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April – Punishment on a 19th Century Whaler

After my last update, I exchanged emails with one of the recipients. He clarified the difficulty of a large sailing ship navigating a harbor full of anchored vessels with the following:

Most often, professionals known as “pilots” would handle the delicate procedure. Also in many case the ships didn’t enter the harbor at all but would anchor in deeper waters, and their cargos were “lightered” to and from the wharves. Finally, many Nantucket ships actually called in at Martha’s Vineyard (officers and crews would sail over and board the “prepared” vessel)…

Democracy did not exist on a whale ship. The captain’s rule was absolute. In First Fury, a group of sailors (including Ann) are caught disobeying the captain’s orders. On a 19th century whaling ship, punishment for such a thing included “being put in irons” or flogging, which was the most common. In flogging, a sailor was hung by his wrists until his toes just touched the deck. Then, the one executing the sentence would use a whip, rope, or a cat-o’nine-tails (a whip with 9 thin ropes often with some kind of weight at the end of each) to bare down on the offender’s stripped back. A picture of a flogging can viewed here. Richard Henry Dana In Two Years Before the Mast describes a flogging at sea as “Swinging the rope over his head, and bending his body so as to give it full force, the captain brought it down upon the poor fellow’s back. Once, twice – six times.” The full account can be found at http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/flogging.htm. This was not done in private; all the crew was required to watch.
Next month, see where Ann lived in Rochester, New York.

March-Navigating a Harbor

After my last update, I exchanged emails with one of the recipients. He mentioned the difficulty of a large sailing ship navigating a harbor full of anchored vessels. That was especially true for whalers like the Christopher Mitchell. These ships often had a good number of “greenhands,” or first time sailors. Like the old shanty asks, “What do you do with a drunken sailor?” You wouldn’t put him to hauling ropes. But they put greenhands on such work. In Whale Hunt, Nelson Cole Haley describes that scene. While those on shore may gasp or laugh and other crews might jeer as the Mitchell veered left and right (like a drunken sailor), his Captain stood proudly on his ship as if it were manned by the most experienced crew.

Turning a green crew into a finely tuned machine became one of the first orders of business. To see how greenhands responded to such training, have a look at First Fury.

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