USA > New York > Nassau County > Long Island; a history of two great counties, Nassau and Suffolk, Volume I > Part 62
USA > New York > Suffolk County > Long Island; a history of two great counties, Nassau and Suffolk, Volume I > Part 62
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"WHALEMEN !
"Please to attend the first and second lesson. George B. Brown can fit you out and fit you in, and as short horns are logged, he can fit you to what's much better in all weather- short jackets. Long-shorts and monkey jackets, and striped shirts from 371/2¢ to 50c. And for a change, doff your money getting gear, and he'll put you upon the other tack, and fur- nish as infits-fine frock and other coats, jackets, vests, pants, fine shirts, boots, pumps etc etc all at a price * * low as * the times."
Observe the offer of an "infit" for the sailor on shore. The "out- fit" had not lasted long, and had been replaced by more of the same from the "slop chest" on board. Outfit, infit, and slop chest debts were all incurred without much choice in the deal, and all deducted, with other charges too, from Dorsey's 108th and Mulligan's 106th share in the voyage.
Other ads quoted "Tobacco, Snuff and Segars". "Hoops and oars as usual", were offered by Huntting Cooper who once ran the back of a whale and was now retired from the sea. A waggish editor made note of changes in fashion: "Ladies bump behind is disappearing so railroads need no more charge double for one lady's space and other benefits! After the second great fire, 1845: "Business resumed at the Old Stand-Ladies half and full gaiters". In 1847, "The Subscriber will commence giving Lessons in Quadrilles, * *
Waltzes, Gallopade, and Polka
* at 4 o'clock for children and ladies, and at 7 for gentlemen." Under the heading "New York Oil Market,"-"crude sperm is firm at 105 a 107¢. Whalebone-The market is quiet; sales at 34 a 35¢." As for the state of the world, "Ireland is Tranquil."
But neither Ireland nor Sag Harbor remained tranquil for long.
To 1871
If conditions were hard for the sailor, neither did they present a bed of roses for the investor. In the final accounting whaling was one of the most unpredictable business risks of all time! There was the obvious and dramatic hazard of loss by storm and disaster; yet
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even more damaging to the industry as a whole was the liability of fluctuating market prices. Even as today, a bumper crop and a glutted market could mean ruin to the very ones who had labored for it. Management also was a factor. Disastrous choice of a captain, one of poor judgment or outright dishonesty, could make a failure out of the most carefully planned cruise. The decreasing efficiency of
Ponquogue Lighthouse at Hampton Bays
the men in the forecastle took its toll. Desertions and disorder were costly.
In the year 1848, these many risks of the industry seemed to gather weight and descend at once upon an unprepared optimism. At the Long Wharf, ship after ship came in without a cargo. Some of them had been gone four or five years and represented an all-high in costly outfits. Whales were shy, these wanderers reported. The furious slaughter of the preceding decades had caused an actual scarcity of "fish"; at the same time, the fabulous returns of. the previous year had caused a drop in the market price of oil. Only eight vessels sailed in '48 from Sag Harbor; an ominous lull settled down on the activities at the waterfront.
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THE WHALING ERA ON LONG ISLAND
The experience of the erstwhile fortunate David Hand was typi- cal. Up to this time his homecomings had all been gold-plated. He undertook command of the Salem, a new ship purchased in the excite- ment of good times and rising prices. It was fitted out to the last detail, and high were the expectations that this would be the greatest success of all. The Salem cruised for four years, over the old grounds, in many distant waters, only to return in 1848 with a small cargo, to be sold at low prices. The huge investment was not paid for. The whole effort was a failure.
This was David Hand's last whaling voyage. The next year he was a member of the crew of the Sabina, loading pick-axes, and sing- ing "O Susanna!", with 17 other captains who were also through with whaling, and off for the Gold Fields of California. There were 85 persons altogether aboard the Sabina. In this manner Sag Harbor lost many a fiery citizen.
To the lure of gold was added the lure of oil in the petroleum fields of Pennsylvania, free lands in the West, and the rise of milling in New England towns. The glamor of the sea was tarnished in rivalry with these new fields.
Events ripened quickly and changes came. Ships were retired from use after years of service. "Broken up in port", or "Con- demned at Rio" as the reports stated. Many were sold. Old firms retired from the field. There was a turning point, and things were, ever after, different. Yet the life of the '50s and '60s was not without vigor, adventure and history.
Of the Gold Rush by ships, it is more colorful than that by covered wagon. Sailors also encountered Indians. As they passed through the Straits of Magellan, it was the treacherous Tierra del Fuegos, Indians of large stature, who often pirated upon the richly laden ships working westward. An unusual cruise it would be, that did not encounter castaways. Such meetings were poignant beyond words; then supplies must be rationed, even water; one captain tied the dipper to the mast to reduce the number of drinkings.
These years saw the fine, positive energy of the shipbuilders turned to this goal with brilliant effectiveness. From the Wade ship- yards were turned out dashing little vessels, whose destination was the new El Dorado. They were swift as a wing, with not a cumber- some line or an unnecessary inch upon them.
With the shrinkage of the whaling industry in general, prices for the product rose magnificently, and the incentive to investors was thus stimulated afresh. At the same time, a new cruising ground where whales were plenteous opened up for the daring harpooner.
This new ground was the Arctic Ocean where bowhead whales were plentiful. New firms entered the business. Shipbuilding boomed again, producing a new flock of small barks and schooners like the Mary Gardiner and the Odd Fellow. For two more decades whaling was pursued, with its dramatic rewards pouring into the community, and its losses and tragedies.
The Arctic whaling has a peculiar fascination, shadowed always as it was by the awful threat of the frozen north. To move close to
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it, one could follow the career of Capt. James Royce. Here is a romantic figure whose life might well be the subject of a novel. He killed his first Arctic whale in the light of northern midnight, 1848. He was then the first whaler to push through the hazardous Bering Strait, treacherous with fog, into this untried whaling ground. It was a discovery; the whales were so numerous he filled up in 28 days. When he returned home with the news, quickly the ships of New Bed- ford, Nantucket and all the others swarmed in his wake and took over the find. Royce's genius soon turned in another direction. In 1856 he is reported to be sailing to England to have manufactured his invention-the bomb lance. An item from the Cork Examiner speaks with amazement of this new device, giving entire credit to Capt. Royce. But tragedy followed on success. While out in a whaleboat, his bomb lance exploded, shattering his hand; operations at sea were common, and the unskilled mate, with crude instruments, performed the amputation. Yet romance sailed on that unlucky journey too, for Capt. Royce, on this voyage, met and married a lady from L'Orient, France. Thereafter, his life was crowded with other schemes, original and daring, but success in any of them was not to be captured again, and he died in Mexico "from want and exposure".
Other novels could be written about the exceptional women who did not stay at home and wait, but accompanied their husbands on Arctic voyages. Capt. Jonas Winters often took his wife to sea with him. The portraits of both of them are in the Museum, and the ship model of one of his ships, a rare and beautiful piece of work, the bark Excel. Mrs. Winters' sister also married a whaling captain. In fact, widowed twice, she chose a whaling captain for her husband three times. As the bride of J. Madison Tabor, her honeymoon was a three and a half year voyage as far north as the ice barrier in the Okhotsk Sea.
Could a real home be created on board a whaleship? Could any parents, unaided, create for their child raised on shipboard the equiv- alent of a sound education? The Jetur Roses did both. Over a period of fourteen years of Arctic whaling, they raised their little daughter Emma, truly a whaling child. She took her place naturally and hap- pily in Southampton life when the sailings were over. The whaling parents must have possessed great quality and character !
These were the years nevertheless recognized in local comment as "decline". Of the diverse forces at play, some reflection may be traced in scattered items from the Corrector of 1861. "Auction at Budd's cooperage, North Haven, on Saturday next, old casks, copper cooler, and sundry articles of whaling gear, * "The old * * ", Jefferson has been hauled alongside within the past few days, but she is minus masts and in process of being broken up."
Yet it was still profitable for Augustus Unshelm of the Navigator Islands to run in the Corrector a "Notice to Whalers, Guano Vessels, and Others, Trading in the South Pacific" that "The Undersigned has always on hand a good stock of ships' METERIAL, as well as a fresh supply of fine FIDJEE YAMS, PORK, FRUIT etc, and is able to
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furnish vessels calling at the undermentioned Port with any quantity of fresh WATER at the shortest notice."
Humor often tells more than cold sense. In a column called "Varieties" we find this: "The skeleton in every man's house: his wife's skirt." So that is what became of those thousands of pounds of whalebone brought home in ships! Cherchez la femme. But what is this ?- the very next month, Messrs. W. H. and G. H. Cooper start advertising "Steel Spring Skirts"! Time marches on!
The Whaling Museum, Sag Harbor, 1846, designed by Minard Lafever
Another telltale bit refers to a school of whales that made their appearance in Buzzard's Bay. "Two of them ventured into the har- bor *
* * but soon retreated-Probably they did not like the appear- ance of the several petroleum works in the vicinity."
The press of 1859 could be joyful about the newly launched Sag Harbor band, but of shipping, its note was mournful. "Our wharf is well filled with ships and a stranger might suppose that a brisk busi- ness is being carried on, but that is the appearance alone and not the reality. Messrs. W. H. and G. H. Cooper are * * * undecided whether they will fit the Mary Gardiner and the Timor recently pur- chased by them. * *",
They did fit the Mary Gardiner again, though not the Timor. Nevertheless both of these gallant ships sailed right into the final curtain-the Civil War. The Mary Gardiner, a remarkably trim and fast sailing vessel, was homeward bound in June, 1861, with a cargo
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worth $40,000. Her captain was unaware that Fort Sumter had been fired upon and that the Alabama was making a deadly record in the Atlantic, capturing and burning Yankee vessels. Other rebel priva- teers lay in wait also. Off Bermuda, the chase began. For two hours the Mary Gardiner was hotly pursued by a Confederate enemy, a fleet-winged marauder. She escaped-shrewdly navigated and clearly the better ship, marvelously more buoyant of sail than any pursuer.
(Photo Courtesy of H. T. Weeks)
Homestead of a Descendant of Whalers, the Author of This Chapter
Other ships from other whaling ports were not so lucky, and the report of their destruction reached every shipping quarter with chill- ing effect. No wonder that when the government issued a call for ships to be used as a blockade in Charleston harbor, to be dynamited and sunk at the entrance, there were many answers. From Sag Har- bor, the Timor and the Emerald sailed in "the Stone Fleet". The Corrector of 1861 concludes an account of the entire armada which was about to make its exodus from many whaling ports, with a resounding flourish: "With this formidable fleet, the loyal blubber- hunters of the North, to the hotbed of Seceshia, send greeting!"
Capt. Jakey Havens was one who did not join the Stone Fleet, or seek after oil wells, or become lured by western lands. He went right on sailing the Myra, right through the Civil War. Once he thought the game was up, when his ship was "overhauled" by a
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vessel flying the Confederate flag. But it turned out to be a renegade Yankee trying to run the blockade in order to sell goods to the South. He merely asked to be given some needed supplies, and this Capt. Jakey refused to do. Never should the Myra aid her country's foe!
The Myra was the last whaling ship to sail out of Sag Harbor. The date was 1871.
That year, whaling in Sag Harbor came to a decisive end. The third great fire broke out and swept through the business section. All the paraphernalia centered at the waterfront, shops, boatyards and storehouses of whaling gear and craft, all made a great blazing funeral pyre. Stored bomb lances exploded, far from their intended target. Flames leaped high, and the night was as bright as day as the trappings of whaling went up in smoke, making one last glorious sight like autumn's turning.
It is a rich vibrant history that is recalled now by picket fence and iron pot in Sag Harbor. High on a roof may be spied the scuttle- hole which used to open out onto a "roof walk", the better to give view over the waters of the bay and the coming of ships. And side by side, street after street, are the houses, built by the whalers.
What has become of the energy that created this rugged Ameri- can scene? In a large sense, it has gone on-creating railroads, empires of the West, new states, new heroes; and with it, no doubt, the same old barnacles of injustice, greed, and ruthlessness. In a special sense, one could point to the wide diversion of this particular Colonial stock, infusing its vigor into every kind of enterprise. The blacksmith's son became a great teacher of technology in a western state. A ship owner's grandson pioneers in the motion picture indus- try. The energy has gone on, making a new and more vastly compli- cated world. And now the village that whale oil built is a retreat from the stress and strain of that world. To modern man, intimate association with fine old things is a balm to the spirit, sometimes a necessity, always an inspiration. Furniture and tapestry bespeak the skill of one's hands and hours of industrious leisure. Old houses whisper of neighborly days. In peaceful dreaming streets, one can understand the love of one small community that lasts from one gen- eration to another.
Indeed, the presence of old houses is the embodiment of a val- iancy that did not seek elsewhere. Many a daughter of the whaling generation fought with courage as great as that of her fathers. Toss- ing off poverty, age and loneliness, she struggled to save for the future something that cannot be replaced-a house mellowed by time. It is in the smell of old wood, the touch of smoothed woodwork, in a worn threshold, and the blackened hearth. It is that sense of having been lived in by generations of fine people.
In Sag Harbor, clocks with wooden works and church bells fill the air with their ancient voices. Old bridge sites remain, these and the roads that used to be guarded by toll houses. Horse troughs and
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hitching posts still linger. Here are flower-filled try-pots that once knew the stench of boiling whale oil, the flare of the flames, demon- like at sea.
So let the morning glories climb over an old fire wheel. Let the petunias bloom from Great Aunt Agatha's kitchen kettle and let it hang from a crane that used to swing over the hearth of a whaler's fireside. Sag Harbor is a living museum, and best of all, it is a village of houses, that are linked intimately to adventure of the seas, and forever associated with that old high courage.
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