Walking the Berkshires

Like the Frog Says; "Its Not Easy Being Green" (But It's Mainstream!)

I like to think this blog manages to explore "the intersection of history and the environment from a (fairly) non-partisan perspective" as Tigerhawk kindly describes Walking the Berkshires.  I hope it manages to be engaging as well, and if "occasionally nettlesome" that this is not merely an irritant but considered and thought-provoking.  That doesn't mean I am apolitical, however, or indifferent to the role that politics play in the issues confronting the environment and our collective memory of the past.  If I valued my marriage less highly, I might seriously have contemplated a dark horse run for the US Senate one of these days (having first done my adversaries a favor by compiling my dirty laundry in one neat package in this corner of the blogosphere).  That, or perhaps become a trial attorney - not that there's anything wrong with that.  Luckily, it does all come down to values, and there is little danger of either eventuality coming to pass.   Joe Lieberman can rest easier at night knowing I won't be coming after him in 2012...

I mention all this because I've been giving a good deal of thought to the politicization of conservation  issues and the wedge that partisanship drives between those who share more environmental values than they might suspect, or are encouraged to believe.  I've been working out a thesis of sorts in the rough and tumble cock pit of the right-of- center blogosphere, where Al Gore has been taking lumps as a "Chicken Green"  for preaching conservation values while living excessively and unsustainably, and it boils down to this:

Interests trump positions if the dealer doesn't cheat.  If he does, though, all bets are off.

It is no accident that Gore comes under fire after the self-congratulatory gushing of the "Greenest" academy awards and the two Oscars won by his documentary on global warming "An Inconvenient Truth".  He probably deserves it.  As a rule, practice what you preach is a requirement if you want to convince others to follow your example, and Gore is unfortunately vulnerable here, which is a pity because then the messenger becomes more important than the message. 

Certainly, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune are part of the job for leaders working to set the national agenda or change our collective behavior.  Those assaults brought on themselves, however, with the inevitable feet of clay, become a lightning rod for movement detractors.  Lord knows there are plenty of stones lying about and in the absence of anyone blameless, one can easily find others quite willing to cast them.  Something in the American psyche seems to love the group activity of setting up pins just to knock them down. 

We also detest hypocrisy, although will make allowances for our tarnished idols when their transgressions are outweighed by the benefits of their efforts (or by their conversion, if claiming to be born again: today's equivalent of medieval indulgences or perhaps Monopoly's "Get out of jail free" card). 

This is indeed all about values, and whether they will be used to unite or divide us.  It is also about  class resentment of the moralizing of cultural elites, and the disenfranchisement of those who live on the land and are most deeply effected by natural resource management decisions made outside their communities and reinforced by more numerous suburban and urban voters.  It is about private property and shared resources that everyone uses but nobody owns.  It is about the proper role of government, of private enterprise, and most of all about whose behavior should change, and how, and why.

These are huge factors and make for a very tense and politicized conflict.  There is another way to approach it, however, and its strength is that it is both "values based" and inclusive.  It starts by recognizing that conservation is mainstream and justifiably a conservative as well as liberal value.  I wrote the following yesterday in the comments at Tigerhawk to elaborate:

...I refuse to accept that conservatives don't care about conservation. After all, the root word is the same ,and not by accident. Jim DiPeso of Republicans for Environmental Protection - yes there is such an entity and they are far from RINOs [Republicans In Name Only] - makes the comparison crystal clear:

"The truth is that conservation IS conservative, rooted in traditional conservative values. Such as:

Freedom and responsibility
Thrift
Patriotism
And prudence -- the cardinal conservative virtue.

These values are our values. These words are our words. We must not allow them to be stolen from us, twisted into weapons, and brandished in our faces."

It was not just the grand old men of the Grand Old Party who once made conservation a signature part of the Republican agenda: TR, Baxter and the rest. Hoover Institution Fellow Terry Anderson notes;

"This Republican action marked the beginning of the political conservation movement that ultimately grew into today’s environmental leviathan. In fact, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Wilderness Act, and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act all have deep Republican roots."

Furthermore, there are many self-identified conservationists who understand the value and importance of market forces and private initiative for sustaining the lands and waters we and other species need to survive. But don't take my word for it. Steve Sailor of vdare.com makes the point exceedingly well:

"(M)any environmentalists understand market economics much better today than in the past. (For example, Wilson's new book The Future of Life is reasonably hardheaded about need to enlist the mighty engine of capitalism in the preservation of biodiversity.) In fact, the greens sometimes grasp economics better than the libertarians, who often fail to comprehend the crucial role of government in establishing and maintaining property rights. For instance, the oceans are being badly overfished today precisely because nobody owns a fish until they've caught it. That's why professional fishermen support stringent government controls on their right to make a living, including even the recent two year shut down of the entire New England deep sea fishing industry. Left to the free market, the fishermen know they'd put themselves permanently out of business."

There is no reason that I can see, aside from the politics of division and short-sighted self interest, for  those on either side of the aisle to denigrate or devalue our shared interest in clean air, clean water, nice places to live and work and recreate, and the values - individual as well as collective - that we place on special places. We may differ on the best means for achieving these goals, but for the vast majority of us conservation matters and has to be part of any policy making calculus. It is, after all, a great act of patriotism to conserve the homeland for the benefit of future generations...

I'll close for now where I left things at Tigerhawk with two questions:

1) What do you cherish about the place where you make your home and

2) What has changed in the time you have lived there?

The answer to the first question will highlight what we value about home and community and place and the answer to the second will underscore that changes are at work, larger than ourselves or our individual communities, that impact these values.

This, I believe, is where conservation questions should start. When I ask these questions in Northwest Connecticut - where every town jealously guards its right to home rule and its unique identity - people overwhelmingly talk about the rural character of our communities and the environmental qualities of this landscape. They all say they value clean water, farms and farmland, the look and feel of our small towns, the importance of community and the natural beauty of our surroundings. They all express concern about the rapid growth of development, the loss of affordable housing, the collapse of our farm-based economy, the loss of open space, and changes in the demographics of our communities.

These are shared interests. Understanding the root causes of these changes is the hard part and we come at it from very different perspectives and with different expectations about what can and should be done. But they are shared interests and have everything to do with the role that conservation can play in safeguarding what we value and sustaining what is special about our environment, our landscape and our communities through the changes that come.

Like the Frog says...

More: The National Review agrees with me...as does the American Spectator.  I see a bandwagon!

Bee Gone!

Pity the poor pollinator.  The BBC reports a collapse in honey bee colonies across the United States of unprecedented proportions.  Between 30% and 70% of commercially maintained bee boxes are simply empty.  The bees have gone.

"The crisis threatens numerous crops, from avocados to kiwis and California almonds - one of the most profitable in the US.

'I have never seen anything like it,' California beekeeper David Bradshaw, 50, told the New York Times.

'Box after box after box are just empty. There's nobody home...'

The investigators are exploring a range of possibilities to explain the losses, which they are calling 'colony collapse disorder'. These include viruses, a fungus and poor bee nutrition.

They are also studying pesticides banned in some European countries to see if they are affecting the bees' innate ability to navigate their way back to their hives.

In some cases, bees are being raised to survive a shorter offseason, to be ready to pollinate once the almond bloom begins in February. This could have lowered their immunity to viruses.

Mites have also damaged bee colonies, and the insecticides used to try to kill them are harming the ability of queen bees to spawn as many workers."

It is worth recalling that Western Honey Bee species found in America is actually native to Europe, Africa and Western Asia.  Native pollen bees, which do not produce honey in commercial quantities, are actually better pollinators as both the males and females pollinate the crop.    I have not yet seen research showing the same colony collapse disorder in the more than 3,500 native North American bee species, although many pollinating insects are under threat from pesticides and other stresses known to affect honey bees.  Another wrinkle in the story is the relationship between both native and non-native bees and invasive exotic plant species, some of which (tartarian honeysuckle, purple loosestrife) are used preferentially by certain bees as forage.  Some honey producers have expressed concern about efforts to control loosestrife - not that this invasive plant is in any great danger of eradication in any but the most localized and smallest of its infestations.

The economic consequences of a honey bee collapse for the production of important cash crops could be quite severe.  One has to think, however, that the reliance on a single, introduced species to provide the bulk of commercial pollination services would appear to be asking for this kind of crisis.  Just as monocultures of Elms fell like dominoes to Dutch Elm Disease, one can easily imagine the same thing at work with honey bees in North America. 

Newsflash: Dow Takes a Swan Dive as GreenmanTim Opines on Page One of the Wall Street Journal

Actually, I am quite flattered.  It may not come as a surprise to those of you who know me that I am not a subscriber to the Wall Street Journal On-Line.  Those of you who are, however, or who have a copy of the print edition, might wish to read Page One for this day February 26th, 2007 entitled :"Why Birdwatchers Now carry iPods and Laser Pointers" for which I was interviewed and in which an entire paragraph is devoted to why this particular birdwatcher doesn't.

Reporter Andrew LaVallee very kindly contacted me after coming across this blog and my post The Casual Twitcher, which he felt expressed a different take on the technological revolution underway in the hobby which might add to the article he was writing.  He thoughtfully provided me with a link to the complete article, in which I was delighted to read the following:

"For me, it's much more about the simple joys of discovery. I appreciate what technology can do, but I don't want the distraction, and I don't want a barrier," says Tim Abbott, a 38-year-old birder in North Canaan, Conn., who confines himself to binoculars. "I don't want to spend all my time wishing I could recharge my computer so I could get the bird atlas going."

Yes, I did say that, and it is a true reflection of one who is not a Luddite but neither a Gearhead and learned to bird in Africa where charging up the laptop, let alone keeping sand out of it or keeping it from being stolen, was a considerable challenge best dispensed with.

I'm not sure how long this link will work, but you can read the whole thing here.

"The Misplaced Bones of William Dawes": With Apologies to Longfellow

Listen my children and let us pause
by the resting place of William Dawes,
Who was laid in earth, in Ninety-nine;
Those who would follow the Freedom Trail's Line
To this patriot's tomb must hear of its flaws.

He said to his friend, one Paul Revere,
When they met on the road that fateful night,
"Two may succeed where one may fail
To alert the militia before day-light,--
I went by land, and you came by sea;
And in Lexington by dawn we'll be."
Together they rode and spread the word,
And when a British patrol was heard,
Revere was caught, but Dawes had spurred.

When the cause was won, with an honored name,
Eclipsed though it was by a silversmith's fame,
His mortal remains were to dust returned,
But precisely where was soon unlearned;
In the family tomb, by King's Chapel side
The SAR long claimed, with pride,
Resides the Dawes who made the ride
Yet things are not what they appear
Despite what those on Duck Tours hear.

A document has come to light,
That proves this tale is far from right,
The Central-Burying-Ground, not King's,
Received his bones when his soul took wings,
And this makes sense, for when he died,
The bone-yard was full by the Chapel side,
And yet this was not his final ride;
In Forest Hills, in Jamaica Plain,
His bones were laid in earth again.

As to why his remains were thus exhumed,
Brought to Forest Hills, then re-entombed,
The Sexton's log no mention makes
(Assuming these records are real, not fakes)--
Still the pages state the year and day;
In 1882 he lay
In the plot of his first wife, Mehitable May,
Thus Liberty loses, then finds a Son,
Who rode with Revere to Lexington.

With apologies to H.W. Longfellow, and for J. L. Bell of Boston 1775: CWCID

Switched at Birth?

Not everyone is lucky enough to be a dead ringer for a really attractive celebrity.  I, myself, am occasionally compared to Jack Black, or worse, to Mickey Dolenz, but at least I'm man enough to admit it.  Two of my great grandparents (mother of the bride and father of the groom) are remarkably like two actors who graced the large and small screens in the 1960s.   See if you can figure out who the dopplegangers might be for my great grandmother Alice Schoonmaker Livingston and great grandfather Charles Henry Abbott.

Yes indeed, they resemble no one so much as Mary Poppins (at least attired similarly to Julie Andrews) and the first television portrayer of Gomez Addams, John Astin.  But why not be the judge yourselves?  As always, click to enlarge.

  Uncanny, I call it.

Meanwhile, there is still time to avail yourselves of the opportunity to find good hearted humor at my ancestors' expense by weighing in in the 4th, and possibly last Walking the Berkshires Family Archive Caption Contest.  The estimable Bill West seems set to walk away with the winner's laurels once again, but this time uncontested, and I know there are witticisms just waited to burst forth into the limelight to give him a run for his money.

I await your brilliant contributions here.  And that means you, Charlottesvillain and Tigerhawk.  Don't let the family side down!

Score One for the Blueskins: Abraham Swartwout Gives The Cloak Off His Back

Betsy Ross had a better publicist, but if Abraham Swartwout hadn't offered up his cloak of "Dutch Blue", the "stars and stripes" would not have been carried into battle for the very first time in upstate New York but on some other field of the Revolutionary War.  During St. Leger's Expedition down the Mohawk Valley in an effort to link up with Burgoyne during the Saratoga Campaign, a plucky force of 750 men under Colonel Peter Gansevoort made a stand at Fort Stanwix against a force of more than 2000 loyalists, Canadians, Indians, British and Hessians.  Among the fort's defenders was Captain Swartwout of Poughkeepsie, New York.

Benning Lossing's Pictorial Field-Book of the Revolution picks up the story:

"The garrison was...without a flag when the enemy appeared, but their pride and ingenuity soon supplied one in conformity to the pattern adopted by the Continental Congress. Shirts were cut up to form the white stripes, bits of scarlet cloth were joined for the red, and the blue ground for the stars was composed of a cloth cloak belonging to Captain Abraham Swartwout, of Dutchess county, who was then in the fort. Before sunset the curious mosaic-work standard, as precious to the beleaguered garrison as the most beautifully-wrought flag of silk and needle-work, was floating over one of the bastions."

This was August 3, 1777.  Not two months previously - on Flag Day, to be precise - the Continental Congress resolved:

"that the flag of the United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white: that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation." 

Patriots in Dutchess County New York were called "Blueskins" by the Tory Press.  Captain Swartwout, whose coat was blue but whose name in Dutch translates as "Blackwood", did his full patriotic duty.  Two of his sons later served their country with General's ranks.  Nonetheless, he also displayed a thrifty streak, and because of this history records his contribution.  He submitted a bill for 8 shillings to replace the cloak he donated "for the colors." 

Eastward, the Course of Empire: A Footnote to the First Opium War

15 days out from Canton, China on the homeward voyage to Philadelphia, the ship "Lehigh" heard news of war.  From the log of that voyage, kept by my ancestor Henry Morse Olmsted who appears in this blog from time to time, comes the record of their exchange:

"February 19th, 1840     First part moderate breeze from westward.  Ship in sight ahead at 3:30 p.m.  Spoke the ship Dumfries of Greenock from Singapore bound for London.  Reported that the British India Government has declared war with China and that the dispatches has gone forward from Singapore to Canton on 4th February and also that the fleet consisting of several ships of the line and 2 or 3 steam vessels were expected every hour to arrive at Singapore on their way to China and also that Admiral Maitland is dead."

This was the 1st Opium War, fought between the British East India Company and the Qing Empire between 1839 and 1842 and which established British dominance in the China Trade and forced the resumption of the opium trade.  One might assume from the log entry that the war itself was news to my ancestor, but in fact he had been in Canton (Ghangzhou) since the previous August and hardly could have missed the escalation in hostilities that lead to the seizure of Hong Kong by the British on August 23, 1839.  Nor would he have been ignorant of the fact that the British community had withdrawn from Canton and their Chief Superintendent Charles Elliot was enforcing a trade embargo on the Chinese that lead to the sinking of 29 Chinese ships. 

What was news was the flotilla of reinforcements expected at Singapore.  In June, 1840, 16 British Warships sailed to Hong Kong and the following year attacked Canton, and presumably those reported by the ship "Dumfries" were among them.  As for Rear Admiral Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland KCB  S^t FMRG, he famously accepted the surrender of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1815 after Waterloo:

"After escaping from the field of Waterloo on 18 June Napoleon arrived in Rochefort on 3 July hoping to find a passport for the United States. At that time Bellerophon was blockading Rochefort and on 10 July messengers from Napoleon arrived on board her to enquire about passports. Maitland informed them that there were none and that no French ships would be permitted to sail. While the emissaries were still on board orders arrived saying that Napoleon should be brought to Torquay. On 15 July Maitland sent his barge to bring Napoleon on board. Bellerophon reached Torbay on 24 July and two days later was ordered round to Plymouth where Admiral Keith came on board to inform Napoleon that he would now be addressed as General Bonaparte and that no communication would be permitted with the shore. Bellerophon anchored off the breakwater and was surrounded by small craft packed with people hoping to catch a glimpse of the prisoner. On 6 August Bellerophon anchored off Berry Head. The following day Napoleon removed to the Northumberland and thence to St Helena and Bellerophon took those of his staff who did not wish to follow him round to Spithead."

Maitland was Commander in Chief in India at the time of his death at sea off Bombay, November 30th, 1839.

When Olmsted returned to China in 1843, British dominance had been asserted and the war was over.  The Chinese were forced to pay war reparations as well as accept British Opium (grown in India). European hegemony toward the Celestial Empire intensified throughout the 19th century - through a Second Opium War, the Boxer Rebellion and the Open Door Policy - but its harbinger was the British Fleet en route from India, and ships like "Dumfries" speaking news of war and retribution across the water.

Ice Watch

Folks in Kent Connecticut have a tradition at this time of year that climate change may well do in.  For the last couple of years, in fact, the Housatonic River has been largely ice free, which has made it touch to hold the volunteer fire department's annual Ice Watch contest.  A tradition in Kent since 1978, tickets are sold at $2 a piece starting on Valentine's Day for contestants who try to guess the day, hour and minute when the ice cover will melt and go out downstream.  A ticking clock on a tripod is planted on the ice and once it moves 100 ft. downstream the clock stops and the winner gets to take home the total amount in the pot.

According to the Kent Volunteer Fire Department:

"Even in a year when the ice doesn’t form or last until Feb. 14, the contest is transformed into a drawing and a winning guess is pulled out of the pile. In all the years since 1978, there’ve only been five such drawings. Past winners have split as much as $3,650 with the fire department. In 2003, the ice finally went out at 1:07 p.m. on March 18 and the total pot was $2,604."

I didn't lay my $2 down this year, but I'm betting the ice goes before March.

Update (4/9/2007)  And a good thing, too, as the tripod drifted downstream on March 16th this year.

Too Late for Lexington But Not for Bunker Hill : Nathaniel Abbott and the Andover Minutemen

The Lexington Alarm reached Andover, Massachusetts by 5 o'clock that April morning, but the minutemen got a rather late start and arrived too late to participate in the opening engagements of the American Revolution.  Oxen may have been "left in the field...the food untasted on the table" as one Andover history written in the late 19th century recalls, but this same volume includes a journal excerpt from Thomas Boynton, a sergeant in Captain Benjamin Ames' Andover company of Minutemen, who recorded the following for April 19, 1775 :

"This morning, being Wednesday, about the sun's rising the town was alarmed with the news that the Regulars was on their march to Concord.  Upon which the town mustered and about 10 o'clock marched onward to Concord.  In Tewksbury news came that the Regulars had fired on our men in Lexington, and had killed 8.  In Bilricke (sic) news came that the enemy were killing and slaying our men in Concord.  Bedford we had news that the enemy had killed two of our men and had retreated back; we shifted our course and persued (sic) after them as fast as possible, but all in vain; the enemy had the start of 3 or 4 miles...after we came into Concord road we saw houses burning and others plundered and dead bodies of the enemy lying by the way, others taken prisoners.  About eight at night our regiment came to a halt in notime (sic).  The next morning we came into Cambridge and there abode."

One of the Andover men in Benjamin Ames' Company was my ancestor Nathaniel Abbot(t), the third and youngest son of Deacon Joseph Abbot(t), a member of the Town Committee of Safety, and Deborah Blanchard, whose maiden name has long been a middle name in our family (including my own and that of my father and grandfather before me).  The second (t) in our Abbott surname, incidently, has been added or omitted as each generation favored, and has been used exclusively in our branch of the family since the early 1800s.

Nathaniel Abbot(t) had other relations in his unit.  His cousin Isaac was 2nd Lieutenant, and several other Abbot(t)s and Blanchards marched alongside him.  Ames Company also included African American soldiers not listed on the rolls during the alarm but who would serve two month's later in the thick of the fighting at Bunker Hill.  Among them were Philip Abbot, "the Negro servant of Nathan Abbot", and Salem Poor, who purchased his freedom in 1769 for 27£ and was to figure prominently in the battle, credited with shooting British Lt. Col. James Abercrombie.

Captain Ames' unit was one of two minute companies mustered in Andover and was part of Colonel Frye's Regiment. Ames' Company may have been late to respond to the Lexinton Alarm but they were right in the thick of things at Bunker Hill. On June 16, 1775, Nathaniel Abbot(t) and his comrades assembled on Cambridge Common and received orders to march to Charlestown where they worked through the night and into the next morning entrenching a redoubt on Breed's Hill, under fire from the British shipping and batteries in Boston.

The misnamed "Battle of Bunker Hill" has become part of the American creation myth.  Twice the redcoats advanced up the slope and twice they were repulsed with heavy losses.  The third time they reached the redoubt and drove the defenders over Charlestown Neck.  It was a Pyrrhic victory that cost the British nearly 50% casualties (226 killed and 828 wounded, including 92 officers), causing British General Clinton to remark in his diary that "A few more such victories would have surely put an end to British dominion in America." The patriot forces lost 140 killed, 270 wounded and 30 taken prisoner, or a bit less than 30% casualties.  Inside the redoubt, Colonel Frye's regiment lost 15 killed and 39 wounded. Captain Ames Company lost 3 killed and 8 wounded (1 mortally).  Among the dead was African American private Philip Abbot. 

My ancestor Nathaniel Abbot(t) lost a coat during the retreat but managed to escape with his unit and was later discharged August 20, 1775.  He went on to serve as 1st Lieutenant and later Captain in the 11th Massachusetts Regiment(Francis/Tupper's), which fought a rearguard action during the retreat from Ticonderoga at Hubbardton, Vermont and was at Saratoga in 1777 before joining Washington's Army at Valley Forge and taking part in the Battle of Monmouth the following year.  There is no record of Nathaniel Abbot(t)'s service in the muster rolls after September, 1778, and he subsequently relocated with his family to Wilton, NH, where he was a shoemaker until his death in 1791.  He was the last in our branch of the family to live in Andover until my parents relocated there in 1991, 200 years after his death. 

"They That Go Down To The Sea In Ships": The Remarkable Memoir of Captain Thomas Chatfield

As my family's genealogist and curator of an extensive family archive spanning more than two centuries, I fully appreciate the great labor of love involved in David Churbuck's transcribing an extraordinary memoir entitled Reminiscences of Captain Thomas Chatfield, which was written by his great-great grandfather, and posting it to his blog. 

In a brief introductory preface, Churbuck explains that "Thomas Chatfield was a whaling captain, officer in the Union Navy during the Civil War, and then a mariner and sailmaker in the Cape Cod, Massachusetts village of Cotuit Port. He was born in 1831 and died in 1922. He wrote this memoir of his first thirty-four years in 1905 for his four daughters."

This is fascinating reading, a remarkable and exceptionally detailed first hand account of life at sea spanning the years 1848-1865.  I found it a real page turner, which is high praise indeed for an electronic manuscript that occupies 73 pages in Microsoft Word and can be read in eleven installments here via WordPress. 

What Churbuck has done is made a unique piece of history from his family record available and accessible on-line in the broadest possible sense.  Doubtless there are reams of similar memoirs in the collections of places like Mystic Seaport or the New Bedford Whaling Museum, but one has the sense that the quality of his writing and broad experiences of Captain Chatfield constitute a most singular record that would otherwise be unavailable to readers or researchers alike.  I have more than a passing knowledge of the subject matter and found many things that were fresh and even surprising in the narrative.

Here's a taste:

"We were off the north coast of New Zealand, and at daylight we were in the midst of a school of sperm whales. They proved to be a school of young males. Sixty barrel bulls – whalemen call them – such as the old bulls, who will tolerate no interlopers in their harem, had driven out of the herd: and being young, active, and full of fight are dangerous fellows to deal with. It was blowing half a gale, and the sea was so rough that it was a question as to whether it was safe to lower the boats. But we were after oil, and so decided to try for it. I struck, or rather your Uncle Bethuel, who steered my boat, struck a whale in a few minutes after we were clear of the ship, getting in one iron only. There is always two irons (Harpoons) ready, and the boat-steerer (harpooner) is expected to strike the whale with both; but, as in this case, is not always able to do so. The first iron is attached to the end of the line, the other to one end of a short warp, the other end having a hawline in it through which the main line passes and is only of use if the first iron pulls out of the whale. In striking, the boat got half full of water, and I dropped off a hundred fathoms in order to bail out the water, secure the sail, and get ready for the fight, which from the fact that the whale instead of running remained in the same place, was standing on his tail showing his head and part of his body out of water, pirouetting round and so bringing his eye to bear in all directions, making for his enemy. I was sure I had on my hands. We hauled up to within ten fathoms – the usual distance – got the second iron into the crotch, then took the oars ready for action: and just at that time the fellow got his eye on the boat. He did not hesitate a second but made his rush at once. Had the sea been smooth I might have dodged him, and perhaps killed him as he passed, but it was too rough for that, and he came quick, jaw dropped, head above water, at an angle of forty degrees, and over the boat he came. All I could do was to drive the second iron and the lance deep into his ugly head, for I didn’t want those sharp things in the water with us. He snapped his jaws together, cutting the boat into two pieces, rolled over on one side, smashing one half with his head, and threw the other half in the air with his jaw, making kindling wood of both. The first thing I discovered was that my feet were entangled in the line, or perhaps the lance warp, and that if he started to either run or sound it would be the last of me. You may be sure I doubled myself up, and with my hands cleared the line from my feet quick. Then I looked around for my men, and could see only three, Bethuel and the after oarsman (Martin) were not in sight. I gave an oar to each of the three men, and directed them to swim off to the mate’s boat which was lying five hundred yards distant: all the time the whale was thrashing about striking with his flukes snapping his jaws, sometimes underwater for a few seconds. After seeing the three men started towards the mate’s boat I looked again for Bethuel and Martin, and I saw Martin clinging to a piece of the boat’s bow still being enough to hang him up, and Bethuel (hardly able to keep afloat) with his feet within a few inches of the whale’s nose. I called him to swim off at right angles to the whale, but he did not seem to understand. So I looked around for another oar, and found two which I put under his arms. This gave him confidence, and he started after the other three men. Then I looked to see how Martin was faring. (The whale had settled under water, and it was more fearful) and found that he had climbed onto the piece of boat, and with a piece of wreckage was paddling off to leeward, submerged to the waist, but still making some headway. I learned afterwards that when the men left the boat Martin (Who could not swim or thought he couldn’t) had clinched Bethuel, and they had gone down together, and that Bethuel had a hard struggled to break away from him, which he finally did by getting his knees against Martin’s breast and then straightening out. Then both came to the surface. Martin found that he could swim, and reached that piece of boat. Bethuel so exhausted that he could hardly keep afloat until I gave him the oars. The men being safe, it was time for me to look out for myself. Just then I heard the whale blow close behind me, and he was so near that when I started to swim with the first stroke, the sole of my foot came in contact with the edge of his flukes. I naturally looked behind me, and there was that tail ten feet in the air, and apparently right on head, and it came down like a flash, and struck the water with a noise as a clap of thunder, and the spray and foam completely buried me. I overtook Bethuel and Martin, and kept with them until we reached the boat, all pretty well exhausted and all pretty sick from the effects of the saltwater we had in our stomachs. Poor Mr. Bunker, he was a timid sort of man, and the first words I heard him say were: “My God, Mr. Chatfield, I didn’t dare come any nearer. It would not do to get two boats stove and both crews drowned.” Which was true enough. We went to the ship, which was a short distance off, and after talking it over concluded it was too rough to risk any more boats. So we ran down with the ship, and tried to kill the whale from the bows: but he settled and let the ship go over him, and in a short time he started off to windward, and we soon lost sight of him for good and all."

Set aside some time and read the whole thing.