News Exchange at Sea
The practical benefits of these maritime meetings extend beyond mere socializing. Ships bound outward might carry letters or at least newspapers with more recent dates than the blurred files aboard long-cruising vessels. In return, the outbound ship would receive the latest whaling intelligence about their destination grounds – information of utmost importance. Even when two ships have been equally long absent from home, they may exchange letters transferred from other vessels they encountered, along with current whaling news, all contributing to the agreeable social interaction that characterizes these meetings.
English and American Whalers
Though Americans and English share a language, meetings between their whaling vessels occur relatively infrequently, and when they do, a certain shyness often exists between them. The English are described as rather reserved, while Americans don’t fancy that quality in others. The English whalers sometimes affect metropolitan superiority over American counterparts, regarding Nantucketers as provincial sea-peasants. Yet Melville notes that this alleged superiority is hard to justify, since Yankee whalers collectively kill more whales in one day than all English whalers combined accomplish in ten years. The Nantucketer takes this minor foible in stride, knowing he has his own imperfections.
Contrast with Other Vessels
Other types of vessels display strikingly different behavior at sea. Merchant ships often pass each other without any word of recognition, cutting each other like fashionable dandies in Broadway and perhaps criticizing each other’s rigging. Men-of-War perform elaborate ceremonies of bowing, scraping, and ensign-ducking that lack genuine good-will. Slave-ships are in such haste they flee from each other. Pirates, when meeting, ask “how many skulls?” in the same spirit that whalers ask “how many barrels?” – but after this exchange, they immediately steer apart, having no desire to see much of each other’s villainous likenesses.
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