The grandest sea-chase is that after the whale—the most gigantic of mammals, the most extraordinary in appearance and habits, and the most valuable to man, for the capture of one may mean ten times as much reward as the ivory of an elephant or the rarest otter-skin would afford, and perhaps a hundred times as much, if ambergris be found within its body.

Men have had the hardihood to chase these huge and often savage creatures in their own turbulent element, and with the most primitive weapons, ever since the art of navigation was acquired.

The Japanese and other Asiatics of the western shore of the North Pacific have dared to go out in rowboats and attack the largest whales since the origin of their traditions, and they had a method of entangling these leviathans in nets, which must have produced exciting scenes, as the monster struggled amid the bloody turmoil of waters to free himself from the innumerable connected cords that embarrassed his movements, rather than subdued his strength, until his life ebbed away through a hundred wounds.

On the Alaskan coast, and southward as far as Oregon, the Indians, and especially those of the Queen Charlotte Islands and the coasts of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, were accustomed, hundreds, perhaps thousands of years ago, to go far away into the ocean in their dug-out canoes, searching for and spearing the whales with lances made of flint or bone, having detachable barbed heads. These were attached to shafts by rawhide lines, and to the shafts were attached buoys of large inflated bladders. When the animal was struck, the heavy pole would drive the lancehead through the skin and then fall off. The barbs would not only hold the instrument there, but cause it to work deeper and deeper, and the whale, darting away or diving, would be so impeded by dragging the poles and buoys after him, that he would soon return to receive other darts, and so, between loss of blood and exhaustion, would ultimately be killed. It is extremely interesting to read the stories, gathered by early travelers from the lips of the Indians,—old Haidas or Makahs are living yet who have taken part in such nerve-testing canoe-chases,—of their fights with this gigantic foe far from land, and their hair’s-breadth escapes; and it is not strange that many quaint ceremonies were devised to placate the waters and the power of the whale-god in advance, and to honor the sea-hunters when they returned.

The Greenlanders and Eastern Eskimos do not seem to have been able in their small skin boats to conquer the largest sort of whales, but the smaller ones, such as the white whale, fell to their spears in a similar way; and they took great pains to secure any dead or stranded cetacean that came within their reach, the bones of which were as valuable to them, in the absence of wood, as were the flesh, oil, and sinews.

The history of European whaling begins with the excursions of the Basques, who, as long ago at least as the tenth century, were accustomed to go out from their shore-towns in search of the southern right whale which frequents the Bay of Biscay and its offing. Doubtless their boats were small, half-decked, lugger-rigged “shyppes,” carrying ten to fifteen men, and looking much like many of the Channel fishermen of to-day. This “fishery” supplied all Europe during the Middle Ages with the whalebone and oil which were among the luxuries of the rich at that time; but by the time the sixteenth century had arrived, whales had become so scarce in the Eastern Atlantic—where now they are almost extinct—that this industry must have ceased had not the Cabots shown the way to Newfoundland, to whose shores the Basques at once extended their voyages with excellent results, for in those days whales were commonly seen all along the American shore of the North Atlantic. But this remote fishery would have been too precarious and costly to be of great consequence had it not been for the early efforts, related in Chapter V, to find a passage to the East north of the continents. The earliest of these failed, but they brought back reports that the edge of the frozen sea abounded in whales, and men rushed into this newly discovered field of wealth, as, centuries later, they abandoned everything in headlong haste to go to the gold-fields of California, Australia, South Africa or the Yukon Valley.

The English did their best to monopolize the whale fishery at once, but the Dutch sent war-vessels, and in a fleet action almost at the edge of the ice in 1618 the Dutch conquered and opened the seas to all comers, while separate districts on the coast of Spitzbergen were assigned to each nationality. The English interest in the fishery declined, but the Dutch increased their attention to it, taking over one thousand whales each year. “About 1680,” we read, “they had two hundred and sixty vessels and fourteen thousand seamen employed. Their fishery continued to flourish on almost as extensive a scale until 1770, when it began to decline, and finally, owing to the war, came to an end before the end of the century.” The Germans were always associated with them, and continued to send a whaling fleet to Barentz Sea and the Jan Mayen waters until 1873. Meanwhile the Greenland whaling-grounds had begun to attract British whalemen, followed by the Danes in the early part of the last century; then this local industry fell off, but was revived about 1800, remained prosperous for many years, and is still the support of Peterhead and a few other Scotch ports.

The abundance of whales near the coast was one of the prime inducements held out to colonists by North America, where whales often appeared close to the shore, or in harbors, as occasionally they do yet. Here, at first, whale-fishing was pursued wholly in rowboats launched from the beach. Many shore towns owned whaleboats and gear, each with its trained crew, and some kept a regular lookout, day by day, whose duty it was promptly to announce the appearance of any whale in the offing. Such was the case at Southampton, Long Island, for many years, and even now, occasionally, the town-crew there rushes away through the breakers after some stray visitor amid the excitement of the whole neighborhood, but this happens only at intervals of several years.

Before the end of the seventeenth century, however, the people of Nantucket Island were wont to cruise about the neighboring ocean for right whales, their voyage lasting six weeks or so as a rule, and now and then they would pick up a sperm whale. By the middle of the eighteenth century, however, sperm whaling was no longer profitable in the Northern Atlantic, while the Greenland grounds were overrun by European ships. American fishermen therefore turned their attention to the West, and for many years confined themselves mainly to catching the sperm whale, finding at first their best “grounds” in the south-middle Pacific. When the War of Independence came on, Nantucket was the leading whaling-port of the country, but all the New England towns were more or less engaged, and no less than three hundred and sixty vessels, large and small, were out. The Revolutionary War nearly destroyed the industry, and before it could well revive, the War of 1812 again subjected the whaling-ships to capture by English privateers and men-of-war all over the world. After that, however, they spread all over the Southern seas, and between 1840 and 1850 more than seven hundred were flying the flag of the United States.

The whaling vessels were large, stanch craft, usually bark-rigged, distinguished by their old-fashioned shape, weather-stained, smoky appearance, enormous boats swinging from end to end of the ship from lofty davits, and try-works forward. They kept longer than any one else many relics of rigging, custom, and language, belonging to the seamanship of earlier generations; and no sea-peril could daunt either the vessel or its crew. They would sail on voyages lasting two or three years, and sometimes would circumnavigate the globe and return without having touched at a port. As a rule, however, they would gain part of a cargo, and then go to some port, ship it to London or New York, and refit for a new voyage. The profits of a trip were thus very great sometimes, but other trips were attended only by expense and misfortune.

The capture of whales in those days had more danger if not more excitement than now, for the only method was by rowing after them, helped by the sails, in the 28-foot, double-ended rowboats made for the purpose (of which every vessel carried six or eight), and sinking into their vitals darts and lances until they died. They were then towed to the vessel’s side, held by tackle from the yard-arms in a suitable position, and cut up. The oil in early days was packed in casks, but later has been run into iron tanks built into the hold, after having been tried out of the blubber in the great caldrons set in brick on the forward deck, which gave a whaler so peculiar an appearance, at all times, and would lead any one to suppose her on fire while the process of trying-out was going on, and the great volumes of black smoke caused by the use of whale-fat and waste as fuel were drifting to leeward.

One of the best accounts of a chase published is that by the late Temple Brown, of the United States Fish Commission, in an article in “The Century” for February, 1893, from which I am permitted to make an extract:

This is only one of the exciting tales Mr. Brown has to tell, and the history of whaling in every country could add many more. He tells us that approaching a whale at all times is like going into battle, and says that many of the deeds remembered by old hands were purely heroic, since the danger might have been avoided by declining to attack the animal under the especially hazardous conditions that often present themselves.

The persecution suffered by whales of all kinds in all parts of the world made the more valuable kinds so scarce by the middle of the present century that many voyages were almost fruitless, not only by reason of small catches, but because the substitutes invented for whalebone, and the constantly increasing use of mineral oils had lowered prices to an almost ruinous level. The American fleets suffered with the rest, until during the Civil War they were nearly swept from the seas by the ravages of the Shenandoah and other Confederate privateers.

Since then there has been only a partial revival, accompanied by a good many changes. A few Scotch and German whalers still go to the northern seas, working in the ice, and some American vessels from the Eastern States, and a greater number from California search the Pacific and the waters off Alaska. All or nearly all of these whalers are provided with steam-propellers, having an arrangement by which they can lift the screw out of water and use their sails for ordinary purposes. Many of them chase with a steam-launch instead of the old-fashioned whaleboats, and save their men the back-straining labor of towing a prize perhaps two or three miles to the ship. In place of the hand harpoon they have several forms of swivel-guns and shoulder-guns discharging harpoons and explosive darts by gunpowder, so that a large share of the danger as well as the labor is saved to modern whalemen, who are also much better housed and fed in their large iron steamships than those used to be who wrestled with scurvy in the grim old hulks of half a century ago.

The ships that go up through Davis Straits now frequently winter there, in order to be on hand in May to meet the whales that appear in the first open water, to which the men drag their boats over the ice between their ships and the first open channels. For the same purpose many vessels of the American fleet are accustomed to pass the winter in company under the shelter of islands near the mouth of the Mackenzie River. Here they have a rendezvous where buildings have been erected and means for social comfort have been established, such as billiard tables, books, etc. These western vessels do not force their way into and through the ice, as do those among the eastern archipelagoes, but operate in comparatively open water, as long as it lasts, along the edge of the paleocrystic ice. Delaying the departure of those who mean to return to the Pacific and home until the last moment, it occasionally happens that some are caught and frozen in. These are usually destroyed, but thus far their crews have managed to escape either to more fortunate vessels or to the shore, where, at Point Barrow, the government has built and keeps furnished a strong house, with stores, fuel, and provisions, as a refuge for shipwrecked mariners.

Walrus-hunting is not much followed nowadays by civilized seamen, though the animal is still of great value to the Eskimo and Siberians. It has become very scarce in easily accessible waters, but is occasionally taken by whalers, who find a market for the ivory of its tusks.

Sealing is an industry which still claims considerable attention from the Scandinavians and Scotchmen who go to the coasts and waters about Spitzbergen, Jan Mayen, and Greenland, as well as to nearer resorts, in pursuit of several species yielding oil and valuable hides; and in the North Pacific the pursuit of the fur seal still occupies many small vessels, but seems likely to come soon to an end. Antarctic seals are practically extinct.

The industry of fishing is probably one of the oldest in the world, and it remains among the most important, for the fisheries not only furnish a vast amount of nutritious and pleasant, yet remarkably cheap, food, but many other things useful to mankind. Hence it is not strange to find that in all the early reports of the discovery of new lands and waters that followed one another so rapidly from the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries, the fish and other sea-animals to be found were always given a prominent place in the list of valuable assets pertaining to each locality. Even the Spaniards and Portuguese, in their insane rush for gold and silver, to the neglect and ruin of everything else, had to pay some little attention to fishing and allied industries in both the East and West Indies; while in the case of the exploitations of new regions by the calmer, more prudent people of western Europe—the British, French, Dutch and Scandinavians,—the value of the harvest of the sea was really more in view, at first, than that of the land, at least when they began to visit and colonize North America. Take, as an example, the history of St. Pierre, Miquelon, and the others that form a group of islets in the Gulf of Newfoundland, half way between Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland. Mr. S. G. W. Benjamin, in whose “Cruise of the Alice May” you may find many interesting and picturesque materials for an account of them, tells us a French settlement was begun on St. Pierre as early as 1604, and that tradition says the islands were resorted to by the Basques two centuries before that, as is very likely true.

As these islands were of no use to any one for any other purpose, all this struggle for their possession was in order to retain the privilege and naval control of fishing in those waters. The French government has carefully fostered this interest ever since, and now the islands not only have a settled population of several thousand, but at the height of the season sometimes as many as ten thousand strangers (sailors and fishermen) congregate at the principal port, St. Pierre, which is one of the most important centers in the world for the marketing, curing, and export of sea-caught fish.

Of all waters those of the North Atlantic seem to excel in useful fishes; from the oil-shark hand-lining off the coast of Lapland, or the sardine-catching of Spain, to Yankee sword-fishing, this ocean is alive with fish and fishermen, on both sides and at all seasons of the year.

The whole coast of Norway supports this industry, especially around the far northern Lafoden Islands. The North Sea, shallow and cold, is the home of many valuable species that are sought by extensive fleets from Denmark, Holland, and the north of France, while thousands of British sailors make a living along their own eastern coasts and among the islands north of Scotland; but the waters on all sides of the British Isles are fishing waters, especially the English and Irish channels and the western lochs of Scotland; the herring-catch alone is worth eight and a half millions of dollars a year, while Great Britain’s mackerel-catch amounts to two millions, and her share of the codfishery to another two millions. Nearly half of all the products of British fisheries are obtained by the use of the beam-trawl—a huge dredge-like bag-net, handled and towed by steamers in pretty deep water, which scoops in everything near the bottom, where the most desirable sea-fishes stay. Among the prizes are the turbot and sole—toothsome and valuable species not known along American shores.

More southerly are the profitable fisheries for pilchards, sprats, and especially sardines—little fishes taken in vast numbers and canned or preserved in various ways. The abundance of sardines, a recent writer tells us, may be inferred from the fact that the Spanish fishermen take annually about one hundred thousand tons of these little fishes, having a value of from $400,000 to $600,000. A peculiar method of capturing the sardines at night prevails in the Adriatic. The location of the shoals of fish is literally felt out by a light sounding-line, and by means of the attraction of a fire of resinous pine the fish are slowly coaxed into some creek or estuary and surrounded with a seine. The demand for wood for use in this and other night fisheries causes a serious drain on the neighboring pine-forests.

The great fishery of the Mediterranean, however, is that for tunnies—huge fishes allied to mackerel, sometimes weighing several hundredweight, and regarded in America as poor food. They have been taken by means of pounds and strong enclosing nets ever since classical antiquity, and preserved tunny flesh is still popular in Spain, Italy, and North Africa, while the same fish is the object of one of the principal sea-industries of Japan.

But important as are the catching, preserving, and utilization of these and many other European fishes, they are far outranked by the marine fisheries for the cod and its relatives, the halibut, haddock, hake, etc., in waters about Newfoundland, Labrador, and Iceland, where also great quantities of mackerel, herring, and other food fishes are regularly obtained. The principal grounds are on the Banks of Newfoundland, which have been resorted to for more than three hundred years by men from both continents.

The Banks of Newfoundland are a series of shoals—submerged islands, in fact—which lie off the northeastern coast of America from Cape Cod to the farther end of Newfoundland. The shallowness of the water over them makes them advantageous places for fishing, because many of the species caught remain near the bottom, and in deep water are therefore beyond convenient reach. It is possible, also, to anchor there—often a necessity.

But just here are presented some of the worst perils to which fishermen are exposed. Nowhere are old ocean’s storms worse than on these Banks, where the sand is sometimes stirred five hundred feet below the surface. The best fishing comes in winter—the season of the heaviest gales. The vessels must anchor close together, too, for the areas of good fishing are small, and if one breaks its hawser, or the anchor drags, there is great danger of drifting afoul of some neighbor, which is likely to end in the destruction of both. Then there is ever present the danger, in these latitudes of almost ceaseless fog, of being run down by the transatlantic steamers, in whose track the fishing fleets must anchor. The skipper keeps his bell tolling, or a great horn blowing, but if a steamer comes down the wind her lookout will hardly be able to hear it before it is too late to stop or change the course of the monster rushing at full speed through the thickness of mist and flying spray. “Before anything can be done the relentless iron prow cuts into the schooner, which for a moment quivers and then disappears into the depths.... One of these great iron ships might cut the bows off a fishing schooner of sixty or eighty tons and not, perhaps, experience a sufficient shock to alarm the passengers sleeping calmly in their staterooms.”

The vessels which go upon this perilous quest are the stanchest, swiftest, and withal handsomest little vessels that sail our seas. Their rig is adapted to this purpose, and spreads almost as much canvas as a racing-yacht, which, in fact, on this side of the Atlantic has been modeled from Banks fishermen. The best of them probably are those hailing from Gloucester, Mass., and these are never used for any other purpose.

The old-fashioned hand-line fishing, such as still holds a place in the mackerel fisheries—although even there it has given way in most vessels to purse-netting,—is no longer practised in the American codfishery, which now uses the trawl-line altogether, by which the men have added to the hardship and danger of their adventurous life as well as to its profits.

This trawl is not a huge dredge as is the beam-trawl of the North Sea fishermen, from which it has unfortunately copied its name, but is a strong rope between three and four hundred feet long, having at each end an anchor and a flag-buoy. It is so arranged that when it is stretched out and anchored the line will be several fathoms beneath the surface. To this line, at intervals of six feet or so, are hung short lines, each carrying a stout hook. When the fishing-ground has been reached, the captain anchors his vessel, or, if the weather permits, he sails gently to and fro. Previously, six trawls have been baited with clams brought from home, and one put in each of the six small boats which the vessel carries. Two men now put off in each of these boats and anchor the trawls at convenient distances from each other, in such a way that the trawl-line, with its fringe of hooks, shall be stretched taut and at the proper depth. How long they stay down depends on the weather—five or six hours, or from evening until morning, is the usual period. Then the men go out, and taking up the anchors at one end, haul each trawl into the boat, coiling it in the bottom and taking off the hooks each captive fish as fast as they come to it.

Simple as this sounds, it is terribly hard work. The trawls are heavy and stiff, and armed with dangerously sharp hooks. The busiest season is midwinter, and no dread of cold or danger must stop the fisherman, who boldly ventures in his little dory into the teeth of a howling snow-storm and fast increasing gale, piling the water “mountain-high” about him and encasing his body in a sheet of icy spray; this must he do, in spite of discomfort and the imminent risk of death, if he would save from destruction his valuable trawls and the booty they may have hooked for him. A fine day on the Banks of Newfoundland is a rare thing; fog and snow and icy gales are the rule, and only the boldest courage, endurance, and skill will enable a man to resist that ocean and wrest from it his self-support. A vivid picture of the hardships and dangers of fishing on the Banks is to be found in Rudyard Kipling’s story, “Captains Courageous.”

The intrepid and skilful voyages of our whalers and fishermen, daring every fatigue and danger in the open sea, have been schools for the best seamen of the world. Every nation is glad to draw these sailors into their navies, and it is they who make the bravest yet most cautious captains of our merchant marine, showing to their comrades and to landsmen splendid examples of heroism and fortitude. This is the schooling I meant when I said that in its industries we get not only food, but formation of character, from old Ocean,—and this is the highest result attainable from either land or sea.