Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 188, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 August 1913 — WAR WHEN THE WHALE COMES [ARTICLE]

WAR WHEN THE WHALE COMES

So Think the Superstitious Ones Who Watch Over the Delaware Bay. Chester, Pa. —Superstitious people of this city believe that the whale which was recently seen in Dalaware bay is a precurser of war. They refer to past omens of a similar charar ter, reciting that the whale wbict came up the Delaware river in 181» was a precurser of the War of 1812, and that in 1860, one year before the outbreak of the Civil war, a whale came up these waters to Philadelphia. This latter whale Edward Culen, a veteran fisherman of this city, avers he saw. He says: “It was just this way. It was during the summer of 1860. Horace Davis and I were out in a boat fishing. It was a little dark, and we a lantern. I was drawing in the net and Daviß was banking it. All of a sudden Davis said: ‘Ned, there’s vessel upside down out thfere.’ I looked and saw a thing that had the appearance of the hull of a craft upset. ‘See how swift the tide speeds by it,’ said Davis. “We’d got pretty close to it then, and I lifted the lantern to take a good look. Just then there was Of terrible splash and the water went clear up into the air out of that thing. Just as though a powder magazine had busted. “I dropped the lantern, and Davis and I grabbed the oars, and we didn’t stop until we got ashore. There wasn’t any steamboat on the river that could have beaten us that trip. When

that whale was caught up near Ken* sington she had fishermen’s nets around her to stock two or three ship stores. She had dragged them off the bottom of the Delaware as she crawl* ed up toward Philadelphia.”