In the Heart of the Sea

boys would taunt the green hands (p. 21). William F. Macy defines “watching the pass” (p. 140); he also defines “foopaw” (p. 126), “rantum scoot” (p. 134), “manavelins” (p. 131), and the idiom used to describe someone who is cross-eyed (p. 121). William Comstock tells of the whittling code on Nantucket ( Voyage to the Pacific, p. 68). More than fifty years earlier, Crèvecoeur remarked on the Nantucketers’ almost compulsive need to whittle: “[T]hey are never idle. Even if they go to the market-place, which is (if I may be allowed the expression) the coffee-house of the town, either to transact business or to converse with their friends, they always have a piece of cedar in their hands, and while they are talking, they will, as it were, instinctively employ themselves in converting it into something useful, either in making bungs or spoils for their oil casks, or other useful articles” (p. 156). Joseph Sansom tells of how everyone on the island used sea phrases (Crosby, p. 143). A sampling of the unique pronunciations of Nantucketers is recorded in “Vocabulary of English Words, with the corresponding terms as used by the Whalemen” in The Life of Samuel Comstock (p. 57).
    The green hand Addison Pratt tells of how he was examined by the shipowner and the captain (p. 12); William H. Macy speaks of how the owners and captains judged the men by their eyes and build (p. 19). William Comstock tells of green hands whose ignorance led them to insist on the longest lay possible ( Voyage to the Pacific, pp. 11-12). William H. Macy explains how first-time captains were the lowest in the pecking order in finding a crew (p. 19).
    I have used the time frame described by Nickerson to calculate when the Essex was floated over the Nantucket Bar. Pratt provides a detailed description of the loading of a Nantucket whaleship during this period (p. 13). According to Richard Henry Dana, “The average allowance, in merchant vessels, is six pounds of bread a week, and three quarts of water, and one pound and a half of beef, or one and a quarter of pork, a day, to each man” ( The Seaman’s Friend, p. 135). William H. Macy tells of how a whaleship was always full, whether it was with provisions or oil (pp. 33-34).
    It is difficult to determine exactly how many whaleboats the Essex was originally equipped with since Nickerson and Chase seem to disagree on the subject. She had a minimum of two spare boats; that it wasn’t uncommon for a ship of this period to have three spares is indicated by Comstock. “Two spare boats, placed on a frame over head, shaded the quarter deck, while another, placed on spars which projected over the stern, was ready to be cleared at a moment’s warning” ( Voyage to the Pacific, p. 14).
    Pratt describes taking a packet from Boston to Nantucket (p. 11). According to James and Lois Horton, there were three African American communities in Boston at this time: the “black” section of Beacon Hill in West Boston (where the Museum of Afro-American History is now located); to the north in the area now occupied by the Massachusetts General Hospital; and near the wharves of the North End. The Hortons say that the North End neighborhood “had once been the largest black neighborhood in the city,” but was losing ground to the other areas as of 1830 (pp. 4-5). In Dana’s Two Years Before the Mast, there is a black cook whose wife lives on Robinson’s Alley (between Hanover and Unity streets) in the North End (pp. 179-80). For a summary discussion of the relative equality enjoyed by blacks on shipboard, see W. Jeffrey Bolster’s Black Jacks (pp. 1-6). James Freeman provides the 1807 description of how blacks had replaced Indians as a workforce in the Nantucket whale fishery (Crosby, p. 135). Comstock tells of the harsh treatment of African Americans in The Life of Samuel Comstock (pp. 37-38). William H. Macy claims that the packet delivering green hands from New York to Nantucket was commonly referred to as “the Slaver” (pp. 9, 17).
    William F. Macy defines gam as a “social visit and talk. Originally this term was applied to a school of whales, and its use by the whalemen is doubtless derived from that source. Whaleships meeting at sea often hove to, and the captains would visit back and forth during the time the ships were in company. Under certain conditions the crews were allowed the privilege also” (p. 126). At the onset of his voyage, the green hand narrator of William H.