“BOAT SMASHED TO ATOMS AND FRED WALDEN KILLED”
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(WHALING.) Harriss, Benjamin R.
Whaling journal kept aboard an English
ship in the South Pacific.
Illustrated with 11 whale tail drawings. [189] manuscript
journal pages, [4] pages of summaries for this and a previous voyage, [10] pages unrelated
memoranda at end. Folio, original paper-covered boards, worn but stable; contents
generally clean and sound, final journal leaf excised and pasted back in.
Vp, 1841-1845
[1,500/2,500]
Harriss was apparently the carpenter aboard the ship Pacific, and many of his entries deal with
repairs to the whale boats and masts. The ship’s nearly four-year voyage was a modest success,
with 87 whales taken in, producing 1607 barrels of oil—a slightly smaller haul than the ship’s
previous 1837-1840 voyage (summarized here in a two-page chart). Whaling was never easy
work, though, and the deaths of four crewmen are mentioned here, most of them by illness (9
February 1842, 28 July 1843, 10 September 1843), with auctions of the deceased’s effects
described twice. The final fatality was the only one inflicted by the enemy: “Saw a pod of
sperm whales. Lowered, struck and killed 1 whale. Got the w boat smashed to atoms and Fred
Walden killed. At 11 am got the fragments of the boat on board, got the whale alongside at
noon” (24 November 1843). While anchored in Cape Verde, a steerage passenger from
another ship was also “murdered by a Portuguse” (3 May 1841).
On 11 December 1843, while cruising off New Guinea, the Pacific saw a canoe coming
toward the ship. The next day, “the canoe came alongside, the natives being in a very exhausted
state, having been from the island 10 days without provisions of any kind. Had not providence
driven them in our way they must have all perished. Took the canoe on board and made sail for
Lord North’s Island.”
Benjamin R. Harriss was born in England circa 1825, and left in 1841 aboard the English
whaler Pacific on a journey of nearly 4 years. By 1852, he was living in California, where he
married an English woman and raised a family in Santa Rosa. The later part of this volume
dating from 1888-1894 documents the work of his son Benjamin Henry Harriss (born 1854)
as a day laborer in Santa Rosa and Petaluma.
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