February 2014 MAINE COASTAL NEWS Page 21.
20 January 1906 Yarns of a Whaler
HISTORY FROM THE PAST - Bangor Daily Commercial - Early 1900s it.
Capt. Frank A. Jordan of Watervilee and His South Sea Tales Some Narrow Escapes
A Runaway Whale and Discipline on Board the Ship – One Story Substantiated
Capt. Frank A. Jordan of Waterville occasionally gets in a reminiscent mood, and like to tell of the days when he was younger and spryer than he is now and attended to more exciting marine affairs than occur on the lakes of northwestern Kennebec county. The newspaper man found him, the other day, in that mood and enjoyed a quarter of an hour of yarns still salt with the sprays of the south seas. It was in the years immediately following the Civil war that he cruised in those waters on board the New Bedford whaleship BARTHOLOMEW GOSNOLD. She was a staunch vessel and a good sailor, but she could not go so fast as a whale. SHIP DISCIPLINE.
According to Capt. Jordan, the way that they capture a whale is by sneaking upon the great beast and harpooning him before he is aware that trouble is at hand.
They were gone on that voyage four years and 20 days, leaving the port of New Bedford on June 19, 1866, and tying to the pier again on July 9, 1870. Not all their cruise was in the south Pacifi c but the greater part of it was in those “grounds” as the whalers say, though handsmen would be apt to speak of “those waters.”
Capt. Jordan told one little story that illustrates the discipline on shipboard. One day, there came from the lookout the cry of “There she blo-o-ows,” and the third mate’s boat put off to attack the whale. Mr. Jordan had not then attained his title of captain, and was ranked as an able bodied seaman, at the time of the happening from which he spun his yarn:
“The boat was lowered pretty near as soon as we got the call from the lookout. The third mate took her, and we had wind enough so that we used the sail. “We come up to the whale head on, and he sounded, so that when we reached him he was coming up pretty high under us. The harpooner struck him fair amidships, and the mate shouted to ‘let go the sheet’. I was holding the sheet. I see that if I let go, we would stop right on top of the whaler’s tail, and I held on. One of the great big fi ns,
longer’n you are, touched our gunnels as we slid along by him in that light breeze. We just got by the tail of the fi sh when he lifted his fl ukes, and he made the sea boil for a few minutes, but we was safe.
“The mate jumped on me like a thousand barrels of blubber, and I had to take an everlasting pounding from his fi sts, and him yelling ‘Why didn’t you let go that sheet? Why didn’t you let go that sheet? Why didn’t you let go that sheet? I tried to tell him, but he pounded me some more and told me that ‘You ain’t navigating this boat, and you take my orders till the’s somebody above me to give orders.
“The ship was coming up, and I see the ‘old man’, that’s Capt. Nichols, coming down out of the tops with the spyglass that he always took up there when a boat was after a whale. When we got on board, Mr. Luce, that’s the third mate, was called on the quarter deck and him and the captain had a talk. Then he went to looking after the cutting up of the whale and I was called up on the same quarter deck to see the captain. The old man says to me: ‘What did I see Mr. Luce striking you for?’ I says: ‘We was right over the whale and he told me to let go the sheet and I see that if I did it we’d get caught in the fl ukes. We didn’t but just miss ‘em as it was.’ Jordan, says he, ‘when we want you to take charge of one of the boats for this ship we’ll make you one of the mates and send you out without any superior offi cer in the boat. You obey orders till we do that, even if the offi cer in command of the boat tells you to jump overboard. You may report for duty in you watch.’ And he mixed some profanity with his orders. “That’s all the satisfaction I got for taking a licking, and it wasn’t any use to mutiny. I was in the right in the way that I had hauled the boat, but I was in the wrong in disobeying orders, and the old man rather lose a few sailors than let discipline get slack. For if anybody but the boss was to give orders on shipboard, it wouldn’t be long before there wouldn’t be any shipboard. But that didn’t soothe my feelings at the time. ANOTHER WHALE.
“Another time we struck a whale pretty near the meridian when we were in about 30 south latitude.”
“What do you mean by the meridian, captain?”
“The meridian’s 180 degrees of longitude. It is same either way you reckon
News from the Maine DMR Continued from Page 20.
non-native species and is so destructive to native resources, the Department will focus its regulatory efforts on reducing green crab populations rather than on their manage- ment as a sustainable commercial fi shery. The Department is also working closely
with industry, academe, and with municipal shellfi sh programs to monitor and contain the spread of green crabs.
The Department issues Green Crab Exemption permits to municipalities that wish to conduct trapping or other green crab removal programs. This allows many individuals to participate under the umbrella of the municipality in green crab removal activities without obtaining green crab per- mits ($38 resident) or submitting landings reports.
The Department actively engages with
the Army Corp of Engineers as a consultant on issuance of permits in order to conduct green crab fencing projects. Permits to conduct green crab fencing projects in the intertidal zone fall under the Army Corp of Engineers’ jurisdiction because it is consid-
ered a potential hazard to navigation. The Department facilitates the application and review process for towns in order to support and encourage fencing activities. Fencing has historically proven to be an effective method of excluding green crabs from valu- able bivalve shellfi sh resource areas. The Department assists and encourages the use of nets associated with municipal clam seeding activities in order to encourage the survival of seed by minimizing predation by green crabs to the extent practicable. This activity involves placing a net directly on the surface of the mudfl at where seed or baby shellfi sh are “planted.” The net is later removed once the seed has dug in, become established, and grown to a refuge size. The Department is committed to main- taining the health of the bivalve shellfi sh resources of Maine and will continue to focus its resources and efforts on education, research, and reduction of green crabs. Questions or comments should be di-
rected to the Shellfi sh Management Program staff: Denis Nault, Supervisor (422-2092); Hannah Annis (949-4498) or Pete Thayer (633-9539)
“That spot on the ocean, a hundred and eighty longitude and 30 south latitude, is off no’theast of New Zealand, and the’s good whaling grounds there. “We struck a whale at eight bells of a moonlight morning. That’s 4 o’clock the way we keep time here in Waterville. I was in the third mate’s boat and the second mate was just astern of us. She was a big cow whale, and she started to run when we struck her. We took the second mate’s boat line, and the whale towed both of us. We were in the trades, that’s the trade winds, and the whale took to running her best, and it wa’n’t but a little while before we went out o’sight of the ship. The whale took a straight course almost to ‘luard,’ and we set the compass, so that we knew what it was. As long as we kept a straight course, we know that the ship would follow us catch up with us as soon as the old man could sail her to us, for it was the season of good weather. “So we kept on being towed, and it was 4 o’clock in the afternoon of the next day before that whale stopped running enough so that we got near enough to kill her. A good part of the time our gunnels were lower than the water she was pulling us through on that run.
“As I was telling you, it was 36 hours from the time we struck that whale before we killed her, and we’d been out of sight of the ship all but four or fi ve hours of that time. “We laid there beside that whale all the night and all the next day, and it was 10 o’clock in the following night, the third night away from the ship before the ship come up with us. And don’t you think that she didn’t look good when the lights in her rigging showed up on the horizon under the stars. “We had waited and killed time there, and while we were doing it the two mates talked it over doing it the two mated talked it over and tried to reckon where we might be. They didn’t exactly settle it, but as nearly as they could make out, we must be 1,700 miles from any land that was civilized enough for us to be safe from the savages if we reached it.
“I told this story over at Belgrade, a few years ago, to an old naval offi cer, Capt. Charles Randall of New Bedford, the same that was executive offi cer on the CONGRESS when she was sunk at Hampton Roads. I could see that was executive offi cer on the CONGRESS when she was sunk at Hampton Roads. I could see that he looked incredulous, and it was a
pretty stiff yarn. He come down to the lakes again, the next summer, and when he met me he says: ‘You remember telling me about a whale that towed two boats 36 hours and never stopped to rest? Well, he says, ‘I had curiosity enough, last winter, and looked up the ship’s lo and I found it there, just as reported by the second and third mates and set down by the fi rst mate. I don’t mind telling you told me, but I know how they keep ship’s records, and that wasn’t there unless it was so. But it was the longest I ever heard tell of.’
“And I felt good, for I had been able to tell a good story, and one that he acknowledged was true, and he couldn’t match it, and he was somewhat of a story teller himself,” concluded Capt. Jordan.
27 January 1906 The Wreck of the Big Bath Ship SUSQUEHANNA
The Terrible Experience of Mate Elwell and His Bride; Twice Shipwrecked, Five Days Ocean-Tossed in an Open Boat, and Thrown Among Cannibals – Fighting Death on Their Honeymoon – Capt. Watts Now Visiting at His Home in St. George, Near Thomaston. A honeymoon trip which included an escape from a burning ship, in the harbor of Numea, New Caledonia, which was continued on another ship which sank 500 miles off the Solomon islands, followed by
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