An
engraving of the "Cachalot" a New Bedford whaler
made famous by F.T. Bullen in his 1901 publication "The
cruise of the Cachalot". Cachalot was the whalers name
for the sperm whale - when you caught one, you'd caught-a-lot and
the ship was named for this.
Whaling as a job in such ships attracted more
than it's fair share of rogues and n'er-do-wells amongst the other
more professional and "career sailors" as we'd probably
call them today.
Whaling ships were often looked down upon by the
crews of other ships, they were sometimes described as being
"built by the mile" a reference to the fact that they
were wide and bulbous with little attention to streamlining and
none to elegance, looking effectively "cut off" from a continuous
production line of ship building and simply finished with bow and
stern.
This design was actually well thought out as a
whaling ship would be at sea for years and needed as large a cargo
capacity as possible. Speed was irrelevant as the whales were
caught from smaller boats with the whaler itself serving as a
base, storage and processor for the job of whaling.
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