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Table of Contents
Chapter 56
OF THE LESS
ERRONEOUS PICTURES OF WHALES
AND THE TRUE PICTURES OF WHALING SCENES
In connexion with the
monstrous pictures of whales, I am strongly tempted here to enter upon those
still more monstrous stories of them which are to be found in certain books,
both ancient and modern, especially in Pliny, Purchas, Hackluyt, Harris,
Cuvier, etc. But I pass that matter by. i know of only four published outlines
of the great Sperm Whale; Colnett's, Huggins's, Frederick Cuvier's, and
Beale's. In the previous chapter Colnett and Cuvier have been referred to.
Huggins's is far better than theirs; but, by great odds, Beale's is the best.
All Beale's drawings of this whale are good, excepting the middle figure in
the picture of three whales in various attitudes, capping his second chapter.
His frontispiece, boats attacking Sperm Whales, though no doubt calculated to
excite the civil scepticism of some parlor men, is admirably correct and
life-like in its general effect. Some of the Sperm Whale drawings in J. Ross
Browne are pretty correct in contour; but they are wretchedly engraved. That
is not his fault though. Of the Right Whale, the best outline pictures are in
Scoresby; but they are drawn on too small a scale to convey a desirable
impression. He has but one picture of whaling scenes, and this is a sad
deficiency, because it is by such pictures only, when at all well done, that
you can derive anything like a truthful idea of the living whale as seen by
his living hunters. But, taken for all in all, by far the finest, though in
some details not the most correct, presentations of whales and whaling ..
2 scenes to be anywhere
found, are two large French engravings, well executed, and taken from
paintings by one Garnery. Respectively, they represent attacks on the Sperm
and Right Whale. In the first engraving a noble Sperm Whale is depicted in
full majesty of might, just risen beneath the boat from the profundities of
the ocean, and bearing high in the air upon his back the terrific wreck of the
stoven planks. The prow of the boat is partially unbroken, and is drawn just
balancing upon the monster's spine; and standing in that prow, for that one
single incomputable flash of time, you behold an oarsman, half shrouded by the
incensed boiling spout of the whale, and in the act of leaping, as if from a
precipice. The action of the whole thing is wonderfully good and true. The
half-emptied line-tub floats on the whitened sea; the wooden poles of the
spilled harpoons obliquely bob in it; the heads of the swimming crew are
scattered about the whale in contrasting expressions of affright; while in the
black stormy distance the ship is bearing down upon the scene. Serious fault
might be found with the anatomical details of this whale, but let that pass;
since, for the life of me, I could not draw so good a one. In the second
engraving, the boat is in the act of drawing alongside the barnacled flank of
a large running Right Whale, that rolls his black weedy bulk in the sea like
some mossy rock-slide from the Patagonian cliffs. His jets are erect, full,
and black like soot; so that from so abounding a smoke in the chimney, you
would think there must be a brave supper cooking in the great bowels below.
Sea fowls are pecking at the small crabs, shell-fish, and other sea candies
and maccaroni, which the Right Whale sometimes carries on his pestilent back.
And all the while the thick-lipped leviathan is rushing through the deep,
leaving tons of tumultuous white curds in his wake, and causing the slight
boat to rock in the swells like a skiff caught nigh the paddle-wheels of an
ocean steamer. Thus, the foreground is all raging commotion; but behind, in
admirable artistic contrast, is the glassy level of a sea becalmed, the
drooping unstarched sails of the powerless ship, and the inert mass of a dead
whale, a conquered fortress, with the flag of capture lazily hanging from the
whale-pole inserted into his spout-hole. ..
3 Who Garnery the
painter is, or was, I know not. But my life for it he was either practically
conversant with his subject, or else marvellously tutored by some experienced
whaleman. The French are the lads for painting action. Go and gaze upon all
the paintings in Europe, and where will you find such a gallery of living and
breathing commotion on canvas, as in that triumphal hall at Versailles; where
the beholder fights his way, pell-mell, through the consecutive great battles
of France; where every sword seems a flash of the Northern Lights, and the
successive armed kings and Emperors dash by, like a charge of crowned
centaurs? Not wholly unworthy of a place in that gallery, are these sea
battle-pieces of Garnery. The natural aptitude of the French for seizing the
picturesqueness of things seems to be peculiarly evinced in what paintings and
engravings they have of their whaling scenes. With not one tenth of England's
experience in the fishery, and not the thousandth part of that of the
Americans, they have nevertheless furnished both nations with the only
finished sketches at all capable of conveying the real spirit of the whale
hunt. For the most part, the English and American whale draughtsmen seem
entirely content with presenting the mechanical outline of things, such as the
vacant profile of the whale; which, so far as picturesqueness of effect is
concerned, is about tantamount to sketching the profile of a pyramid. Even
Scoresby, the justly renowned Right whaleman, after giving us a stiff full
length of the Greenland whale, and three or four delicate miniatures of
narwhales and porpoises, treats us to a series of classical engravings of boat
hooks, chopping knives, and grapnels; and with the microscopic diligence of a
Leuwenhoeck submits to the inspection of a shivering world ninety-six fac-similes
of magnified Arctic snow crystals. I mean no disparagement to the excellent
voyager (I honor him for a veteran), but in so important a matter it was
certainly an oversight not to have procured for every crystal a sworn
affidavit taken before a Greenland Justice of the Peace. In addition to those
fine engravings from Garnery, there are two other French engravings worthy of
note, by some one who subscribes himself h. durand. one of them, though not
precisely ..
4 adapted to our present
purpose, nevertheless deserves mention on other accounts. It is a quiet
noon-scene among the isles of the Pacific; a French whaler anchored, inshore,
in a calm, and lazily taking water on board; the loosened sails of the ship,
and the long leaves of the palms in the background, both drooping together in
the breezeless air. The effect is very fine, when considered with reference to
its presenting the hardy fishermen under one of their few aspects of oriental
repose. The other engraving is quite a different affair: the ship hove-to upon
the open sea, and in the very heart of the Leviathanic life, with a Right
Whale alongside; the vessel (in the act of cutting-in) hove over to the
monster as if to a quay; and a boat, hurriedly pushing off from this scene of
activity, is about giving chase to whales in the distance. The harpoons and
lances lie levelled for use; three oarsmen are just setting the mast in its
hole; while from a sudden roll of the sea, the little craft stands half-erect
out of the water, like a rearing horse. From the ship, the smoke of the
torments of the boiling whale is going up like the smoke over a village of
smithies; and to windward, a black cloud, rising up with earnest of squalls
and rains, seems to quicken the activity of the excited seamen. ..
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