LIFE AND ADVENTURE
IN
THE SOUTH PACIFIC.
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
FRANKLIN SQUARE.
1861.
HARPER & BROTHERS,
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New York.
PREFACE.
The present volume lays no claim to literary merit. Two young men, led to engage in the whale-fisheries, and spending five years in the employment, have compiled from their log-books and their recollection a plain, unvarnished narrative of this period. The work is placed before the public as an account of localities few have visited, and the detail of an employment of which little is generally known. The chief effort in the way of style has been to give vivid descriptions, and make the reader the companion of the traveler. Aside from the information of the volume, it is enlivened by “life on shipboard.”
In these days of many books, in which “voyages” have no small representation, it may seem almost presumptuous to put forth another tale of travel. Yet every traveler has his own experiences; and the sailors who offer here their narrative for the landsman’s inspection believe that their yarn is not an old one, and they have some confidence that the reader will not say it is a dull one.
CONTENTS.
| New Bedford.—Fitting out a Whaler.—Shipping A Crew.—Green Hands.—Shippers.—Outfitters.—A Sailor’s Wardrobe.—All Hands on board.—Good-by to Yankee Land.—The Pilot taking leave.—The last Farewell.—Captain’s Speech.—Choosing Watches.—The Modus Operandi of Ships’ Watches.—Sea-sickness. | Page 13 |
| Sick of the Sea.—Description of the Boats and Whaling Apparatus.—Boat-headers.—Boat-steerers.—Mastheads.—The first Whale.—“There she blows!”—All hands excited.—Lowering the Boats.—“Pull, every man of you.”—A Fisherman’s Luck.—Whales again.—Cape Verd Islands.—St. Antonio.—St. Jago.—Fogo, the Island of Fire.—Going ashore.—A noisy Crowd.—Tom and the Portugee Donkey.—Manuel.—Now for Cape Horn. | 25 |
| Our Captain.—Officers.—Boat-steerers.—Foremast Hands.—Jo Bob.—Sailor’s Fare.—The Cask of Pies.—Mackey.—Lawrence asleep. | 35 |