Wreck of the Ship Canton
On Friday, July thirteenth, we crossed the meridian of 180° from London, or half around the world. We dropped a day from our reckoning according to the marine custom, and appeared in our Sunday dress on the morrow. Had we been sailing eastward, a day would have been added to our calendar. A naval officer once told me that he sailed eastward over this meridian on Sunday. On the following morning the chaplain was surprised to receive orders to hold divine service. He obeyed promptly, but could not understand the situation. With a puzzled look he said to an officer—
“This part of the ocean must be better than any other or we would not have Sunday so often.”
Sir Francis Drake, who sailed around the world in the time of Queen Elizabeth, did not observe this rule of the navigator, and found on reaching England that he had a day too much. In the Marquesas Islands the early missionaries who came from the Indies made the mistake of keeping Sunday on Saturday. Their followers preserve this chronology, while later converts have the correct one. The result is, there are two Sabbaths among the Christian inhabitants of the cannibal islands. The boy who desired two Sundays a week in order to have more resting time, might be accommodated by becoming a Marquesas colonist.
On the day we crossed this meridian we were three hundred miles from the nearest Aleutian Islands, and about eight hundred from Kamchatka.
The boobies continued around us, but were less numerous than a week or ten days earlier. If they had any trouble with their reckoning, I did not ascertain it. A day later we saw three “fur seal” playing happily in the water. We hailed the first and asked his longitude, but he made no reply. I never knew before that the seal ventured so far from land. Yet his movements are as carefully governed as those of the sea-birds, and though many days in the open water he never forgets the direct course to his favorite haunts. How marvelous the instinct that guides with unerring certainty over the trackless waters!
A few ducks made their appearance and manifested a feeling of nostalgia. Mother Carey’s chickens, little birds resembling swallows, began to flit around us, skimming closely along the waves. There is a fiction among the sailors that nobody ever saw one of these birds alight or found its nest. Whoever harms one is certain to bring misfortune upon himself and possibly his companions. A prudent traveler would be careful not to offend this or any other nautical superstition. In case of subsequent danger the sailors might remember his misdeed and leave him to make his own rescue.
Nearing the Asiatic coast we saw many whales. One afternoon, about cigar time, a huge fellow appeared half a mile distant. His blowing sounded like the exhaust of a western steamboat, and sent up a respectable fountain of spray. Covert pronounced him a high pressure affair, with horizontal engines and carrying ninety pounds to the inch.
After sporting awhile in the misty distance, the whale came near us. It was almost calm and we could see him without glasses. He rose and disappeared at intervals of a minute, and as he moved along he rippled the surface like a subsoil plough on a gigantic scale. After ten or twelve small dives, he threw his tail in air and went down for ten minutes or more. When he reappeared he was two or three hundred yards from his diving place.
Once he disappeared in this way and came up within ten feet of our bows. Had he risen beneath us the shock would have been severe for both ship and whale. After this manoeuvre he went leisurely around us, keeping about a hundred yards away.
“He is working his engines on the slow bell,” said our engineer, “and keeps his helm hard-a-port.”
We brought out our rifles to try this new game, though the practice was as much a trial of skill as the traditional ‘barn at ten paces.’ Several shots were fired, but I did not see any thing drop. The sport was amusing to all concerned; at any rate the whale didn’t seem to mind it, and we were delighted at the fun. When his survey was finished he braced his helm to starboard, opened his throttle valves and went away to windward.
We estimated his length at a hundred and twenty feet, and thought he might register ‘A 1,’ at the proper office. Captain Patterson called him a ‘bow head,’ good for a hundred barrels of oil and a large quantity of bone. The Colonel proposed engaging him to tow us into port. Covert wished his blubber piled in our coal bunkers; the artist sketched him, and the draughtsman thought of putting him on a Mercator’s projection. For my part I have written the little I know of his life and experiences, but it is very little. I cannot even say where he lodges, whose hats he wears, when his notes fall due, or whether he ever took a cobbler or the whooping cough. Of course this incident led to stories concerning whales. Captain Patterson told about the destruction of the ship Essex by a sperm whale thirty or more years ago. The Colonel described the whale fishery as practiced by the Kamchadales and Aleutians. These natives have harpoons with short lines to which they attach bladders or skin bags filled with air. A great many boats surround a whale and stick him with as many harpoons as possible. If successful, they will so encumber him that his strength is not equal to the buoyancy of the bladders, and in this condition he is finished with a lance. A great feast is sure to follow his capture, and every interested native indulges in whale-steak to his stomach’s content.