The Glamour of the Arctic
It is a strange thing to think that there is a body of men in GreatBritain, the majority of whom have never, since their boyhood, seenthe corn in the fields. It is the case with the whale-fishers ofPeterhead. They begin their hard life very early as boys or ordinaryseamen, and from that time onward they leave home at the end ofFebruary, before the first shoots are above the ground, and return inSeptember, when only the stubble remains to show where the harvest hasbeen. I have seen and spoken with many an old whaling-man to whom abearded ear of corn was a thing to be wondered over and preserved.
The trade which these men follow is old and honorable. There was atime when the Greenland seas were harried by the ships of manynations, when the Basques and the Biscayens were the great fishers ofwhales, and when Dutchmen, men of the Hansa towns, Spaniards, andBritons, all joined in the great blubber hunt. Then one by one, asnational energy or industrial capital decreased, the various countriestailed off, until, in the earlier part of this century, Hull, Poole,and Liverpool were three leading whaling-ports. But again the tradeshifted its centre. Scoresby was the last of the great Englishcaptains, and from his time the industry has gone more and more north,until the whaling of Greenland waters came to be monopolized byPeterhead, which shares the sealing, however, with Dundee and with afleet from Norway. But now, alas! the whaling appears to be upon itslast legs; the Peterhead ships are seeking new outlets in theAntarctic seas, and a historical training-school of brave and hardyseamen will soon be a thing of the past.
THE SWIVEL GUN.
It is not that the present generation is less persistent and skilfulthan its predecessors, nor is it that the Greenland whale is in dangerof becoming extinct; but the true reason appears to be, that Nature,while depriving this unwieldy mass of blubber of any weapons, hasgiven it in compensation a highly intelligent brain. That the whaleentirely understands the mechanism of his own capture is beyonddispute. To swim backward and forward beneath a floe, in the hope ofcutting the rope against the sharp edge of the ice, is a common deviceof the creature after being struck. By degrees, however, it wasrealized the fact that there are limits to the powers of itsadversaries, and that by keeping far in among the icefields it mayshake off the most intrepid of pursuers. Gradually the creature hasdeserted the open sea, and bored deeper and deeper among the icebarriers, until now, at last, it really appears to have reachedinaccessible feeding grounds; and it is seldom, indeed, that thewatcher in the crow’s nest sees the high plume of spray and the broadblack tail in the air which sets his heart a-thumping.
A PETERHEAD HARPOONER.
But if a man have the good fortune to be present at a “fall,” and,above all, if he be, as I have been, in the harpooning and in thelancing boat, he has a taste of sport which