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Updated: May 27, 2025
In the whale-fisheries, no doubt, he has more than enough of excitement, but after a time he gets used to this, and begins to long for a little variety and of all the pleasures that fall to his lot, that which delights him most is to have a GAM with another ship. Now, a gam is the meeting of two or more whale-ships, their keeping company for a time, and the exchanging of visits by the crews.
I supposed at first it might be a spermaceti whale, for numbers used to play round the island at certain seasons, and I used to watch their blowing and their gambols, if I may use the term, and Jackson, often told me long stories about the whale-fisheries; but a ray of the setting sun made the object appear white, and I ran for the glass, and made out that it was a boat or a very small vessel, with a sail out, and running before the gale right down to the island.
Our whale-fisheries in the Pacific may also require more protection than they have hitherto done; and if we ever hope to have it in our power to obtain live alpacas from Peru as a new stock in this country, and at a rate cheap enough for the farmer to purchase and naturalize them, it must be by the way of Panama, by which route guano manure may also be brought over to us at one half of the present charges.
His pleasures and amusements are so few that he is thankful to make the most of whatever is thrown in his way. In the whale-fisheries, no doubt, he has more than enough of excitement, but after a time he gets used to this, and begins to long for a little variety and of all the pleasures that fall to his lot, that which delights him most is to have a gam with another ship.
Even in the palmy days of the whale-fisheries, it was the practice of the Dutch and English sailors to leave the wooden coffins in which they had placed their comrades' remains, exposed upon the shore; and I have been told by an eye-witness, that in Magdalena Bay there are to be seen, even to this day, the bodies of men who died upwards of 250 years ago, in such complete preservation that, when you pour hot water on the icy coating which encases them, you can actually see the unchanged features of the dead, through the transparent incrustation.
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