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1Ere the English ship fades from sight, be it set down here, that she hailed from London, and was named after the late
2Samuel Enderby, merchant of that city, the original of the famous whaling house of Enderby & Sons; a house which in my
3poor whaleman's opinion, comes not far behind the united royal houses of the Tudors and Bourbons, in point of real
4historical interest. How long, prior to the year of our Lord 1775, this great whaling house was in existence, my
5numerous fish-documents do not make plain; but in that year (1775) it fitted out the first English ships that ever
6regularly hunted the Sperm Whale; though for some score of years previous (ever since 1726) our valiant Coffins and
7Maceys of Nantucket and the Vineyard had in large fleets pursued that Leviathan, but only in the North and South
8Atlantic: not elsewhere. Be it distinctly recorded here, that the Nantucketers were the first among mankind to harpoon
9with civilized steel the great Sperm Whale; and that for half a century they were the only people of the whole globe who
10so harpooned him. In 1778, a fine ship, the Amelia, fitted out for the express purpose, and at the sole charge of the
11vigorous Enderbys, boldly rounded Cape Horn, and was the first among the nations to lower a whale-boat of any sort in
12the great South Sea. The voyage was a skilful and lucky one; and returning to her berth with her hold full of the
13precious sperm, the Amelia's example was soon followed by other ships, English and American, and thus the vast Sperm
14Whale grounds of the Pacific were thrown open. But not content with this good deed, the indefatigable house again
15bestirred itself: Samuel and all his Sons--how many, their mother only knows--and under their immediate auspices, and
16partly, I think, at their expense, the British government was induced to send the sloop-of-war Rattler on a whaling
17voyage of discovery into the South Sea. Commanded by a naval Post-Captain, the Rattler made a rattling voyage of it, and
18did some service; how much does not appear. But this is not all. In 1819, the same house fitted out a discovery whale
19ship of their own, to go on a tasting cruise to the remote waters of Japan. That ship--well called the "Syren"--made a
20noble experimental cruise; and it was thus that the great Japanese Whaling Ground first became generally known. The
21Syren in this famous voyage was commanded by a Captain Coffin, a Nantucketer. All honor to the Enderbies, therefore,
22whose house, I think, exists to the present day; though doubtless the original Samuel must long ago have slipped his
23cable for the great South Sea of the other world. The ship named after him was worthy of the honor, being a very fast
24sailer and a noble craft every way. I boarded her once at midnight somewhere off the Patagonian coast, and drank good
25flip down in the forecastle. It was a fine gam we had, and they were all trumps--every soul on board. A short life to
26them, and a jolly death. And that fine gam I had--long, very long after old Ahab touched her planks with his ivory
27heel--it minds me of the noble, solid, Saxon hospitality of that ship; and may my parson forget me, and the devil
28remember me, if I ever lose sight of it. Flip? Did I say we had flip? Yes, and we flipped it at the rate of ten gallons
29the hour; and when the squall came (for it's squally off there by Patagonia), and all hands--visitors and all--were
30called to reef topsails, we were so top-heavy that we had to swing each other aloft in bowlines; and we ignorantly
31furled the skirts of our jackets into the sails, so that we hung there, reefed fast in the howling gale, a warning
32example to all drunken tars. However, the masts did not go overboard; and by and by we scrambled down, so sober, that we
33had to pass the flip again, though the savage salt spray bursting down the forecastle scuttle, rather too much diluted
34and pickled it to my taste. The beef was fine--tough, but with body in it. They said it was bull-beef; others, that it
35was dromedary beef; but I do not know, for certain, how that was. They had dumplings too; small, but substantial,
36symmetrically globular, and indestructible dumplings. I fancied that you could feel them, and roll them about in you
37after they were swallowed. If you stooped over too far forward, you risked their pitching out of you like
38billiard-balls. The bread--but that couldn't be helped; besides, it was an anti-scorbutic; in short, the bread contained
39the only fresh fare they had. But the forecastle was not very light, and it was very easy to step over into a dark
40corner when you ate it. But all in all, taking her from truck to helm, considering the dimensions of the cook's boilers,
41including his own live parchment boilers; fore and aft, I say, the Samuel Enderby was a jolly ship; of good fare and
42plenty; fine flip and strong; crack fellows all, and capital from boot heels to hat-band. But why was it, think ye, that
43the Samuel Enderby, and some other English whalers I know of--not all though--were such famous, hospitable ships; that
44passed round the beef, and the bread, and the can, and the joke; and were not soon weary of eating, and drinking, and
45laughing? I will tell you. The abounding good cheer of these English whalers is matter for historical research. Nor have
46I been at all sparing of historical whale research, when it has seemed needed. The English were preceded in the whale
47fishery by the Hollanders, Zealanders, and Danes; from whom they derived many terms still extant in the fishery; and
48what is yet more, their fat old fashions, touching plenty to eat and drink. For, as a general thing, the English
49merchant-ship scrimps her crew; but not so the English whaler. Hence, in the English, this thing of whaling good cheer
50is not normal and natural, but incidental and particular; and, therefore, must have some special origin, which is here
51pointed out, and will be still further elucidated. During my researches in the Leviathanic histories, I stumbled upon an
52ancient Dutch volume, which, by the musty whaling smell of it, I knew must be about whalers. The title was, "Dan
53Coopman," wherefore I concluded that this must be the invaluable memoirs of some Amsterdam cooper in the fishery, as
54every whale ship must carry its cooper. I was reinforced in this opinion by seeing that it was the production of one
55"Fitz Swackhammer." But my friend Dr. Snodhead, a very learned man, professor of Low Dutch and High German in the
56college of Santa Claus and St. Pott's, to whom I handed the work for translation, giving him a box of sperm candles for
57his trouble--this same Dr. Snodhead, so soon as he spied the book, assured me that "Dan Coopman" did not mean "The
58Cooper," but "The Merchant." In short, this ancient and learned Low Dutch book treated of the commerce of Holland; and,
59among other subjects, contained a very interesting account of its whale fishery. And in this chapter it was, headed,
60"Smeer," or "Fat," that I found a long detailed list of the outfits for the larders and cellars of 180 sail of Dutch
61whalemen; from which list, as translated by Dr. Snodhead, I transcribe the following: 400,000 lbs. of beef. 60,000 lbs.
62Friesland pork. 150,000 lbs. of stock fish. 550,000 lbs. of biscuit. 72,000 lbs. of soft bread. 2,800 firkins of butter.
6320,000 lbs. Texel & Leyden cheese. 144,000 lbs. cheese (probably an inferior article). 550 ankers of Geneva. 10,800
64barrels of beer. Most statistical tables are parchingly dry in the reading; not so in the present case, however, where
65the reader is flooded with whole pipes, barrels, quarts, and gills of good gin and good cheer. At the time, I devoted
66three days to the studious digesting of all this beer, beef, and bread, during which many profound thoughts were
67incidentally suggested to me, capable of a transcendental and Platonic application; and, furthermore, I compiled
68supplementary tables of my own, touching the probable quantity of stock-fish, etc., consumed by every Low Dutch
69harpooneer in that ancient Greenland and Spitzbergen whale fishery. In the first place, the amount of butter, and Texel
70and Leyden cheese consumed, seems amazing. I impute it, though, to their naturally unctuous natures, being rendered
71still more unctuous by the nature of their vocation, and especially by their pursuing their game in those frigid Polar
72Seas, on the very coasts of that Esquimaux country where the convivial natives pledge each other in bumpers of train
73oil.
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