Leaving San Francisco at 10-30 a.m. April 1st 1893 for a trading and
whaling cruise in the Arctic having got everything in readyness
and everyone on board the ship was hauled out into the stream
to prevent the men from running away, [and sober up] two good watchmen
kept watch over night each with a club and sixshooter, they were
kept busy as several attempts were made to steal a whaleboat and
get ashore some would have jumped overboard but by a liberal use of the
club were persuaded to go below for a while, after a few tough fights
(fight on board a whaler means fight to a finish) as to who should
boss the forecastle and who gets the best bunks & the boss being fixed
and the whisky all gone, nature gets the better of them as daylight
approaches and we have quietness for an hour or so untill they awake
in the morning but they are not nearly so noisy or so quarrelsome as
the night before they have got sore heads they wonder where they are
how they came to be here and who they have got to be shipmates with
and how long they are in for. Up on the quarter deck are the officers boat
headers boat steerers and a few friends who have come off with
the agent in the tow-boat to bid us good bye they leave us at
Meggs wharf we each blow three whistles which means good bye good
voyage we watch them for some time waving our handkerchiefs;
we still remaining on deck taking our last look at the city and
thinking of our friends we have left behind us, the good times
they will be having and we will be missing. As we get out in sight
of the cliffs we can hear the sea lions roar and fancy we hear the
organ in the pavillion grinding music for a spare audiance

***

We could see some people on the rocks waving their handkerchiefs
but could not recognize any even with the glasses. I did not
see any of those pathetic good byes that one is liable to see when
a ship is going away on a long trip, I think there is nothing
that is more foolish or amusing to other people than to see a sailor
bid good bye to his wife or best girl just before the ship sails more
especially if they be anyway chicken hearted. As we are dreaming
away and looking at the cliffs we are suddenly brought to our senses
by the sea coming in through the scuppers and wetting our
feet, the ship beginning to pitch in fact it looks squally and we
all feel bad more or less when we think of our being parted from
civilization for so long, we sneak away one by one each to his
particular room, some to sleep, others to read others to think and
dream; of course one or two men are on duty, about ten o’clock
at night we stopped the engines set sail, altho blowing a strong
N.W. gale just the course we want to go, not being able to steam
against [it?] we cleared more to the south.

April 2nd

Next day we begin to look around whom we have for shipmates. So far
we don’t appear to have a tough crowd forward. If there be ain’t
so rash in expressing our opinion so will reserve our opinion for the
future when it will be more able to judge.
Our crew is a very heterogenous and taking all the Pacific whaling fleet
constitutes perhaps the most cosmopolitan assemblage to be found in any
single industry anywhere on the globe. some not able to speak a word
of English, we have one on our crew a Hungarian others who never saw

***

a ship in their life before, probable only been on a visit to the city lost
his bearings met a good pamaratan in the shape of a Boarding house runner
who took him home clothed him fed him and gave him whisky the next thing
he was aboard a whaler, if he had any friends its the old story of another
man disappeared. In hiring sailors for whaling voyages, the service of men
designated as shipping masters are called into requisition. Various systems
are resorted to, to obtain men, plying with liquor of the vilest description doling
out sufficient money to enable them to keep within the clutches of the harpies
who float around the Barbary coast and water front region, in some
cases conveying desireable men into the interior towns untill the ship is
ready to sail, besides these people we find a class of men who ought to find
something better to do, educated people who have been raised and practiced
a profession such as doctors lawyers, artists &c: they are liable to get broke once
in a while like the rest of us, some through drink others through unlucky
speculation, some has fell out with their wife others with their best girl, and
wonder wheather it will be better to commit suicide or ship aboard a whaler,
two years on board a whaler living on hard tack, salt-meat and beans twenty-
-one times a week will work changes on any man more so a tenderfoot.

Usually the only ones who can pull or steer a boat or knows the ropes are the
boat stearers boat leaders and officers they have to be experianceed men. The mate
starts a night-school after supper teaching them the ropes not any more than he can help.
The boat stearers strike the whale their place is in the bow of the boat the boat leader
in the stearn manages the boat after the whale is struck he takes charge of the whale, the
boat stearers are usually Kanakas, negroes, natives of the Caroline islands, the Azores
Cape de Vere islands south sea islands & Portuguese they seem to prefer them to white men