Dead Horse
"Whaling for pleasure????????"
Sorry - crossed lines.
I was responding to Tom's comment that we don't understand hunting so we shouldn't criticise it.
Whaling certainly wasn't a pleasure - one of the most interesting aspects of the trade for me was that it was considered the bottom of the pile.
Quite often the whaling ships were manned by men who were too bolshie to get work elsewhere - shipboard lawyers, those not afraid to stand up for their rights.
Some of them, referred to as 'scabbers' found themselves regarded as unemployable and were only taken on when full crews could not be found.
Jim Carroll