The Watch's Wild Cry - A Voyage Aboard the Whaling Vessel Clara Bell
by By Robert F. Weir Edited by Andrew W. German 16 Oct 02:44 UTC
At the age of nineteen, Robert F. Weir of West Point, New York, ran away to sea, where he spent the next ten years of his life. Assuming the pseudonym Robert Wallace, Weir sailed aboard the bark Clara Bell out of New Bedford, Massachusetts, in 1855 for a voyage to the whaling grounds of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans.
Upon the death of one of the Clara Bell‘s boatsteerers (harpooners), Weir was promoted to this position of great responsibility. Recording daily events aboard the Clara Bell over the course of nearly three years, from 1855 to 1858, Weir’s journal vividly relates the whaleman’s life, both in prose and in detailed hand-drawn illustrations.
This is a timeless account of life on a nineteenth-century whaler, from the misery of seasickness and the rigors of sea voyages; to the thrill and violence of whale hunts; to the sights, sounds, and foods of foreign cultures. The Weir journal is a staff favorite at Mystic Seaport Museum for its compelling story, beautiful illustrations, and immaculate penmanship.
About the Author:
Robert F. Weir (1836–1905), the son of a prominent American artist, earned his living in the various careers of seaman, naval officer, engineer, and freelance artist. His sailing career spanned the better part of a decade, first on whaling cruises and later as a junior engineering officer on the USS Richmond during the Civil War. During and shortly after the war, he pursued his own artistic talents, supplying illustrations to Harper’s Weekly, then made his career as a civil engineer in New York.
Andrew W. German is former director of the publications department at Mystic Seaport Museum and coauthor of multiple books on Mystic and whaling, including America and the Sea: A Maritime History and The Charles W. Morgan: The World’s Last Wooden Whaleship. He lives in Mystic, Connecticut.
Excerpt
As part of the Hudson Valley elite—a mix of literary, artistic, and financial first-families—at some point, the Weirs had connected with the family of William N. Chadwick, a New York-born industrialist who had settled in Cohoes, north of Albany, in 1841 to develop textile mills there. He served as president of the Harmony Cotton Mills and became a leader of the community. The Chadwicks had six children, the youngest of whom, Anna, was two years older than Robert F. Weir. Like Weir, she was musical and interested in creative writing; she was also outgoing and attracted several young suitors. In the 1850s, she attended a boarding school in New York City, and somewhere between the city and Cohoes, Robert and Anna developed their relationship.
The very large Morris family was near the top of the Hudson Valley elite. Perhaps earlier, but definitely during his time at the foundry, Weir became close to Lewis Morris, son of Richard Rutherford Morris, a wealthy farmer of Pelham, New York, whose grandfather, Lewis Morris, had signed the Declaration of Independence. “Lou” Morris was nine years older than Weir, but at Cold Spring, he was Weir’s friend and confidant, encouraging him to “finish my course at the foundry” when he became disillusioned. Lewis Morris died at New York City on March 28, 1855. In his journal, Weir would imply that he felt somehow responsible. Possibly a foolish prank had gone wrong, injuring his friend, or possibly Lewis Morris was ill. Beyond the death of his friend, it has also been suggested that Weir had disgraced himself by gambling.
Whatever heavy weight of guilt he felt, 19-year-old Robert F. Weir left Cold Spring on August 3, 1855, apparently without a clear idea of where to go to hide from his family. The idea of seeking distance and anonymity at sea may have been suggested to him, or perhaps he had read enough to think of seafaring, or whaling, as an escape. Since Richard Henry Dana had interrupted his studies at Harvard to go to sea to restore his eyesight, then published his experiences as Two Years Before the Mast in 1840, seafaring had the cachet of adventure and anonymity for privileged young men.
For those without seafaring experience but with a thirst for adventure, the whaling industry offered the most opportunity. Europeans had developed the processes for hunting and processing whales at sea by the 1500s. After Nantucket, Massachusetts, mariners took up whaling in the late 1600s, the industry spread as New England merchants and mariners sought new commodities. The insulating blubber of the right whales hunted by Europeans and early New Englanders was rendered into oil for various uses, but Nantucketers expanded the industry and its products when they encountered sperm whales in the open ocean.
Sperm whales produced a finer oil, and the waxy spermaceti contained in their forehead structure called the “case” could be molded into clean, brightburning candles. By the 1760s, when whaling expanded from Nantucket to Bedford on the southeast Massachusetts coast, it had become a characteristic New England maritime industry. After the Revolutionary War, Bedford was rebuilt as New Bedford, and New England whalers pursued the hunt through the South Atlantic, rounding Cape Horn into the Pacific Ocean in the 1790s.
After the War of 1812, the demand for whale products increased, partly fueled by the use of sperm whale oil to light the lamps of US lighthouses. By the 1830s, New Bedford had become the leading American whaling port, and the industry itself was perhaps the fifth most valuable American enterprise. Right whale oil was processed into oil for lighting, oil for lubricating machinery, and soap, and sperm whale oil was processed into finer, clean-burning oil for interior lighting and lighthouses and fine oil for lubricating delicate machinery, from watches to the looms of the rapidly expanding New England textile industry.
Spermaceti candles remained in high demand, and there was increasing demand for the long strands of pliable baleen from the mouths of filter-feeding right and bowhead whales, which could be manufactured into many flexible items. In 1846, when Robert F. Weir was 10, the American whaling industry reached a peak of 735 vessels. The fleet then began to decline, although the single most profitable year was 1853, and New Bedford’s fleet would peak at 329 vessels in 1857.
A fleet of 700 vessels, about half of which sailed from New Bedford, required more than 20,000 men. A whaling crew required a few men skilled in whaling, a few experienced seamen, and 15 to 20 inexperienced “greenhands,” who provided muscle and learned their work during the voyage. In earlier decades, whaling crews could be raised locally, but by the 1830s, whaling owners relied on a steady supply of restless teenage boys from interior New England and New York and island men from places where whaleships called, including the Azores in the Atlantic and the many islands of the Pacific.
By the 1850s, there were numerous published accounts of young men who had gone whaling, which might inspire others to follow them. Francis Allyn Olmsted had made a whaling voyage out of New London, Connecticut, to recruit his health after graduating from Yale, and he published his account as Incidents of a Whaling Voyage in 1841. Irish emigrant J. Ross Browne had worked on a riverboat before he sailed out of Fairhaven, Massachusetts, in 1842 and published his account as Etchings of a Whaling Cruise in 1846. That year, Reuben Delano published his Wanderings and Adventures of Reuben Delano, Being a Narrative of Twelve Years Life in a Whale Ship.
The best-known work on whaling, by New York native Herman Melville, was the 1851 novel Moby-Dick, or The Whale. Melville had sailed aboard the Fairhaven bark Acushnet in 1841. In the year that Weir headed for sea, Charles Nordhoff published his account, Whaling and Fishing. William B. Whitecar, a young Philadelphian who headed to New Bedford two months before Robert Weir decided to run off to sea, sailed aboard the whaleship Pacific and, upon his return, published his account as Four Years Aboard the Whaleship. Embracing Cruises in the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, and Antarctic Oceans. In the Years 1855,’6,’7,’8,’9, in 1860.
Like many before him, Robert F. Weir traveled east, most likely following William Whitecar’s route by steamboat from New York to Fall River, and then by train the few miles further to New Bedford. There, like Whitecar, he was likely intercepted by a “landshark” who made his living representing boardinghouses and shipping agents to naïve arrivals. Weir seems to have been directed to the outfitters Barney & Spooner and to a boardinghouse operated by the widow Hope Howland Doane at 23 South Second Street. Boardinghouses like hers lodged a mix of whalemen home from the sea and young men waiting to go to sea.
Whitecar found boardinghouse food barely better than that provided at sea, with an emphasis on salt beef and salt pork. While Weir’s fellow boarders may have taken advantage of the port’s numerous grog shops or even its houses of prostitution, he spent his free time during his two weeks reading. Although he did not mention it, Weir possibly visited the Seamen’s Bethel for a worship service, or to use the sailors’ reading room there.
Quakers James S. Barney and Charles M. Spooner operated as merchant tailors and outfitters at 25 North Water Street. In addition to selling clothing in the community, they assembled crews for whaleships, paid each man an advance, and provided him with a basic outfit of sailor’s clothing, possibly eating utensils, and a sea chest in which to store his possessions. Weir’s bill came to $48.71 for his cash advance and outfit, $14.00 for clothing from Henry Harris, and $8.00 for board to Mrs. Doane. The vessel’s agent then paid Barney & Spooner, leaving Weir indebted to the vessel for $70.71 before stepping aboard. With several years’ interest added, the sum would be deducted from his pay at the end of the voyage.
Whaling crews were not paid a standard wage. Rather, with the length of the voyage and the value of the whale products to be taken both uncertain, they were signed aboard for a set fraction of the proceeds once the cargo was delivered and costs were deducted. Each man’s share was called his lay. While a captain might merit a 1/15th lay, mates might receive from 1/20th to 1/55th, and the boatsteerers who harpooned the whales earned about 1/90th, an inexperienced greenhand like Weir would be offered a “long lay” of about 1/195th. Each man’s lay was confirmed on the Whalemen’s Shipping Paper, or articles of agreement for the voyage.
A formal contract, probably signed at the Barney & Spooner store and witnessed by them, this crew list would be carried by the captain on board and amended as men departed or were added to the crew. If a man deserted from the vessel, he forfeited his lay. If he was promoted, his lay was adjusted for the rest of the voyage.
Like many a young man who did not wish to be found by his family, Weir assumed a seafaring identity. Proud of his Scottish ancestry, he chose the surname of the legendary Scottish patriot, Sir William Wallace. As a whaleman, Robert Weir would be Robert Wallace, and he would accept a greenhand’s berth on the bark Clara Bell, managed by Robert L. Barstow of Mattapoisett, a small whaling and shipbuilding port seven miles east of New Bedford, and commanded by Captain Charles H. Robbins.