評論
打印
Now, the grand distinction drawn between officer and man at sea, is this-the first lives aft, the last forward. Hence, in whale-ships and merchantmen alike, the mates have their quarters with the captain; and so, too, in most of the American whalers the harpooneers are lodged in the after part of the ship. That is to say, they take their meals in the captain's cabin, and sleep in a place indirectly communicating with it.
海上的船上頭目和一般水手的主要區別既然是這樣...頭目住船尾,水手住船頭。那么,捕鯨船也跟一般商船一樣,大二三副都跟船長住在一起;因此,在大多數的美國捕鯨船上,標槍手們也是住在船尾。這就是說,他們在船長室里吃飯,睡在船長室相近的地方。
Though the long period of a Southern whaling voyage (by far the longest of all voyages now or ever made by man), the peculiar perils of it, and the community of interest prevailing among a company, all of whom, high or low, depend for their profits, not upon fixed wages, but upon their common luck, together with their common vigilance, intrepidity, and hard work; though all these things do in some cases tend to beget a less rigorous discipline than in merchantmen generally; yet, never mind how much like an old Mesopotamian family these whalemen may, in some primitive instances, live together; for all that, the punctilious externals, at least, of the quarter-deck are seldom materially relaxed, and in no instance done away. Indeed, many are the Nantucket ships in which you will see the skipper parading his quarter-deck with an elated grandeur not surpassed in any military navy; nay, extorting almost as much outward homage as if he wore the imperial purple, and not the shabbiest of pilot-cloth.
雖說南方的捕鯨航行時間很長(可以說是古往今來人類最長最遠的航程),又特別富有危險性,大家又有共同的利害關系,全體人員,不論地位高低,收入都不是靠固定工資,而是靠他們共同的運氣,以及大家一起值夜,勇猛而辛勞的工作得來的;雖說這一切有時會弄得紀律不及一般商船嚴峻;然而,盡管這些捕鯨者是多么類似于米索不達米亞家族,富有古風地住在一起;至少后甲板那種刻板的形式,實際上是一點也不松弛的,一點也不會有所簡免的。事實上,在許多南塔開特的船只中,人們就可以看到船長是以一種不下于任何海軍的昂然自得的氣勢在檢閱他的后甲板的;而且外表上簡直是裝得十分使人肅然起敬,仿佛他穿的并不是那種最蹩腳的藍色粗呢,而是帝王的紫袍。
