessible, with a vein of clear water running continuously along shore, we pursued the encouraging opening as far as the northern headland of Charles Island, in latitude 78 53' N Here, tempted by the clear water eastward, we reached into a wide inlet near King's Bay, when, by a sudden gale co on from the northward and north-ard, ere driven, encu betwixt the foreland and the main, where the shi+p ultimately became closely beset in the _Bay of Birds_ of Barentz
At first, the officers in general thought little of the entanglee of ould serve to release us My Father, however, watching the augmentation in the thickness of the ice, by pressure and frost, received, very early, a more anxious impression He had observed, indeed, that the ice was not yet thoroughly sealed together and fixed into an immoveable mass For, periodically, he perceived, that soeneral body of ices took place, which he ascribed to the action of a tide; and, on one evening, before retiring to rest, when a fine breeze, favourable for proun to prevail, he rather confidently anticipated soht be available for our escape at the period of the favourably acting tide In this expectation, he gave special orders to the chief officer, who had forht to have well appreciated the importance of the instruction,-to call hiht take place But, disappointingly enough, he awoke of hi sleep, when, as his watch indicated, the time of favourable tide must be passed He anxiously dressed hiable ice was yet visible at some little distance to the north-ard, all about the shi+p was close and impenetrable His enquiry as to whether the ice about the shi+p had not also slacked? led to theadmission, reluctantly extracted, that the ice had indeed slacked very near to the shi+p, but, as was inti could be done without 'calling all hands,' and ht it would perhaps be more cleared away, by the hopeful breeze, by the tihly culpable folly of this conduct became too soon apparent to all
For when an easterly, and then a southerly wind bleithout inducing any repetition of the slackness that had been missed; e found the whole of the accumulated ices frozen into a solid field, without crack, or opening of any kind to be seen from the mast-head; eheadlands, and the ice everywhere wedged up against and cemented to all the circu the success of the voyage, whilst so apprehension that the shi+p hout the winter!
The story of our distressing detention, with the measures adopted partly for the employment of the men, but which became ultimately available, even beyond our ut,-consistently with the extent designed for this volume, and the completion hereafter, possibly, of soiven in detail It may be sufficient, for our present purpose, now to say, that after the endurance of the ht weeks' besetain free (but not until the season adapted for the fishery had thus been all but wasted) to range through any part of the ordinarily accessible ocean
Our course being directed towards the north-west, we soon fell in with shi+ps, and learnt that the fishery had been tolerably good, and that two or three shi+ps had already obtained aloes
Shortly afterwards we met with fish, and all hands set forth in earnest anxious pursuit But they were, in fact, too anxious, and, in part, discouraged by the idea that the season was about at an end Their efforts, in consequence, were ill directed or inadequately followed up, and onlyfailures resulted Stimulated by the defects and failures of his harponeers, my Father was induced to try the chase hi his post at the bow of one of the boats, he soon gave evidence of his superior efficiency He ”struck” whale after whale to the a adequately supported by the other boats, one of the first of these escaped from the harpoon, under circumstances such as, he considered, should have led to its capture Excited by this failure, he changed boats, in one of the other cases, after the fish, under the first harpoon, had reappeared at the surface; and, as the harponeers generally see another harpoon, until he had planted no less than three or four harpoons, in the same fish, with his own hands!
The season, however, soon came to a close, and these thales, with a dead one which was also discovered by hio in this trying year,-a cargo yielding only five-and-forty tuns of oil, yet aeneral average of the Greenland fishery
Notwithstanding this serious abstraction froe of his five years' adventures in the Dundee, eneral pre-e these five voyages, ninety-four whales were captured, and an aht to e, _inclusive_ of the year of unavoidable failure, was no less than 188 whales, producing 1624 tuns of oil, besides the fair proportion of whalebone, sealskins, etc
Compared with the fishery froo, elsewhere, this result was considerably beyond that of any other Greenland whaler With respect to the Hull average for the same period, the Dundee's superiority was in the ratio of 1624 to 775 tuns of oil, or more than two to one In comparison with the success of any other individual shi+p, the Dundee still stood at the head of the list,-the nearest approach in Hull being that of the Ellison, a shi+p co four years out of the five, by the sa and talented officer, Mr Allan, as we had occasion to notice, so favourably, in a forus Sadler,-a hardy adventurous and able cost his co hest a 689 tuns of oil
The Egginton, Wray, (one voyage under another captain) obtained, at the same time, 508 tuns; the Symmetry, Rose, 481 tuns; the fanny, Jameson and Taylor, 460 tuns; the Manchester, Matson, 417 tuns, etc;-the Dundee's cargoes, as has been shewn, being, in the same period, 812 tuns
But, besides these coain venture, up to the end of eleven years of consecutive adventures, to take the severest test of cooes, and that of the select cargoes, for the five corresponding years, of the most prosperous Greenland- 806 tuns of oil, the Dundee is found still to stand the first
SECTION V-_Successful Stratage nature occurred in the very outset of the unfortunate voyage just referred to, which I here take occasion of introducing, as very characteristic of my Father's tact and cool self-possession
A day or two after leaving the coast of Yorkshi+re, fro fine with a brisk and favourable wind, and the shi+p going steadily and swiftly under her ample and well-trimmed sails,-all hands were set to work,the 'tween-decks of a variety of stores hastily taken in, and confusedly scattered about, in order to e So rossed by this important labour of clearance and order, that, solected, when, suddenly it was announced, by a voice calling out fro down close upon us!”
It being a ti with shi+ps of war and privateers of the enemy, the announce on, and drew universal attention to a circuht possibly involve the safety of life and property in the shi+p
My Father's quick eye, and sure telescopic glance, discovered at once the characteristicdown, steering easterly, exactly so as to intercept our track, but not on any of the courses usually steered either for England, France, or Denmark Already she had approached within a little more than a mile of our position, and so that in about a quarter of an hour wedistance
With the promptness and coolness characteristic of the Dundee's Coy, were arranged and progress commenced These measures, I conceive, are worthy of some particular notice
His habit, it should be observed, was to endeavour to anticipate, in quiet conte to his enterprise, which, peradventure,of an enearded as by no enious tact or device ht_ with an eneht answer for an escape, was justly held as ain no prize;[F] where failure e, and personal liberty; and where either failure or success must probably involve a loss of life, for which there was neither call of duty to risk, nor possible compensation to justify