The Chase

The whale was close enough to the ship that everyone could see the spout.The Old Man (captain) gave the word and the whale boats dangling at the side of the big ship were lowered into the water. Seamen slid, like firemen, down the ropes into the boat. In each boat a mast and sail was raised to get to the whale as quickly and as quietly as possible.

Whales have acute hearing. If the whale was upwind, then the men rowed to a point from which they could sail.

"A dead whale or a stove boat" was a chant of the whaler. A stove boat is an overturned or broken whaleboat.

The object of the hunt was to sneak the whaleboat quietly along side the behemoth, because whales have acute hearing. A splashing oar can "gully," or scare, a whale and make him sound.

When you were close on the whale, the boatsteerer (harpooner) in the bow(front) of the boat rose, bracing his leg against the side of the boat and thrust a barbed harpoon securely into the whale's back. The harpoon was attached to the boat by a very long coil of rope. Now all hands rowed backwards as fast as possible.

The whale was angry! Watch out for that tail! It weighs 20 tons and can smash the whaleboat to splinters. Don't be a stove boat!

Then the whale dove. Whalemen gave him as much line as he needs because they didn't want to follow him down. A baleen whale can dive to (tk)and sperm whale even deeper. It was not unusual to have 500 or 600 fathoms of line, over a 1/2 a mile of rope, out. The line was pulled so fast against the rail of the boat that it smoked. This was a particularly dangerous time, for if a whale sounded fast and the rope fouled on the boat, it would be "taken down" and dragged under water in an instantly. If the rope fouled on a seaman, he and many others could be knocked out of the boat and lucky to be found alive!

Go to the Whaling Museum's Whaleboat Lab to find out why the whaleboat is a work of nautical poetry.