Benjamin Coffin, Elisha Chipman
The old book “Nimrod of the sea: or, The American Whaleman”
by William Norris Davis introduces us to “Old Ben” - an experienced hand on the
author’s first whaling voyage. Since Old Ben’s surname is Coffin, I have to
wonder which Benjamin Coffin it could be? The book was published in 1874.
Benjamin Coffin appears in Chapter 2. They are aboard the Chelsea,
a Baltimore clipper, Major Thomas
A. Williams, owner, possibly sailing out of New London .
At the time of the storytelling, he is “about sixty-five” and
has spent fifty two years at sea. He is a bachelor. He served in the War of
1812, on the Constitution, and began whaling shortly after that.
Old Ben’s story begins at the end of Chapter 2 and continues into
Chapter 3. I haven’t yet placed this Benjamin within the Coffin family tree. 
(Text and images taken from the ebook at Google Books)
Old Ben, one of our crew, was then called on for his yarn about the first time he went on a sperm whale. This story was as nuts and cider to the green hands, inasmuch as it was an honest confession that an old hand had been gallied (frightened). The fellow-feeling made us wondrous kind. But you should know Ben Coffin in order to appreciate the fun of the story. Ben in his youth might have sat for the picture which Dibdin sang:His form was of the manliest beauty
His heart was kind and soft
Faithful below he did his duty
But now he's gone aloft
Faithful below he did his duty
But now he's gone aloft
Ben, as he begins, says he is a rich farmer's son, and that
he came to sea to wear out his old clothes. When he gets through with the job,
he is going to play the role of the Prodigal Son, and go back to the old Vermont
farm and say, “Father I have whaled,” which involves all of sinning, and then
eat fat veal all the rest of his days.”
“When that port is made, and I am safe anchored, and rich,
and all that kind of thing, and can do as I please, I am goin’ to ship a bosin-mate
from the biggest seventy-four in Uncle Sam's blessed navy, and I ll give him a
silver call; and his duty shall be to pipe all hands at eight bells (4 am) in
the morning, and to rap a handspike ag’in the mahogany (inlaid with whale ivory)
door of my state room, and rouse me out with “Starbo-a-r-d watch, ahoy-o-y!”
Then I’ll sing out, “Watch be blowed!” and go to sleep again. What's the
gain of bein’ rich if you can t blow the starboard watch at eight bells?”
Ben is about sixty five, and has a chestful of old clothes
yet. Fifty two years he has spent at sea, with short intervals on shore. He
never married “because his mother was particular on the score of daughters in
law.” Ben is bruised, battered, and warped in body; seamed and wrinkled in brow,
by fire, by ice, and shipwreck. The few fingers which the frosts of Labrador
have left him are corrugated and doubled in, to fit close to the rope and the
oar he has tugged at for half a century. During the war of 1812 he served in the
Constitution, and labored faithfully and successfully in shooting some
new ideas through Mr. John Bull's head. Growing tired of the humdrum and
peaceful quiet of man-of-war life, he came whaling as he expressed it to “see
life, to sweat the weeds from my figure head, and to rub off the barnacles
which deadened my headway; and by the great hokey! I got in the right place iu
the Chelsea under old Captain Davis. I’ll tell you green hands about
that first whale I went on in the captain's boat.”
“We was a runnin’ down the trades, in lat. 13 S, right about
this very spot as it might be, and Lish <note: Elisha Chipman, who is the
boat-steerer> Chipman there, he was at the mast head and raised whale. We
ran down with the ship convenient, and lowered four boats. Captain Davis was
real hungry and cantankerous for a whale, for he hadn’t been in a fight for
nearly six months; howsoever, the whale soon turned flukes and staid down, so
that I thought he d never come up ag’in. The captain was mounted on the
gunwales, and Lishey was on the box; and we was a-lookin’ each man over the
blade of his own oar, to catch the first spout, when suddenly Lish uttered a
cry that almost made one's marrow creep. ‘Bill,’ said Ben, addressing me, ‘you’re
in his boat, and you’ll hear him whisper that way some day, and you won’t grow
any more after hearin it.
“Well however, as I was sayin’, Lisha, with a quiet yell,
not much above a whisper, said, ‘Look out for breakers, captain; take your oars,
all of you, and don’t speak for your lives.’ He grabbed his iron, when, quick
as a white squall, there was the whale's head on a clean breach, not two iron's
length from the head of the boat. We couldn’t stir hand nor foot for the life
of us. Up, up, not fast, the whale kept going. It seemed there was no end to
him. The old man was gallied a little I think, but he let Lish have his own way.
I don’t think one of us breathed, or even winked, as we watched that awful
black mass shootin’ into the sky. I tell you boys, you’ll never really know how
big a critter a whale is until you see him eclipsing the sun, as I did that blessed
day.
“And there stood that Chipman, his back to us, and at that
minute, I guess, to all the world, with his iron and hand away back over his
shoulder, a waitin’ and waitin’ till the hump showed itself, and full fifty
feet of black skin was in the air! It looked as if it hung right over our heads,
when, holy Moses! Lisha clapped the iron in right up to the socket, and yelled
out so they heard him aboard the ship, ‘Starn for your lives! Starn all, I tell
you!’ At the same time he planted his second iron in the falling whale. Didn’t
we obey orders that time, I wonder1 The boat had jumped its length, when the
whale fell crashing right across our bows, nearly swampin’ the boat in the
swell he raised, and more ‘n half filling us with white water.
“I never was at the Falls of Niagara, and at my time of life,
don’t believe I ll ever go there for the express purpose of listenin’ to
splashin’ water, as I have heard one uproar that showed what might be done.
“The whale thought that blow between wind and water was foul,
for he cut such infernal canticoes that we could not get on to him. He sounded
out half the line, and then ran under water, and provoked us in that way till
the old man got real mad, dashed down his hat, and let out one of his rip-stavin’
swears. Old B_____, you know wouldn’t swear to save his soul, let alone a whale!
But our old man, Jerusalem ! how be
could swear when there was honest life and death need of it! Well, while the
old man was a-cussin’, I heard cedar a-crackin’ and when I looked around I was
goin’ up to the sky fast, with Captain Davis about half a boat's length ahead
of me. We parted company up there, for he kept on his course when I turned. I
come down head first as in course, and went down into dark water like a bower
anchor; I was kind of wire-drawn, and felt long as the mainmast. Bime-by I
turned a sharp corner and glanced u,p most as fast as I went down, and was getting’
purty well into daylight ag’in, when all at once it was dark ag’in. I looked up,
and there was the whale, like a comet with a tail of sea-fire a streamin’
behind him, a-headin’ right for me. Good Lord, how I sculled out of his course!
He shot by me like a rocket, and wben I came up on a half breach, I was just
dead-beat for breath. I spouted like a whale, and blowed out the surplush water,
and got a good long breath. Oh, how good the blessed air comes to a famished
chokin’ man!
“Just then I heard something splash in the sea; I turned
quick, and observed that the boat keg had just come down. ‘Stand from under!’
said I, and I looked up, and believe it or not just as you please, but there
was Captain Davis a comin’, end over end, makin’ the tallest kind of headway to
his natural level. This whirligig made me kind of sea-sick, and turned my
stomick ag’in whalin’. I thought I’d carry out my old plans, and git to
“Now, boys, I never could make out exactly whether the
captain went up very high, or I came up quicker than I thought for (I allowed
that I was down about a half hour), but, maybe I only dreamed the dreams of the
drowning, and saw sights which flit through men's heads in their last minutes.
I asked Captain Davis once how long he’d been kiting that time. The old chap
grinned, and said he hadn’t looked at his watch, but he could now believe that
the ‘cow jumped over the moon’ about the time ‘when the little dog laughed to
see the sport, and the dish ran away with the spoon.’
“How about Ben's yarn?” we inquired of Chipman, who sat
quietly smoking his pipe on the end of the windlass.
“Ben is about right in the main features of the case. I
happened to look straight down from the bead of the boat, when I saw the whale
right under us, coming on a breach. He glimmered as bright a blue in the deep
water as my sweetheart's bonnet. There was no time for thought, so I only acted
on instinct and followed mother's last advice, never to let black skin go by
the head of my boat without putting an iron in it, which the dear creature gave,
illustrating it by throwing a fork at the black cat. But say, Ben, I was mortal
feared the old man might order you to starn off before I could get my irons in.
The whale didn’t act so ugly as Ben thought; Ben was green then, you know, boys;
but the durned critter did smash things when he hit us. But, then, nobody was
hurt, although some were mightily skeart; and the old man himself owned that he
got confused in his whirligig passage from the stern-sheets of the boat to the
water.”
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