NAVIGATION

Whaling changed very little between the 16th and 19th centuries, with generations of whalers throwing harpoons from open boats and living on board ‘a wooden world’ often for years at a time. The life of a ship was extraordinary, a new sailor coming upon it for the first time entered a peculiar society with its own manners, dress and language. One boy remembered of his going to sea, ‘Nor could I think what world I was in, whether among spirits or devils. All seemed strange; different language and strange expressions of tongue, that I thought myself always asleep or in a dream, and never properly awake’ (Bellamy ‘Ramblin Jack, The Journal of Captain John Cremer’ 1700 - 1774)