Week of March 5, 2007

Chapter Five: In Which We Strike Our First and Last Whales:

General:

In the first paragraph of this chapter, it tells how busy the sailors were each day. There was repair work to be done after the storm, and many things to do in preparation for sighting the first whale.

Poor Mrs. Preble has been scandalized by little Phoebe shedding all her proper New England clothing and having her beautiful blonde hair trimmed to practically nothing! Phoebe's clothing was definitely for winter anyway, and way too hot for the South Seas. Merino is a wool, almost like cashmere, although perhaps back then it was coarser. Phoebe was probably very glad to be rid of scratchy wool, stockings, and flannel petticoats!

Imagine all those burly seamen standing around Phoebe as one of the crew cuts her hair.

Kate went into fits seeing her daughter not properly dressed as a young lady and with a new haircut, done by a crew member of all things. I’m sure it was very improper in her eyes. And then when the Captain said Phoebe needed a pair of breeches . . . she probably almost swooned!

It's true that Mrs. Preble was scandalized, but little Phoebe seemed to love it! Can't say that I blame her.

Phoebe has her hair cut and is dressed in Andy's pants, but evidently dresses in her petticoats and dress when they leave the ship. I wonder why. Pants would have been so much easier. I am surprised if they were abandoning ship why she was allowed to bring things like a dolls trunk and her foot stool.

Do you suppose Kate Preble was upset more by Phoebe wearing cotton or by wearing pants?

I'll bet Phoebe was tickled silly to have Andy's old, broken-in pants to wear on the ship.
Don’t you wish there was an illustration of her. I was just happy for Hitty that she still was willing to play with her and not spend all her time trying to do Andy things.

I wonder what his duties were. Actually I expect running errands for the Captain and helping with kitchen things.

Whaling:

Blubber peeled off in long strips as neat as it had been an apple. Whale oil ran all over the decks when the whale was hoisted up onto the ship. The ship reeked of it. Mrs. Preble said she had never smelled such a smell or seen such a mess of grease. When the boiling began there was thick black smoke from the fires.

Lots of cutting to be done by the crew – taking the blubber off, mincing hunks of blubber into pieces for the try-pots, and skimming off scraps that kept the fires going day and night.

Patch and Problems:

Patch is up to it again. Disgruntled because he wanted to go gamming (definition below), but Captain Preble decided that the cutting-in must be finished first. Patch evidently was feeling he was first in command instead of second. When off duty, he was often to be found in deep conversation with some of the men, and from his expression, Hitty felt no good would come of it.

Words passed between the Captain and Patch when the ship they wanted to visit sailed away. Before long the whole ship was divided as to which was in the right. Patch felt men had a right to visit; Captain Preble said that to stop work would result in lost time and perhaps considerable blubber and so in the end would affect their shares of the oil. It seems the Captain made the proper decision. Still, the men probably would have enjoyed a visit after so many months on the ship.

Captain Preble talked to his wife about Patch and expressed his feelings to her, but kept his thoughts from the crew.

More dissatisfaction amongst the crew over who had struck the final whale first. Since an extra share of oil was allowed the one whose iron first fastened itself in the whale, the men began to take sides among themselves. When they neglected their work to discuss and argue, Captain Preble was heard to declare that neither should benefit. That created even more dissatisfaction amongst the crew.

Patch and the Captain get into it again when they realize the ship can’t be saved from the fire aboard. They couldn’t agree on which direction to set out in so as to be rescued. Patch grew more and more excited (I supposed that superior feeling taking over again) and said the Captain’s plan was as good as murder and he would not stand by and be party to it. Several of the men refused to go aloft or take the Captain’s orders.

The Captain finally told Patch to steer his own course. He would rather go to the bottom than bicker with such a company of good-for-nothing landlubbers. I think the Captain was just glad to get rid of him at this point. It seems Kate wasn’t so sure the Captain had made the right decision, but she kept it to herself and stood by her husband. The most loyal crew members, Jeremy, Reuben and Bill Buckle stayed with the Preble family.

I wonder what happened to Patch and the others who left with him. He must've really been working the crew for quite awhile to get that many on his side. He's lucky that Capt Preble was a nice guy or he would've found himself swimming a long time before the ship caught fire.

It was touching when Hitty said she would never forget the men pulling away from the ship with hardly a backward look. “Such kindly, pleasant friends many of them had been to us.” Apparently quite a few of the men that left with Patch were decent men, but probably just got caught up in all the trouble being created. That is what can happen when there is a rotten apple in the barrel. That one person can create so much havoc, and in this instance, Patch sure divided the crew.

Hitty wondered what became of them – if they “fared any better than we, or if, as the Captain believed, they steered a course to certain disaster.” I wonder, too.

Fire:

The fire broke in the night. It was a calm night on the tropic seas. Weird that the fire would start in the night as opposed to the daytime when the fires were going strong and lots going on.

I wondered if Patch and his cronies started the fire. Of course, if he (they) did, they would be slitting their own throats, as their profit from the whale oil would be gone, as also perhaps their lives. Still, one wonders. In their minds, it would be good payback for the Captain, and, being a mean and/or foolish lot of men, the only thought they might have had was to destroy the Captain. They probably figured they would get off in the longboats okay before the fire spread too bad.

It seems rather dangerous to start a fire on a ship just to get even with the Captain, but I do wonder.

I kind of figured that no one started the fire. With all of that whale oil coating everything, it wouldn't have taken much for fire to get started. I agree that if Patch's plan was mutiny, he would have been punishing himself to start a fire, so I assume he didn't, but he clearly had undermined the captain and sowed the seeds of discontent to the men or they wouldn't have all so easily switched sides at the end.

I think it's pretty easy to have a fire get out of control on a whaling ship. After all, they had huge iron pots full of blubber that they were rendering over open fires and these were below decks! It's possible the fire was "encouraged" but not necessarily required for the fire to get out of control - especially in heavy weather where everything is pitching about.

When the Captain told Kate about the fire he said it was midships and forward. It won’t reach here fore a good while yet.” That sure wouldn’t make me feel very comfortable. I would want to be off that thing. Mrs. Preble is worrying about all the whale oil, too. The Captain seems pretty calm. He will fight the fire as long as possible and if they have to take to the boats, they will. I would have thought the fire would burn a wooden ship really fast, what with all the whale oil around, too.

Seems like a hard way to put out a fire, by lowering wet canvas onto it, but apparently that’s what they did in those days.

I can't help but think of the loss of all the whale oil. It seems all those whales died for nothing. How sad. Sort of like killing a deer or other animal for the fun of it and just leaving the carcass there to rot. I wonder if ship owners had some type of insurance (for lack of a better term used in those days) that might cover the loss of the whale oil and the ship. Perhaps the Captain was rich anyway so could suffer the loss.

Hitty Left Behind:

The part that always gets me about this chapter is the end were Hitty is forgotten until it is too late to back for her. Poor thing, I can't imagine how scary that must've been for her.

Poor Hitty abandoned to her fate to be left on a burning ship. In all the commotion to get off the ship, her father and others did not hear Phoebe’s cries for Hitty. When they finally did, it was too late. There she was trapped on the ship and watching her family sailing away without her. She saw Phoebe point back and knew the gesture was meant for her. She needed a miracle. One came just as it seemed the paint would sizzle on her face, when the ship lurched and she was pitched over and flew right under the rail and into the water. She shows her positive attitude again when she thought as she took the plunge that “at least I shall not be burned up. Water is kinder to wood than fire and I have heard that salt is a great preservative.” I’m thinking Rachel Field must have been a positive thinking woman to have created a character with such feelings.

Hitty's a wooden doll, but it from her standpoint, it must have been frustrating when Kate and Phoebe were scurrying around packing their things and Hitty could only sit there and watch the activity. Here the ship is on fire, and Hitty can only depend on others to keep her safe. Finally, she is left alone and terrified on the ship, and no way to protect herself. I almost wish Rachel had given her magical powers to sprout wings and jump off the ship herself, but in effect a miracle did happen and she was pitched from the ship. So maybe it is the luck of the mountain ash wood after all.

Hitty is basically an optimist! She was told nearly at "birth" that she was lucky and would bring luck to her owners, and I think that contributed to her cheery optimism, fortitude, hope, patience and faith that she would "weather the storms" and survive her many life experiences. And look where she is today, and look at what she is continuing to do for us, her very lucky Hitty persons! I know I feel lucky to have met her and all of you.

I find this carelessness on the part of Phoebe irritating. I have two children who insist on carrying special things with them everywhere and we have never lost anything (knock on wood). We've come close, but never lost anything. Now I don't fault them in the case of the sinking, burning ship for forgetting about a doll. I wonder, though, if Phoebe really does cherish her doll as much as is claimed. I know that I check repeatedly to make sure my Hittys are in place and often tie them in so that they can't get away to have independent adventures.

It’s always interesting in book discussions how each reader tints the story with our own experiences.

We moved from Nebraska to Georgia when I was 6. It was an extremely stressful trip that my whole family recalls as a particularly bad memory, even 50 years later. One night we stopped for dinner late and I was so exhausted that I left behind my prized possession, a pretend makeup case that was a special purchase, intended to be my distraction on the trip. My mother didn’t believe in store bought toys, and definitely didn’t believe children needed to play with makeup, so it was probably quite a concession for her to buy it. It must have been a major triumph for me to get it, forbidden fruit as it was, and I know it was a huge loss to lose it, when I left it behind in a restaurant along the way. It was gone forever, but for years I could not let go of it. I would dream of going back to the same place and finding it still on the table, waiting for me. Hitty often reads like similarly forbidden fruit to me because of how I perceive Phoebe’s relationship with her mother.

There were a number of mitigating factors to the loss of my make up case, some of which might also apply in Phoebe’s case. I was up way past my bedtime, stressed to the end of my tether (I always picked up on other people’s stress as a child – terrible habit), and out of my element. My mom was overburdened by a number of concerns (including a secret knowledge that she had cancer) and wasn’t being as attentive a mom as I needed her to be. No doubt my brother distracted me at the critical moment by announcing he was going to take the favored seat or some such and I dashed out the door after him. He was my undoing for many years, because he too sought what our mother did not have to give. There was also the irritation of being holed up together for long hot hours in a car, and I don’t know how many times my mom (or my older sister, who drove our other car) took a wrong turn on that trip, but we kept losing each other, which caused loss of time and money we could ill afford. The whole thing was a cocktail for disaster, as was the sea voyage from the start.

Yes, I left my cherished toy behind, no doubt after whining to bring it in (because I was over tired, and she said yes because she was overtired), but look at all I was up against! What child can be held to remembering even a cherished toy under such conditions?) The job of parents is to gauge their kid’s limits and vulnerabilities and maturity, etc. and get things back in balance when they slip out. Don’t we all know that is why parenting is such a difficult job, especially when we ourselves are out of balance? When I read about Phoebe’s carelessness, I view the mom as being remiss as much as Phoebe. However, whether either of them could help their carelessness, is a different question altogether!

I, too, lost a toy. I don't know if it was a cherished toy that I can still remember the incident, but I will tell you, since then I haven't really lost much that I didn't eventually find. Special pocketknives being a prime example. I lose them, but then I find them again. Perhaps that experience was so traumatic that I made sure that in taking care of my stuff I was never absent-minded again. My parents were definitely not the types to go back and look for anything. We are, but I have to admit, we've had to on only the very odd occasion. I constantly take inventory of what we have with us. When Merryn was little she had a favorite monkey from Gymboree. It was orange and purple and she called it Mr. Business or Mr. B. She would search for it at night by calling, "B, Oh B" (I cherish this memory). Well, fearing the worst, I went out and bought like 8 Mr. B's, just in case, and wouldn't you know, she never even lost the original. Years later I gave some of them away as gifts but we still have about 4 rolling around here. Roy is more of the toy loser, Merryn never lost anything. ANYWAY, I don't know why I am so hard on Phoebe; Hitty was just a doll to her, not the ANCESTOR. But Phoebe did lose Hitty a BUNCH of times and I guess I feel like she should have learned her lesson the first two times. Of course in the case of the sinking ship...I don't think she had control of that. She was grabbed and forced overboard. Maybe my annoyance lies more with Phoebe's mother (hence my own mother) who I think should have paid more attention to such a favored item. I know parents didn't have time to pay attention to these things back then, but I somehow think they should have.

It seems odd that they’d have gotten the trunk to safety and not the doll, doesn’t it?
I have been known to micromanage my kid’s things, and I am aware that stems from my own neurotic feelings of loss, but in the long run I think that is preferable to teaching children that their belongings are disposable, which seems to be a common attitude. We complain about living in a throwaway society, but moms and dads created that society by throwing our things away when we didn’t pick them up, or by not teaching us to take care of them. Whoever invented the toy box is another culprit – terrible way to store things, and doesn’t it just say ‘junk pile’?

Kate:

What a sport she continues to be with her duties in the galley and making all those cookies and gingerbread, seeing Phoebe’s transformation from young lady to a wild child in nankeen breaches, then going through the whaling process, the smell, grease and black smoke everywhere, then the fear of the fire, the abandonment of most of the crew, and now having to go over the side of the burning ship on a rope ladder. She could have been a complete pain to have on board, but she pulled herself together and worked through each experience like a trooper.

Interesting Phrases/Terms:

Merino: A wool, almost like cashmere, although perhaps back then it was coarser.

Nankeens: A yellow or buff cotton cloth that originated in the Nanking region of China. Apparently made from a naturally colored cotton and not bleached during the spinning and weaving processes. So the color came from the cotton itself and not from being dyed. Possibly something like a sturdy unbleached domestic (heavy muslin).

Nantucket sleigh-ride: When the harpoon is in fast (in the whale) and they can just pay out the rope and follow him around.

Greasy luck: This is what the sailors would call whale oil that would spill all over the deck. Bad smell and very greasy.

Cutting-in: Removing blubber from a whale.

Try-pots: Large iron pots into which blubber was “tried out”, which meant boiled down into oil; large brick structure on deck of ship used to render whale oil.

The whale's blubber was cut down into cubes called "bible pieces" or "bible leaves" because they look like bibles. They were the size of a medium sized book, and the skin on the pieces looked like the cover of a book, and the thick, white blubber looked like a stack of pages.

When a kill was made, the catch would be pulled alongside the whaler where it would be secured and the task of stripping the blubber and whalebone begin. Boiling try pots aboard the whalers would then extract the valuable whale oil which would be stored in wooden barrels.

Gamming: Common expression among seafaring people. Meant paying social visits from one ship to another while at sea.

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