General Whaling chat - Gam here

[AvastMH]

From the log of the Atlantic on 12th August 1881.
New employment from one of the wreck victims of the loss of the Bk Daniel Webster on 2nd July 1881. Interesting to see that a Mate had been due the 30th lay of a trip (the lay is the sum from sale of the oil made by the trip).

'at ten Capt. Green of Bk John Howland came on board they 11 whales 1200 bbls Capt. Green Engaged Elihu G. Gifford to go with him as boat header for the 30th lay who was late mate of BK Daniel Webster Wrecked off Point Barrow.'



And a last note - not all the oil was from whales - they shot 2 walrus on the 5th August. They took the blubber off that day. They boiled it down on the 12th. A poor sense of smell had to be an advantage surely? ::)

[AvastMH]

Boat-header is an important job

Boat-crew: The six men who comprise her full complement, or the four men who row a whaleboat, generally the former.
Boat-header: The man who steers the boat in going on a whale, and afterwards kills it. Generally a mate, but sometimes an experienced whaleman with no ship duties save masthead and cutting stage, whose only title is boat-header.
Boat-steerer: Harpooner. The man who pulls the harpoon oar, darts the iron into the whale, and then steers while the mate or boat-header lances him.
http://mysite.du.edu/~ttyler/ploughboy/ ... htm#Page_B
http://www.whalingmuseum.org/learn/rese ... %20Capture

[AvastMH]

Lovely whale news....

Grant Miller, Zooniverse Team member, has been to Antarctica with the PenguinWatch science team led by Tom Hart (PenguinTom). Grant recorded a daily vlog which he is posting day by day until World Penguin Day on April 25th. Early on they see an unusual sight - a group of 6 Fin Whales. They are most often seen travelling alone. The Fin Whale is the next largest whale after the Blue Whale. But on April the 18th Grant and the Team spot a pod of about 50 Fin Whales feeding on krill.
They even see a (Southern) Right Whale breaching.
Travel with the team by Grant's vlog here: https://daily.zooniverse.org/

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and... a small baby boom for Northern Atlantic Right Whales...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-47927297

[AvastMH]

Lucretia May 17th 1883

'27 Sails in Sight'

I think that's the greatest number of sails in sight that I've seen in any of the logs, and the Lucretia is ice bound at this time. She's at 61.02N 178.33E which is West of St Matthew Island and above the Navarin Canyon

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2 days later they report 'All the Fleete in Sight'. That must have looked very impressive.

[AvastMH]

Lucretia 14th April 1884 The loss of the whaler Rainbow.

Just how fast your fortunes can change in the ice of the Arctic. During the morning of the 14th the Lucretia speaks to the Rainbow, and Amethist, and Fleetwing. At 3pm Lucretia is rescuing the crew of the Rainbow...

'spoke Rainbow [...] worked in to the ice at 3 PM picked up a boat and crew of the Rainbow she being stove and roaled over in about 20 minuts'

and the weather was not kind...

'latter part [...] blowing a gale'

[AvastMH]

DNA confirms a weird Greenland whale was a narwhal-beluga hybrid

The beluga and narwhal branches of the whale family tree split off about 5 million years ago -- about the same time human and chimpanzee ancestors went their separate ways.

[AvastMH]

North Star Section A

October 15th 1881
https://archive.org/details/northstarst ... rt/page/14

Here's one for engine enthusiasts:

'discover the Syphon Pipe to the Condensing Engine Eaten off where it was encased in a connexsition Flange in the Ships side And the Leak has been Stopped by plugging up the Hole from out side'



When you are in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean you're on your own pretty much. You need the right engineer for your engine. Interestingly, the hero of the Jeannette logbooks, George Melville, became the Head of US Naval Engineering. He instituted standard engines, training of engineers, and the use of the triple screw propeller. I wonder how long it took for whalers to standardize? :-\

[AvastMH]

North Star (Log Section B)

29th November 1881

Such a short entry, but it's for the days just after passing Cape Horn. The weather is a gale, and there's a 'tremandous heavy sea Running'. You're in the middle of nowhere. One of your chronometers was misbehaving a month or so ago. OK - it's in the Austral Summer season, but it sounds like the tales you often hear about those seas - they are not nice.

[AvastMH]

North Star Section C

2nd and 3rd March 1882



Olfactory nightmare?

I just transcribed these short log notes when it suddenly hit me that Honolulu must have stunk to high heavens with all these whalers calling into port busily boiling their last catch (I've seen quite a few of such comments). I wonder if that's why the Pilot sent them to Karakakua Bay? ;D

[AvastMH]

Back in the old days....

Hello fellow whalers - you might be interested to see the forum pages, and access the log books, for the ships that we covered in phase 1 of OWW.

Here's a link to that old forum's Shipyard: https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/zoo ... r/talk/157
To advance through the pages just add one to the last page number so '0008.jpg' becomes '0009.jpg'

If you want to take a very quick look at the old 'box marking' system try this: https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/zoo ... ment=23414

One of the most romantic logs came from the John Wells. He noted his family's birthdays and piano lesson days and wash days and....etc etc
Which gave out to the boredom of some parts of the journey: https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/zoo ... ment=32781 '"all sail set nothing doing very dry dry dry & dull dull dull"'

But the bit that has stayed with me was from Saturday November 13th 1869. Here's what I wrote back in early November 2015...
"Around the 12th November 1869 (146 years ago pretty much to the day) (page 7 of the database, http://whaling-data.oldweather.org/subj ... n_0007.jpg):"

I'm very tempted to celebrate Sarah's Cake Day in a week or two...Suggestions anyone?

And last for the John Wells, the log keeper (I presume it was A. Dean the Master) ends up writing a synopsis of Vergil's Aenied: https://static.zooniverse.org/whaling-d ... n_0098.jpg

[AvastMH]

I shouldn't get so emotional, but this had the tissues out for a moment:

Notice of a birth in the logbook of the William Baylies overwintering on the Canadian Yukon Coast

Wednesday 8th May 1895 at Herschel Island
At 6 am Mrs Sherman of the St. Beluga gave birth to a child (girl.)



Awwwww....a little present from the OWWhalers

[AvastMH]

Heavens they were tough in those days! I hope Mrs Sherman had some other wife around to help her.

Lovely present ....

[AvastMH]

There were about 7/8 steamers up there overwintering at Herschel Island, as far as I can tell after a quick breeze through the logbook. I'm pretty sure that there was a wife on each ship I'm hoping to discover that they went out and played baseball alongside their husbands.

[AvastMH]

Overwintering that far north wasn't the safest thing to do.

The Overland Relief Expedition, also called the Alaska Relief Expedition or Point Barrow-Overland Relief Expedition, was an expedition in the winter of 1897?1898 by officers of the United States Revenue Cutter Service to save the lives of 265 whalers trapped in the Arctic Ocean by ice around their ships near Point Barrow, Alaska.

[AvastMH]

Overwintering that far north wasn't the safest thing to do.

The Overland Relief Expedition, also called the Alaska Relief Expedition or Point Barrow-Overland Relief Expedition, was an expedition in the winter of 1897-1898 by officers of the United States Revenue Cutter Service to save the lives of 265 whalers trapped in the Arctic Ocean by ice around their ships near Point Barrow, Alaska.

Oh gosh - that's new to me Michael. Thanks for posting this. They had a job cutting themselves out of the ice by about June in the 1895 log of the Wm Baylies. It'll be interesting to know when they first decided to do overwintering at Herschel, or elsewhere on the north coast of Alaska or Canada. Must find out more about the Overland Expedition which sounds epic in itself.

Point Barrow always gives me a chill. Land running out into a skinny spit pointing a short distance up into the Beaufort Sea/Arctic Ocean.

[AvastMH]

You can read all about it here.

It was posted in the 1897 discussion for Bear. ;D

[AvastMH]

You can read all about it here.

It was posted in the 1897 discussion for Bear. ;D

I had forgotten this - thank you so much Michael. It makes epic reading - but then what else would one expect when the Bear is on the case? I need to do a check later today - I'm pretty sure that they were all steam whalers which is both interesting and relevant.

'The Bear left Unalaska on 14 June and was caught in the ice near St. Lawrence Island six days later'. I bet that hasn't happened in a couple of years - bad ice at St Lawrence in June - have to chase that up too

[AvastMH]

You can read all about it here.

It was posted in the 1897 discussion for Bear. ;D

Researching this in the hope to match with our whaler logs.
In the meantime found a copy of the original report: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id= ... =1up&seq=7
I've been scanning it. You need a strong stomach for some parts- not only were Captains captains, they were the doctor and surgeon too... :-X :-[

[AvastMH]

Very interesting, Joan!

[AvastMH]

To say the least Michael..just started stringing things together and it's way too engrossing. I need to retire immediately and read the logs

In the meantime - 'Base Ball on ice'. Here's the Summer of 1895 Herschel Island Base Ball League results from the log of the Newport

https://archive.org/details/logbookofne ... e/page/322

just a sample.... ;D