The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-07-06
A TYPICAL NEw BEDFORD
 wuAIEbAAN.

When Capt. Charles IT. hopbins olea | the other day at the age or elghty-one | a man passed over whose life was so 1 typical of the men who created our | fortunes in that fasciFating industry which makes our past unique that we hope all our readers read the brief sum- mary of his experieuces-that We print | ed. We would like to emphasize the l fortunes of a race of men who sailed ! free voyages to all the seas of earth and accepted adventures and hair 1 breadth escapes as a part Of the days work. 1 Melville's old whaling master was | wont to call his men together and ask I them what song the whalemen sang as l he drove his boat upon the whale. "A | Dead Whale or a Stove Boat" would l come the response This was the spirit 1 which dominated the men who brought | prosperity to us, and here, where it's | significance is so well appreciated, the l phrase should be emblazoned, perhaps l on the monument which we are one day to build to the whalemen, even on the schoolroom wall or on the bed
 chamber of the youth of New Bedford:
 "A Dead Whale or Stove Boat"
 This was the impulse which led the
 whalemen to do brave deeds and take
 any risk for a chance of success. Where N the adoption of such a glowing, slash
 ing, inspiring, do-or-die, spirtt-stirring
 motto might still lead our youth if it
 was adopted into our precepts, we love,
 to consider. g s%. s@.
 This typical New Bedford whaleman
 was an American down to his feet
 Lemuel Robbins, his father, and Ra-
 chel Robbins, his mother. The former.
 died when Charles was nine years old.
 and the boy parted with school at the age of twelve, for there were nine sis ters and two brothers to be supported. At that age the boy sought an oppor- tunity to ship, but he was declared by the agents to be too young, ana ne worked at the lever of the old hand press in the Mercury office and carried papers for three years. When he was fifteen, however. he shipped on the ship Swift, without his mothers knowledge. although she subsequently, gave her consent. The ship was to sail on Feb ruary l, but the vessel was frozen in at the dock. Fearing assertions, the captain ordered the men to saw chan mel through, the ice, and for ten days with the lonesomest boy in the world on board s.sss,.. sss5 F. set . At length the ship sailed away in February, 1SS7 and thereafter Robbins Lived more stories than all the writers could invent. He visited the isles of the Pacific which civilization had new CT touched. In proof of the claim that | The encountered the heather in his ut ter blindness, the captain used to of- firm that not only were they cannibals. but they had no knowledge of any kind of intoxicating liquor. It was in Au- gust, 1S41, after an absence of fifty | four months, before the boy came back. He went away stripling weighing IIninety-six, and when he came home he \ weighed one hundred and sixty and had | Ito be introduced to his sisters. . He received one hundred dollars and a suit of clothes for four and a half | years work, and in few weeks he sailed again, this time as boatsteerer | on the Balaena. He was gone nearly | four years adding to the store of his N novel experiences which filled his life. II While cruising downathe line one day es his vessel picked up q canoe containing I eight persons, Kanakas, who turned out to be the royal family of Ascension. tThere had been a revolution and the king and queen and princes had been
 cast adrift, literally as well as practice
 ially. The Kanakas did these things Ihalf century ago more humanely than
 the enlightened nations of the earth
 exampla gratia, Servia, now rid them
 Selves of their rulers. One of. the
 princes had a wound in his shoulder
 1I1o I,oH vYb no ", jumped overheard to- capture it fol pc food. >5-.
 to The ship took 1900 barrels of sperm . this voyage, and when the captain 's reached home he married. Two months
 later he was at sea again ais mate oi as K the Balaena. On the Peru grounds no smallpox broke out aboard the ship ,.s several of the crew died. Robbins hat " Ia light attack of the disease, and final IT ly left the ship at Payta and reached
 home after year and half to gree
 his wife and sail again in a few weeks
 las mate of the bark Hope. To the In
 ldian ocean he sailed this time. and wa!
 gone two years and a half. Arrivin'
 home in May, 1850, he sailed four ol
 live months later as master of the same
 vessel. He was gone thirty months
 this voyage. His next voyage as mas
 ter of the bark Elisha Dunbar was
 broken one, and he returned ill, bu
 Isailed again ill the Clara Bell, and add
 ed thirty months more to his life on tn
 ocean wave.
 In 1859 Captain Robbins sailed in com
 mand of the bark Thomas Pope on ; - four years voyage, and this time h r took his wife and children with him The vessel was struck by a hurrican \ in the Mozambique channel, her mast were torn out, the mizzen mast tearing
 out the skylight, so that the wate ! rushed into the cabin. The vessel la, on her beam end, and the Captain wife and little children clung to tn
 weather side. An officer fell on hi
 Knees and prayed for the safety of hi wife, who was at home. Since his wifi \ was safe and sound ashore. Mrs. Rob bins suggested it would be more to tn
 purpose to pray for those about hin \ who were in extremity. When tn
 storm abated, iurymasts were rigged | and the crippled ship drifted into Mau ritius. All the whaleboats were lost and none could be procured nearer tha New Bedford. So the ship waited min months for the boats. A child wa