Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 307, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 December 1912 — WHALES ARE AWED [ARTICLE]

WHALES ARE AWED

Captain of Blubber Bark Describes Eruption of Volcano. j Portuguese Sailors Pray to the Saints and Every Form of Life in Sea or Air Vanishes—Hurricane Hits Ship. San Francisco. —The whaling bark Gayhead, Captain Wing, which left here seven months ago on a blubber expedition in the frozen north, returned with 350 barrels of sperm oil, the product of eight whales, and an account of the volcanic eruption at Katmai in June. The Gayhead was .200 miles from the volcano and 150 miles off shore at the time of the eruption. Whales were plentiful, sea birds were visible in all directions and fish, large and small, could be seen in the clear, green water. A whale had been cut out of the school that was spouting not far from the bark, had been killed and made fast alongsidv the vessel. Fires had been started under the blubber kettles and the work of cutting up the whale was in full blast when a muffled explosion that seemed to shake the universe was heard. It was followed by six more explosions. A few minutes later there appeared on the horizon a small, black cloud that assumed leviathan proportions as ff rushed toward the Gayhead. There was wind with it, and it struck the vessel with the violence of a hurricane squall. As it hit the bark the air was filled with fine white dust, that soon covered the decks. The blaekness was on both sides of the vessel. “Black as the darkest night,” is the way Captain Wjng describes it. Between the two strata of black was a column of fiery yellow, bright as gold. Captain Wing, who has passed many years in the arctic and who recognized the explosions as of volcanic origin, says that the combination of black and yellow was the strangest sight he had ever seen. The Portuguese whalemen quit work, dropped to their knees and invoked the aid of every saint on the calendar. They were satisfied that the day of judgment had arrived. The

shower of ashes and the accompanying darkness lasted for forty-eight hours. “As the squall approached,” said Captain Wing, “I noticed the whales skedaddle. They hooked on at .full speed. When the air cleared, two days late£, there was not a whale in sight, nor a fish nor a fowl, nor a sign of any kind of life. It w r as not until the Gay-

head had cruised many miles and had winged its way far out cjf the track of the volcanic dust that as much as a bird was seen. That cussed squall queered our cruise all right.” It was more than a month later that the people on the Gayhead learned that Katmai had been in eruption.