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I had written, in [7201]

"Of course, whalers were a rather special case. They would make incredible
voyages from New England ports, right through the Pacific and into the
Bering Straits, away for four years or so, only sighting land on the passage
round the Horn, and sometimes not even then."

and Frank replied-

"That's an exaggeration."  Well, yes, it was something of an overstatement,
I admit.

When "fishing", they needed to find what was (sometimes quite literally) a
"watering-hole", from time to time, depending on whether they had managed to
catch rain, or collect freshwater ice. And their provisions wouldn't last
for ever; sometimes leading them sometimes to beg for food from vessels that
were spoken. So it's quite true, they would find a harbour when they had to.

But we need to distinguish two phases; the travelling to the
cruising-grounds, and the "fishing" when they got there. I have an account
of the Charles W Morgan's voyage to the Pacific whaling grounds in 1849
(Haley), which on that occasion was East-about, calling at Azores, Cape
Verdes, Tristan de Cunha, St. Paul, Albany, Hobart, to the Bay of Islands in
New Zealand. Such a journey called for real navigation, just as Frank
claims.

===============================

But the "Morgan" was a particularly well-found specimen of American whalers,
which is one reason why she, and her log-books, have ended up in a museum.
There were many hundreds of such vessels at sea throughout the world's
oceans, over a period of hundreds of years, so tens of thousands of years'
worth of such ship's logs resulted.

I had written- "And such seat-of-the-pants navigation seems to have applied
particularly to American whalers. Although I can't now recall chapter and
verse, I've read several accounts of merchant vessels being "spoken" by New
England whalers, asking for a position, who hardly knew what ocean they were
in."

Frank replied- "I've read through over thirty logbooks of American whalers
specifically, and I don't think that this was true in any general sense."

Thirty logbooks is good going and to be respected. But were those
representative of all whalers? Not on your life!

From the vast number that once existed, a museum collects the documents that
have survived and can be preserved, the well-bound official logbooks with
well-organised information that can be read and studied. Where, now, are the
dog-eared scraps of paper on which the hardly-literate skippers of
parish-rigged whalers kept their scanty records? They've gone into the bin,
over the years, not into a museum. So it's now impossible to judge, from
what has been preserved in museums, what was the general standard of
practice at sea. Frank doesn't know it, and neither do I. We just have to
keep an open mind.

============================

I had written-
"In mid-ocean, they didn't really care exactly where they were, not making a
passage from A to B, but simply wandering in search of "fish". If these were
Sperm whales, these could be anywhere on the world's oceans."

And Frank responded-
"Whales are found in some areas more than others. These "whaling grounds"
were the destinations of whaling voyages. There were many of these, with
varying popularity and fishing value."

Yes, of course. Who could deny that? There are many such concentrations of
commercially-valuable whales, such as the Right (Bowhead) whales to be found
in Arctic , and Blue Whales in the Antarctic, and many others between. Which
was exactly why I restricted my comments to Sperm whales, which can be found
literally anywhere, their distribution being so diffuse that a vessel
hunting Sperm whales can and will simply wander over hundreds of thousands
of square miles of open ocean.

George.

contact George Huxtable, at  george@hux.me.uk
or at +44 1865 820222 (from UK, 01865 820222)
or at 1 Sandy Lane, Southmoor, Abingdon, Oxon OX13 5HX, UK.


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