Blow ye winds in the morning
Blow ye winds Hi Ho
Blow ye winds
Blow ye winds
Blow ye winds Hi Ho
That song was one of my few favorites we were able to sing in chorus as a child. It was a pretty little thing having to do with whaling, which meant killing whales and the celebration of the people in Boston Massachusetts in the ships coming in, which meant prosperity.
I dislike lost knowledge for the reason there is knowledge worth a million dollars, which was wrought by the death of those who gleaned the experience and it is pure sin that such knowledge should ever be wasted simply because some amoral psychosis ridden hell bound God denying minions of satan now state that killing a whale is some crime compared to killing a cabbage.
Life is life and all is to be conserved and be valued as precious whether it bleeds clear sap and you do not hear to scream or whether it sounds and bleeds by the ton in a Sperm whale.
I have written of the Cachalot, which was a Massachusetts whaler. The conditions for the sailors was one of absolute tyranny and terrorism which broke them as slaves were broken, but no matter the officers and the cowed crew, the thing which remained was the Cachelot, and she was a most interesting vessel in not being at all like merchantmen.
A whaler was run under a completely different chart than other ships, and a whaler was nothing like other ships. While a merchantman was sleek and fast running, as time was money, a whaler was like a cork floating about the ocean, without ever full sails, as she was hunting prey and not delivering cargo.
That is interesting for the clippers and steamers would burst and drive through the waves, but the Cachalot would bob along in ocean gales contentedly not going any place at all, as she was hunting big game constantly.
The fisheries or whaling grounds in the Atlantic were off Greenland, and off west Africa. A whaler would then move out of the Atlantic south to might surprise a whale of large size in the south Atlantic, but soon enough would steer into the Doldrums of the Indian Ocean and try for a prize in the Mozambique Channel off east Africa.
While there was a dead reckoning on merchantmen, in the Captain and first mate would both chart the course of the ship to compare positions accurately, and on larger vessels like warships, the second mate fell to that task, on a whaler, the Captain of the Cachalot maintained position with a dime store guide, a sextant which not seaworthy, and he was never known to keep time in order to chart latitude.
A whaler was content to bob about in the ocean swells and if they knew what ocean they were in, and were somewhere close to where they should be, then that sufficed in their not being too lost in the great watery plain.
The Cachalot was a stumpy little ship, but she was built for the production of blubber oil. She would groan under the immense weight of heads of Sperm whales lanced off to get the precious oil inside. She would be lashed by chains to the great bodies of the whales and in gales be shuddered and crashed into by the body of their cargo not yet rendered, and, through it all with fires burning under the oil pots, a foot of oil sloshing about on deck, the crew would manage to work where in a merchantman they would have been washed overboard.
The oil would be dipped, drained, rendered and poured into great barrels, which the men would be in danger of breaking free before they were secured with ropes. It was a mysterious and dangerous existence for the crew which scrubbed the Cachalot and sent their little row boats after the monsters of the deep which could crush them with a flip of their tails.
While a merchantman crew might spend a year on a long voyage, the whaler would spend years plying the waters of the world to gain that precious oil. The spermacetti or oil wax was of high quality, as was the whale oil, but it was a mixed bag of "train oil", exactly as it is today in North Dakota, in their sweet crude is mixed with the sour crude of Canadian oil sands, in order to improve pricing.
High grade whale oil, was always mixed with lower grade porpoise oil.
For those who cringe at reading that these mammals were killed for oil which lit the homes of people. It should be noted that if you sat one week with burning candles or kerosene lamps, you would soon find that your head would be full of soot and would hurt. You would soon look upon these swimming mammals with a new reality that porpoise actually eat their own kind in shark type feeding frenzies.
It is a great deal easier to accept whale harvesting when it is your head hurting, your eyes going blind from lack of light, and those blubber carriers of the oceans are not so humane as human fiction makes them out to be.
So many men and so many fortunes in this world were employed and created by whalers in those tiny bobbing ships. It is a pity that Moby Dick is what most people in propaganda have the least information on in what a hard and yet glorious life it was in plying this trade of 150 pound men against 30 ton beasts.
Not all whales were hunted for oil. Some had little or poor grade of oil, so were not harvested, and were as content to swim by a whaler for company as any other ship. The Sperm whale or the Cachalot was the prize, and the one hunted for necessity of the quality of life of humans.
The Sperm whale was the great hunter of the deep in going after the great squid of the ocean depths. The giant squid is a most deadly hunter of the oceans and fitting prey for the toothed Sperm whale, but once again what in degrees of prettiness does one have empathy for a Sperm whale to the beaked predator of the squid savagely killing it's prey.
I though appreciate the learning of information and the artform involved in whaling as thee entire operation was honed and if it was not, everyone would have perished.
To know in a little row boat, how to position for a strike with a harpoon, to then run the whale, to close and lance it, as the whale made the attack on the boat, to row the boat short against the larger turns of the whale, and then back off as the whale made rushes in death, is a thing appreciated if one places themselves in a 16 foot row boat and thinks....."Today I will get me a whale for if I do not I will die."
That sinking feeling in the stomach takes over, as you would not have a clue as to how to do it to survive, and then that little harpoon and little boat, would not seem so menacing to such a ship large creature in the ocean.
Yes you too would have evolved to an exploding charge to kill a whale and hope for a steel ship to hide in with winches to keep you safe.
Humans do have it far too easy in the slave plantations they are now in, in this feudal world. They are rationed death while they judge peoples who made a living exploiting natural resources.
Odd how the whales have arbitraitors and so many can see their demise as cruel, but humans suffering the same harvesting by the modern whalers sent out from regimes to profit off of the pods of humans, have absolutely no advocates for the two legged creatures swimming through air on land every day in the gulag.
Odd.
agtG
