Sebastian Nothwell

[all emphasis mine]

One of them I shall always remember as the best specimen of the thoroughbred English sailor that I ever saw. He had been to sea from a boy, having served a regular apprenticeship of seven years, as all English sailors are obliged to do, and was then about four or five and twenty. He was tall; but you only perceived it when he was standing by the side of others, for the great breadth of his shoulders and chest made him appear but little above the middle height. His chest was as deep as it was wide; his arm like that of Hercules; and his hand "the fist of a tar—every hair a rope-yarn." With all this he had one of the pleasantest smiles I ever saw. His cheeks were of a handsome brown; his teeth brilliantly white; and his hair, of a raven black, waved in loose curls all over his head, and fine, open forehead; and his eyes he might have sold to a duchess at the price of diamonds, for their brilliancy. As for their color, they were like the Irishman's pig, which would not stay to be counted, every change of position and light seemed to give them a new hue; but their prevailing color was black, or nearly so. Take him with his well-varnished black tarpaulin stuck upon the back of his head; his long locks coming down almost into his eyes; his white duck trowsers and shirt; blue jacket; and black kerchief, tied loosely round his neck; and he was a fine specimen of manly beauty. On his broad chest he had stamped with India ink "Parting moments;"—a ship ready to sail; a boat on the beach; and a girl and her sailor lover taking their farewell. Underneath were printed the initials of his own name, and two other letters, standing for some name which he knew better than I did. This was very well done, having been executed by a man who made it his business to print with India ink, for sailors, at Havre. On one of his broad arms, he had the crucifixion, and on the other the sign of the "foul anchor."

He was very fond of reading, and we lent him most of the books which we had in the forecastle, which he read and returned to us the next time we fell in with him. He had a good deal of information, and his captain said he was a perfect seaman, and worth his weight in gold on board a vessel, in fair weather and in foul. His strength must have been great, and he had the sight of a vulture. It is strange that one should be so minute in the description of an unknown, outcast sailor, whom one may never see again, and whom no one may care to hear about; but so it is. Some people we see under no remarkable circumstances, but whom, for some reason or other, we never forget. He called himself Bill Jackson; and I know no one of all my accidental acquaintances to whom I would more gladly give a shake of the hand than to him. Whoever falls in with him will find a handsome, hearty fellow, and a good shipmate.

-- 2 Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana

There's a small problem with the research for my work-in-progress whaling romance Take Me Like a Sailor. As mentioned on tumblr, my primary sources and my secondary sources are contracting each other in a big way.

From A History of World Whaling by Daniel Francis (1990) [emphasis mine]:

During the decade of the 1860s, whaling entered the modern age and changed forever. The new machinery of the Industrial Revolution was applied to the chase with devastating results. Steam and explosives increased the speed and ferocity of the hunt. Species of whales that formerly had been ignored as unproductive or beyond the reach of the hand-held harpoon were now targeted for virtual extermination. ... A boat steerer from a wooden whaler of the early nineteenth century would not have recognized what his vocation had become by the beginning of the twentieth.

tl;dr - “By 1870 whaling was an entirely post-industrial Arctic bowhead enterprise, done on steam ships with metal hulls and using explosive harpoons fired from guns.”

BUT! From A Year With a Whaler by Walter Noble Burns (1913) [emphasis mine]:

Let me take occasion just here to correct a false impression quite generally held regarding whaling. Many persons — I think, most persons — have an idea that in modem whaling, harpoons are fired at whales from the decks of ships. This is true only of 'long-shore whaling. ... But whaling on the sperm grounds of the tropics and on the right whale and bowhead grounds of the polar seas is much the same as it has always been. Boats still go on the backs of whales. Harpoons are thrown by hand into the great animals as of yore. Whales still run away with the boats, pulling them with amazing speed through walls of split water. Whales still crush boats with blows of their mighty flukes and spill their crews into the sea.

There is just as much danger and just as much thrill and excitement in the whaling of to-day as there was in that of a century ago. Neither steamers nor sailing vessels that cruise for sperm and bowhead and right whales nowadays have deck guns of any sort, but depend entirely upon the bomb-guns attached to harpoons and upon shoulder bomb-guns wielded from the whale boats.

In the old days, after whales had been harpooned, they were stabbed to death with long, razor-sharp lances. The lance is a thing of the past. The tonite bomb has taken its place as an instrument of destruction. In the use of the tonite bomb lies the chief difference between modern whaling and the whaling of the old school.

The modern harpoon is the same as it has been since the palmy days of the old South Sea sperm fisheries. But fastened on its iron shaft between the wooden handle and the spear point is a brass cylinder an inch in diameter, perhaps, and about a foot long. This cylinder is a tonite bomb-gun. A short piece of metal projects from the flat lower end. This is the trigger. When the harpoon is thrown into the buttery, blubber-wrapped body of the whale, it sinks in until the whale's skin presses the trigger up into the gun and fires it with a tiny sound like the explosion of an old-fashioned shotgun cap. An instant later a tonite bomb explodes with a mufiied roar in the whale's vitals.

tl;dr - “Yeah so it’s like 1902 and we’re hunting sperm whales in the South Pacific from wooden ships under sail power and using hand-thrown harpoons like we have for about a century now. Plus explosives.”

Who should I believe? Which source should I base my story on? The historian in me says the primary source is the best, but the secondary source is probably the one my audience will be most familiar with, if they're familiar with any source at all.

P.S. - You can read A Year With a Whaler online free and legal thanks to archive.org! Warning: it's super racist.