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The Whaling Masters

Captain W. Adams of the Scottish whaler Maud on the bridge of the ship 144 Ko Captain W. Adams of the Scottish whaler Maud on the bridge of the ship

Whaling in arctic waters was a highly dangerous business. The ships' captains were not only skilled navigators in challenging conditions, they were experts in the whale hunt. And while they were much less famous than the arctic explorers who often captured the public's imagination, whaling masters often instructed explorers on the course to follow in Arctic seas and on the necessity of adopting Inuit ways in order to survive the icy temperatures.

Whaling masters knew their voyages had significant chances of failure: nineteen British vessels were crushed by ice in the Davis Strait in the single year of 1830. It was not uncommon to read in the home port paper, "The whaling ship was lost with all hands". Wreckage got the best of many ships known by the Inuit, such as the Active, the Seduisante, the Era, the Ernest Williams, the Tilly, the Essonian, the AT Gifford, the Finback, the Polar Star, and the George Henry, just to name a few.

Sometimes bad weather, ice, and rocks were the cause of the wreckage, other times fire burnt ships to the waterline. Freezing cold was no small threat, and it was not unusual for the Captain or the surgeon to amputate frozen limbs. Many sailors died from accidents such as falling into the icy water or being clobbered by a whale fluke. But scurvy was by far the most lethal threat to whalers. Before 1850, not many sailors understood that eating fresh food was the best remedy to the disease.

A whaling master was someone who had the experience and skill to successfully overcome all these dangers and at the same time be able to cope with rebellious sailors or a mutinous crew. The great whaling captains are still honoured in their home towns: William Penny, William Adams, David and Alexander Grays, Alexander and John Murray, Christopher and Edward Chapels, George Tyson, James Mutch, Sydney Budington, John O. Spicer, George Comer, and so many hundreds of others with fascinating life stories.