"He used to always whale {sic} me when he was sober and could get his hands on me," says Huckleberry Finn of his father at the beginning of Chapter 3. Huck's spelling is, of course, not entirely reliable ~ part of Mark Twain's 1st-person-narrative joke in this great novel. But it is probably OK here: Chambers Dict, as well as 'wale' in the sense of to thrash, also gives 'whale' in the same sense, 'perhaps from 'wale' or perhaps from whalebone whip'. So it seems that Gibb's Captain Taylor the whaler could have been thus spelt and still mean he was a whipper of 'Mex'cans'.

~M~