Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1903-01-08

| furnish a comfortable stable for ten Jer-
| seys, whose tongue alone weighs as much
| as ten oxen andswhose lips, throat and jaw
! bones weigh as much as twenty-five LOCO
pound steers.
Striking the Whale.
"A hundred-barrel fish," says the cap
| tain, lis about seventy feet long. Some
| times you see bigger fish, but not often.
No, a whale as big as that doesn't stick
| out of the water very much. Whales float
| SO that only just a small part Of their
backs and heads shows In harpooning
them OF courseTthe main idea is to get the
IRON IN oeep, so- that 1t will hold and stop
the nghtlng asamuch as possible A man
has to take mighty good care not to strike
the white. horse. That's the part Of the
harpoon will simply slide off II it hits
| there. II means a good deal of ridicule for
| that.
| When a whale is struck the first thing
that he does, generally, is to roll over into
| the sore Now and then a whale will roll
| over and over until he has the line wrapped
| around his whole body. We don't let a
whale run any further than we have to, of
course. = 80
Many times a whale will hardly move
away from, the spot where he has been
struck sometimes one will lie still and
.NAAA> wv anu even three lIoHS WITHOUT Try
| ing 10 run AS soon as the boat is fast we
Try 10 WORK up on him and get alongside,
SO tnat the mate can use the killing lance
and reach his life.
Ihe life of a whale is as big as house,
ana there isn't any trouble to find it. The
lance is orlVen in with all the mans might
right oehind his fiuke and from the Shout
DER downward. When the lance reaches his
llle tne blood comes up thick as tar. Then
We lay off and wait. A good quick man
Will OFTEN brace himself right on the haft
OF the harpoon that is sticking in the whale
and lance him half a dozen times before
the BOAT backs away Then it's merely a
case OF Keeping out of the way till the fish
oles: sometimes whale will die easily
as II he was asleep There won't be a
hurry or anything. He takes the harpoon
ana the lance and just dies.
II whale runs too fast and far, there
is nothing for 1t except to cut away. Whal-
ers don't generally hold fast long enough
TO permit fish to tow them out of sight
oI me snip. That makes the usual limit oe
hanging on In clear weather about eight
miles If they can come up with a whale
IN that distance they heave in on the line
un!ll they have as much as they can get
ana then they cut OF course. they don't
cut till they have to.
we CANNED the Ellen Swift one day.
she had just lost six lines Of $50 fathoms
each to one whale. He took it all without
stopping minute. and. at last, when they
were towing behind him with more than
three miles OF line out. they lost the whole
business That's pretty expensive work,
ior aWhale line is a mighty costly and fine
line"
In Due and Ancient Fashion.
Whalers still recount in their logs that
tney CANNED ship, meaning that they
stopped and had talk, just as the logs of
fifty years ago put it. Comparison between
these old logs and log of last year shows
difference only in dates. They still use
an the log terms just as they still use the
old weapons
Each ship Is supplied with set Of rub
Der stamps. one depicting a sperm, another
right whale, and so on When a whale
is is taken and saved the entry for that day
Is stamped with picture Of the particular
Kind OF whale that 1t was. If more than
one whale was caught there are as many
pictures as there are whales. Each pic
lure mas written across 1t the number of
fish.
When vessel lowers and chases and
nnally loses whale for any reason the
mented with the stamp of the whales tail
sticking up just as If he We're diving. That
denotes that the result Of the chase was a
III, luke. Sometimes a half dozen ''fukes"
Will ornament one entry.
This system Of keeping the log saves the
ship owners the trouble Of reading through
all the entries. They need merely glance
through the book to find the number of
kind were taken by the ship. f.-.--.
The logs are locked up and guarded care
fully. Ship owners and captains make a
great secret of where the whales were
found. The writer was permitted to read
through the log Of one famous whaling
bark only after he had promised the own
ers selemnly that he would not divulge the
latitude and longitude Of any places where
big whales were taken.
The crews have as much interest in keep
ing the secret, for they share in the pro-
ceeds as crews did in the old days. Most
of the new New Bedford whalers sail in
the same vessel voyage after voyage. When
they retire at last from the sea many of
them buy farms In Massachusetts. These
Portuguese who prove themselves such
good whalers. are also proving themselves
to be excellent farmers Some of the hand
soonest and most flourishing farms around
New Bedford are owned by retired Portu-
guese whaling men.
opium Pudd'n' Whaling"
There is a form Of whaling that is fol-
lowed a great deal more from New Bed
ford now than deep-water whaling 1t is
whaling in schooners off shore, especially
off Cape Hatteras. 1t is referred to, some
what sarcastically by the deep-water men,
as plum pudd'n' whaling" because the
crews are rarely out more than two or
three months and they are always within
running distance of harbor.
plum puddn' whaling may strike the
deep-water whale catcher as tame. But
to the landsman who sees the ridiculously
small schooners with scarcely more free
board than the brick schooners that one
sees in peaceful inland waters, 1t doesn't
seem the height Of luxury. And certainly
no less peaceful and idyllic scene could be
selected in all the ocean than that particu-
lar locality off Hatteras.
The plum puddn whaler" isn't a bit
behind his brother of the big ships in dar-
ing He lowers in what steamship pas
sengers would call a living gale. The writer
saw the boats from two Of these New Bed
ford schooners fast to small whales one
winters day off Hatteras when the steam
ship ON which he was rolled so in the
storm and sea that the water swept her
bridge.
Whales of the small species known as
blackfish were blowing the sea that day
wherever one looked. Far away toward the
horizon, two plum pudd n" whaling
schooners were rolling and pitching con-
vulsively. as if each roll and pitch would
be the last. And driving like madmen
through the great shouldering green sea
were the crews of two small boats fast
to one whale, while a mile away a third
boat, discernibe only as a wallowing black
streak was dashing along behind another.
1t seemed to be a most peculiar kind of
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