Jack the Whaleboy , livre ebook

J ack the W haleboy
Lloyd Esler
Austin Macauley Publishers
2022-01-31
Jack the Whaleboy About the Author Copyright Information ©
About the Author
Lloyd Esler is a writer, teacher and historian who lives in Invercargill in the far south of New Zealand. He has a special interest in the history of whaling. He hopes this book will provide readers with an insight into life on a whaling station.
Copyright Information ©
Lloyd Esler 2022
The right of Lloyd Esler to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781528984614 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781528984621 (ePub e-book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published 2022
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My name is Jack Fletcher aged ten and this is the journal I am writing for the year of 1830. By the end of this year I hope you will know a lot more about me and my life in New Zealand.
I was born in England and I was a schoolboy in London so I can read and write. My father, mother and I emigrated to Australia in the Albion in 1828 but I became an orphan soon afterwards when my parents’ gig was upset and washed away in a flood near Sydney. After the accident I lived with my aunt but she died as well and Mr Peter Williams, who was a friend of our family, became my guardian and he brought me with him to Rakituma, which is a whaling station in Preservation Inlet in the Middle Island of New Zealand.
I am employed here as a cooper’s boy at threepence a week.
I live in a hut with Mr Smith, who is the cooper and I call him Mr Cooper Smith. I have to call anyone who is twice my age ‘mister’. Mr Cooper Smith is a carpenter as well because we do not have another trained carpenter. He makes the barrels we will use for the whale oil and for water. In his workshop are saws, planes, chisels, hammers, boxes of nails and all sorts of other things.
Our whaling station is called Rakituma or Preservation and it is in a sheltered bay called Cuttle Cove in Port Preservation. It is surrounded by birch forest although the men are clearing the nearby trees for timber and to make open land to let more sunshine in. Our beach is a bit sandy, but mostly pebbles and cobbles with a cleared launching strip for the boats. We have a little island called Single Tree Island and off in the distance are Coal Island, Steep-to Island and the Cording Islands. We have a sandy beach about an hour’s walk through the forest and there is a kaik there with Maori families and boats. Everything is kept tidy by Mr Williams, who is the manager. He says that we are a ship-shape whaling station and we are organised like a ship and he is the captain and there are officers. Mr Bosun McKenzie is a real live bosun off a ship who is in charge of the boats and gives sharp orders. He gives me orders like look lively lad, stand to, be off with you and fetch me a new anchor at the double, but he is joking as it takes lots of men to raise an anchor. The quartermaster, Mr Andrews, is in charge of all the supplies and looks after the store shed.
It is sometimes lonely as there are no other boys, but the men are kind. Our food comes from the stores and from what we can find or catch. Our ship Enterprise comes from Sydney every few weeks and brings supplies and takes away our whale oil. It brings news and sometimes letters which I read for the men who cannot read. The letters tell them of people who have died and babies born. Many of the men have wives and families in Sydney. On the Enterprise , we get candles, food, clothing and tools and furniture. I help to unload and carry stores for Mr Andrews, the quartermaster, and I arrange tins and jars on the shelves. There are sacks of flour, rice and oatmeal and there is preserved meat and fresh fruit and vegetables.
We try to grow potatoes, turnips and beans but they do not do well as they do in Sydney. Most of our vegetables come from Stewart’s Island and Codfish Island. The ketch brings cases of vegetables. Mr Jackson, who is second in charge of Rakituma, says you can grow anything on Codfish Island but not bananas. I have not seen a banana, but I know it is black from the picture in the encyclopedia.
When the ketch is coming, there is a shout. She is called Queen of the Sea and the lookout on Cavern Head sees her coming, so we get ready. Off Steep-to Island her sails are shortened and then loosened and they flap and we can hear voices shouting. She drifts into Cuttle Cove on the high tide and grounds on the beach. When the tide goes out, she sits on the rocks at a strange angle and we form a line, passing flax baskets of potatoes and vegetables into the storehouse. There is Skipper Nairn and two crewmembers, who are a Maori brother and sister, Will and Eve. I ask them about Stewart’s Island and they tell me about the wild animals there. They have bears, and tigers and lions and elephants. Mr Cooper Smith says balderdash when I tell him and says they are great big liars, so I ask Mr Portland and he says they are really just small fibbers. The lions are sea lions which is what sea bears are as well, the tigers are sea tigers which are sharks and the elephants are elephant seals. On the next trip I will tell them we have horses and cows, which are seahorses and cowfish, which are porpoises.
One day a porpoise is harpooned. It is cut up and cooked, but it doesn’t taste very nice. Our meat is fish and preserved pork or beef. We get fresh pork from our shoats, which are young pigs, and live sheep come on the Enterprise sometimes.
I will describe my bed which is a shelf of five-foot-six inches, two feet wide and two-foot-six-inches high built into the wall between the shelves and cupboards. Mr Cooper Smith calls it the palace bed chamber. I have a straw mattress and two woollen blankets and I use my spare clothes for my pillow. I have a curtain for when men are talking and smoking and I have a whale oil lantern because a candle is not safe and I keep my kit in a chest in the shelf below my bed. I sometimes read by the lantern or Mr Cooper Smith tells me one of his stories. When he sees I am sleeping, he blows out the lantern. Sometimes I wake up in the dark and in the moonlight I go outside the hut to look at the stars. The owls and kiwis call all night. If I need the latrine at night, it is too far, so I use a pot and leave it outside and empty it in the morning. Mr Williams says that we must keep the station clean or we may get diseases like leprosy and scurvy and smallpox. Mr Young had smallpox when he was a boy and he got better, but has marks on his face from the smallpox. Mr Boscowen, the cook, says no one he has made food for has ever gotten scurvy and never to mention the word near him or he will have their liver out.
I ask Mr Jackson what is scurvy and he tells me it is a disease from not eating the right food. Mr Jackson says it is easy to prevent and that is why we have to eat scurvy grass and wild celery and spinach when we find it. That is why we like fresh food and not too much preserved food, except for preserved cabbage, which is called sauerkraut which I don’t like.
We have a pig house at Rakituma called the house of parliament, but I do not know why. There are four shoats which are young pigs and I take them scraps and collect seaweed for them and they are black-and-brown and hairy. Mr Boscowen says not to get too fond of them as they will be pork soon, but I don’t mind because I like pork. The pigs eat scraps and fish heads and seaweed.
The men are often fishing and sometimes they take a whaleboat or one of the dinghies. They like catching fish and we need it for food but the midges make them angry. The best fish are trumpeters, blue codfish and gropers which the Maoris call hapuka . They also catch red codfish and gurnards. Around the shore we collect shellfish to eat. We have mussels and muttonfish. The muttonfish has a shiny shell, six inches across. They stick fast and we have to get a knife under them before they stick on. Mr Cook Boscowen says take those disgusting things away because they are black and slimy but Bill says they are full of goodness and says that at least I will never get scurvy and Mr Cook throws a ladle at him for saying scurvy and misses. Our three Maoris eat them all the time and I eat them, too, but we have to cook them away from Mr Cook Boscowen, who says they are revolting. The Maoris call them pawas .
Our Maoris are Honny, Harold and Mr Ratama. They are native New Zealanders. Mr Ratama is from the North Island which they call the fish of Maui in their language. Honny and Harold are cousins from Stewart’s Island, aged about 20 years. They sometimes cook on their own fireplace and sometimes make an earth oven called an oomu . They have dug a pit by the beach. They make a big fire and heat the stones, then put them in the pit and put in food in flax baskets then cover the baskets with gunny sacks and soil. After three hours, the food is cooked. I like food cooked in the oomu . It is called a hungy and most of the men say this is the best way to cook meat, fish and potatoes. When there is a big hungy the Maoris who live not far away at Matauira come around along the bush track or in their boats. One of the boats is an old canoe carved from a tree trunk. They live in a kaik which is the Maori name for a small village made of huts and they live from catching fish and birds and getting seals for skins which th