I have written of the whaling vessel Cachalot and mentioned a storm she survived, which was a literal typhoon. The Cachalot was a unique cork floating about the ocean, for like Noah's arc she was built for floating on water and not traveling on water.
It was this that saved her really, as she bobbed about mountainous waves in a typhoon, but I include in this the Gordon Lightfoot line from the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald on Lake Superior, for does any man know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours.........
The Cachalot broke free into the eye of the storm and the reality is it was the worst place in the world to be in the calm, for while the moon shone brightly over head, the sea was in a rampage of waves. Where in the storm the small boats were in peril of being swamped or torn free from the rigging from the wind, the calm produced horrific waves without direction.
It was of those waves that one broke on the Cachalot, almost drowning the crew as it submerged the ship. Most vessels would have sunk or been disabled, but the Cachalot without sail to guide her just bobbed up again like a cork.
It was when they emerged that in the moonlight squalls a sight appeared before them in a merchantman, with all masts shattered was in that tempest. She was riding low in the waves appearing to be settling down, and as the Cachalot crew looked on, she disappeared like a rock dropped into the water, taking her entire crew with her to never be seen again.
That is what is amazing about this whaling ship in not that she held together, but that she survived not the typhoon winds, but when smashed by a mountain wave, she simply bobbed to the surface again, carrying the water on her decks without losing any of the crew.
She was not built for speed, but for hunting whales, and in that she was of a design which bested the fast moving merchant ships.
In an instant, the calm was broken and the hurricane force winds hit the Cachalot again, this time astern, but the whaler soon came about and was into the wind again, bobbing along with absolutely no problem.
After three days of storm, the Cachalot had two boats caved in by wind or wave, most of the planking bulwark was gone due to the weight of the water on deck, but she took on no water in the hull and lost not a piece of rope from her rigging.
No ships could survive the center waves of a storm, but the whaler did when others went to the bottom. She was of American design for service, and in that service she happened to be a perfect vessel for typhoon survival.
She is now gone in the wink of time and no longer rides the crest of the wave, but she lived on when all others were gone in the wink of an eye and the crest of a wave they could not endure.
agtG
