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Updated: May 21, 2025
As the day advanced the wind fell, and after many passages of nautical compliments, by means of signals and the trumpet, Roswell Gardiner fairly lowered a boat into the water, and went a "gamming," as it is termed, on board the other schooner. Each of these little vessels was well provided with boats, and those of the description in common use among whalers.
We had heard many glowing accounts from visitors, when "gamming," of the delights of this well-known port of call for whalers, and under our new commander we had little doubt that we should be allowed considerable liberty during our stay.
Be did not sense what was impending all about him. Aft, where he stood, the deck was almost deserted. Amidships and for'ard, gamming with the boat's crew, the deck was crowded with blacks of both sexes. He made his way to the yam sacks lashed abaft the mizzenmast and got his bottle. Just before he drank, with a shred of caution, he cast a glance behind him.
Prosaic and uneventful to the last degree was our passage, the only incident worth recording being our "gamming" of the PASSAMAQUODDY, of Martha's Vineyard, South Sea whaler; eighteen months out, with one thousand barrels of sperm oil on board. We felt quite veterans alongside of her crew, and our yarns laid over theirs to such an extent that they were quite disgusted at their lack of experience.
The glaring whiteness of new planking in many places along the bulwarks told an eloquent story of seas bursting on board carrying all before them, while empty cranes testified to the loss of a boat in both of them. As soon as we came near enough, "gamming" commenced, for all of us were anxious to know how each other had fared. As we anticipated, every whale was lost that had been caught that day.
This visiting between the crews of ships at sea is called, among whalemen, ``gamming. Our place of destination had been Monterey, but as we were to the northward of it when the wind hauled ahead, we made a fair wind for San Francisco. About thirty miles from the mouth of the bay, and on the southeast side, is a high point, upon which the Presidio is built.
And as for a tiller, the whale-boat never admits of any such effeminacy; and therefore as in gamming a complete boat's crew must leave the ship, and hence as the boat steerer or harpooneer is of the number, that subordinate is the steersman upon the occasion, and the captain, having no place to sit in, is pulled off to his visit all standing like a pine tree.
How long this argument, which the boys listened to with some amusement, might have gone on is hard to say, probably all night, if Ben had not suddenly cut it short by springing to his feet with an exclamation: "Come on, shipmates!" he exclaimed, "stop gamming and get a move on and snug down this yer awning if you don't want to lose it.
I am afraid he has some knowledge of the existence of our islands, though I doubt whether he has their latitude and longitude exactly. Something there is of this nature on board the other schooner, her people often dropping hints to my officers and men, when they have been gamming.
Certainly, it needs a definition, and should be incorporated into the Lexicon. With that view, let me learnedly define it. There is another little item about Gamming which must not be forgotten here. All professions have their own little peculiarities of detail; so has the whale fishery.
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