Nantucket Sleigh Ride

“Thar she blows,” comes the shout from above. “Whar she blows?” is the return bellow from the deck. “Two points abaft of the starboard beam,” comes the yell from the pointing lookout. “Back the mains, away the boats,” the master orders. There is a mad scramble of scurrying men intermingled with the barking commands; squeals from the blocks peal through the air. The boats plop down on the oily swells, four boats in all if there is more than one whale sighted.

The men slide down the manila lines and push off, rowing their hearts out as they head toward the feeding whale. The boat steerer guides the craft toward the mammal, and the dark shape emerges higher and higher as a wall of ebony blubber. The harpooner, his sinewy arm drawn back, his foot braced, takes aim as the boat nears.

Finally the iron sails through the air, untwirling the three-quarter-inch manila hemp. Another iron is flung into the soft blubber just forward of the hump. In pain the whale arches his mammoth body out of the water; he blows; he raises his flukes and sounds; more line spins out of the tub around the smoking chock pin in the bow of the boat. The leviathan surfaces and starts his run as the harpoon line is snagged to the small whaleboat.

The “Nantucket Sleigh Ride” is on! Lookouts on the whaler try to keep the disappearing boat in sight.

Suddenly, all motion stops. The whale sounds again; more line spins out. Then there is a fearsome, ungodly calm. Will the whale surface under the boat, cracking it like a thin crate, or mashing its teeth together to splinter everything and everybody? The whale surfaces, churning the water into a billion bubbles. The emerald sea color is laced with blood from the dying whale.

Finally the third mate, the boat steerer, switches places with the harpooner. He thrusts in a final iron, twists the lance, and the whale rolls, fin out, and dies.

It is over for the creature. But in the long history of whaling the narrative did not always follow this pattern, for often the whaleboat was towed so far that it was never recovered, or the snap of the whale's flukes would come down on the boat with such power that the craft's delicate frames would be crushed, leaving the whalers splashing in the icy waters to die.

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