Mast-Head Discomforts
Despite the peaceful hours spent there, the narrator deplores the mast-head’s lack of comfort and coziness. Standing on the t’gallant cross-trees—two thin parallel sticks “almost peculiar to whalemen”—the beginner feels “as cosy as he would standing on a bull’s horns.” While a watch-coat may be worn in cold weather, it offers little more protection than clothing the body. The narrator draws a philosophical comparison: just as the soul is “glued inside of its fleshy tabernacle” and cannot move freely without great risk, the watch-coat cannot become a true shelter. One cannot arrange a shelf or drawer inside one’s body, and similarly cannot make a “convenient closet” of the coat.
Sleet’s Crow’s-Nest
The narrator contrasts the discomfort of southern whaling mast-heads with the superior “crow’s-nests” used by Greenland whalers. He references Captain Sleet’s fireside narrative “A Voyage among the Icebergs,” which describes Sleet’s invention: a crow’s-nest shaped like a large tierce or pipe, open above but fitted with a movable side-screen to block wind. Accessed through a trap-hatch, the nest contains a comfortable seat with a locker for umbrellas and coats, and a leather rack for nautical conveniences. Sleet himself kept a rifle, powder flask, and shot to shoot narwhales from above, since shooting down through water differs fundamentally from shooting from deck level. The narrator humorously notes that despite Sleet’s detailed account of his compass experiments to counteract magnetic attraction, the captain surely remained “attracted occasionally” to a well-stocked case-bottle tucked within reach—a detail Sleet neglects to mention.
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