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EXPERIENCE OF A GREEN HAND IN THE WHALING VOYAGE.

      The Department of State has been furnished with a document from F. M. Ringgold, United States Consul at Paita, in the Philippine Islands[sic], which gives some details of especial interest to green hands who are proposing to go a whaling voyage. The document is mainly devoted to an account of the whale trade as pursued and carried on from several ports of the United States. The writer, however, makes some statements upon the subject to which we have devoted this article which are worthy of attention. They are important, because they came in an official shape. He says shipping masters to whom is confided the making up of a whaler’s crew, have runners in the interior of New England and New York, to take up green hands. Whaling crews are mostly obtained from this source. Our consul then proceeds to state graphically the picture of the voyage.

      He charges that when the time of sailing arrives, all hands are huddled on board without a chance of looking into their chests for the contents of which they have given a receipt which is to be deducted from their share or "lay." Each sailor is charged upon the owner’s books with an average outfit of seventy dollars. By many owners interest is charged on the outfit from the day of sailing until the return of the vessel. When the sailor opens his chest he feels as we may suppose the man did who "fell among thieves." He finds that the contents of the chest are insufficient for his comfort, and that they are not worth twenty-five dollars in all. However, to compensate for this want of comfortable clothing, he may procure supplies from the owner’s slop-chest, which has been providently placed on board, by paying a handsome profit.

      The lay or share of a green hand is from a hundred-and-eightieth to a two-hundredth; that is, one barrel of oil for every one hundred and eighty or two hundred that are taken. A sperm whale ship will take, on a voyage of four years, 1,200 barrels of sperm oil. This is, the consul says, a liberal average. The share of a green hand on a hundred and-eightieth lay will be two hundred and ten gallons. But from this, ten per cent is to be deducted for leakage and shrinkage, and frequently three per cent for insurance, although if the vessel is

lost, and is fully covered by insurance, the owners recover all and the men get nothing, because the charge is not made upon the men until the vessel gets home.

      This is forcibly explained by an old sailor. "The owner plays an open and shut game. If the vessel gets home we pay the insurance, but if she is lost, they pay the insurance and pocket the profits."

      Mr. Ringgold thus sums up the result of a seaman’s voyage of four years: –

      The consul states that 3,000 or 4,000 young men yearly sail from the United States, and becoming disgusted, desert, and either from shame or moral corruption, never return. The cause he attributes to small pay and bad treatment. Subjoined to the document is an estimated value of the whaling vessels of the United States which he fixes with their expenses, equipment, interest, &c., at twenty-four million, and the value of the annual amount of oil taken at twelve million, which shows a handsome yearly profit, and one that ought to induce owners to feel that they can afford to treat their sailors better.

"Experience of a Green Hand in the Whaling Voyage."
      Hunt’s Merchants’ Magazine and Commercial Review.
Vol. 41, No. 3 (September 1859)
    pp.391-392

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