Pacific Ocean I: Gam with the Julia

14) Gam with the Julia
4°35” S., 93°42” W. South Pacific Ocean, June 11, 1845

A) The Julia
On the evening of June 11th, a ship is spied in the distance, lighting her lanterns and furling her sails. Bristling with merry pennants and sporting the jawbone of a whale lashed to her bowsprit, she is the Julia, an Australian whaler from Sydney. After the customary “Hast thou seen the White Whale?” is answered with, “Nay, but we heard a bloody good tale of ‘im—ol’ Mocha Dick, aye?” Joab allows the ships to gam for the night.

The Julia is commanded by a Scotsman named Jamie MacTaggart, a boisterous fellow with a bristling beard and a ringing voice touched by a Highland accent. His chief mate is Timothy Wiseman, a mild-mannered Londoner with a fondness for chain-smoking clove cigarettes and quoting obscure works of literature. They’re accompanied by an extraordinarily tall surgeon, a somewhat rakish gentleman called “Doctor Long Ghost” on account of his pale features. All three radiate a sense of good cheer, and it’s clear the Julia is a happy ship. (Unlike their American counterparts, British whalers carry surgeons onboard. Doctor Long Ghost’s real name is Charles Cave, a dissolute medical student from Sydney.)

The Julia is nearing the end of her voyage. They just stopped at the Galápagos for a few turtles, which are currently pondering over her freshly-holystoned deck. MacTaggart reckons that a few more whales should top off their casks, so they’re off to Honolulu, and thence home to Sydney. In a gesture of hopeful good will, McTaggart has allowed the men to sling the jawbone of their last whale from the bowsprit—“Ach, ‘tis usually done for a full hold, but that bugger was a proper monster, five-and-seventy feet ‘were he an inch! A fine braw bull, fought like a Scotsman.” A couple more parmaceti, and the crew can raise the “homeward bound” pennant and invert the stern boat.

B) The Gam
After agreeing to the gam, Captain MacTaggart rows over to the Quiddity, and Mr. Pynchon joins Mr. Wiseman onboard the Julia. In the mood to host a party, the Julias invites the Quids to a “grand whaler’s ball.” There’s rum, pisco, and gin to spare, and one of the tortoises is slaughtered for soup. The “Little Jule” features several fine musicians among her crew—the blacksmith plays the bagpipes, Doctor Long Ghost packed his baritone horn, and the forecastle boasts two concertinas, a violin, and a bodhrán. The stomach-skin of a poke-fish is stretched across the trypots, turning them into kettle drums. Unless interrupted by a wicked Keeper, the decks ring with song and dance all night long.

C) Gather ‘Round and Hear My Tale…
The Julias have two stories to share with the Yankees. Hearing both earns a player character to +1D3 points in Sea Lore.

The Tale of the Jeremiah
According to an Australian harpooneer named Harry Banks, a few months ago while cruising the Offshore Grounds the Julia spoke a ship named the Jeremiah, from Nantucket. She was under the acting command of her former third mate, one Michael Fink of Philadelphia. According to Mr. Fink, the Jeremiah’s captain and ranking officers were killed by a white whale bigger than any parmaceti ever seen. The chase lasted for hours, pulling the men into a mysterious fogbank. The whale attacked with terrific ferocity. After crunching the captain’s boat in his jaws, the whale overturned chief mate’s boat and smashed the second mate’s boat with his tail. According to Fink, the whale circled around the struggling sailors until nightfall. As the fog grew thicker, the men were dragged down one by one by hungry sharks. Only five men survived until morning, when the fog lifted and they were rescued by the Jeremiah.

At this point, one of the Julia’s sailors interrupts, “Nay, ‘tis not what he said. He said some were eaten by John Shark.” Banks laughs, then remarks that while this is true, what poor Mr. Fink really said could scarcely be countenanced: the mate claims he saw, with his own eyes, “a great sea-snake wriggling up from the deep.” The creature wrapped its coils around it prey and yanked them underwater. This story is greeted by nervous laughter; things grow more solemn when the harpooneer asks, “Ain’t your captain looking for this whale? Ain’t he Mocha Dick? And ain’t Joab’s Christian name Jeremiah?” Even sailors sworn to Joab’s Binding Oath experience a chill; trading nervous looks until Owen Love breaks the spell—“Fucking sea snakes, is it? Christ I see ‘em every time I drink!”

The Tale of the Azrael
The second tale comes from the bagpiper, a Scottish blacksmith named Ian Heath. When Heath was gamming with the crew of the Jeremiah, the ship’s blacksmith Matthew Pease told him another tale, the tale of the Azrael, a ship the Jeremiah encountered shortly before their disaster. According to Pease, while whaling near the Marquesan Islands, the Jeremiah spied a strange ship, its sails painted black with soot, its course veering oddly, and a stinking, shark-ravaged whale still fastened to the side, its flensing abandoned. The name of the ship was scratched out, the word AZRAEL painted on her side. (A Regular Occult role or a Hard Religion roll recognizes Azrael as the “angel of death.”)

Believing the ship in trouble, the Jeremiah made to lower a boat, when a crazed man in a tattered black cloak raised his speaking trumpet and declared that the Azrael was “A quarantined ship, for we have the Plague.” When the Jeremiah’s captain asked if they needed help, the man grew agitated, and began shouting, saying that if any boat lowered, he would open fire upon its crew. Indeed, a few moments later, a musket was produced by a “shifty figure hunched in a black cloak,” who waved it threateningly in their direction. The Jeremiah’s captain asked the speaker his name, and the speaker replied, “I am Lazarus. Raised from the dead, I serve the Angel of Death.” When the captain asked where “Lazarus” intended to sail, the two figures on the Azrael argued for a second. Then the speaker called out, “Have you seen an uncharted island, with tall cliffs of black stone like the walls of a prison?” When the captain asked for more information, the speaker and hunchback argued again, then vanished below decks. Thoughts of Samuel Comstock on his mind, the Jeremiah’s captain ordered the ship to make a hasty retreat from this ship of fools.

Character Reactions
The tale of the Azrael calls to mind the Manuxet and the Rachel, and the crew mutters about possible connections. Why so much mutiny? And what about plague, was the hunchback telling the truth? Of course, Dixon’s ears perk up at the mention of the Black Island, but none of the figures described in the tale seems familiar. A hunchback?

Joab and Pynchon
Captain Joab and Mr. Pynchon also hear these stories; Pynchon on the Julia and Joab from Captain MacTaggart on the Quiddity. Joab’s feverish reaction at the mention of Mocha Dick alarms his Scottish counterpart, who warns Joab to avoid that “sure and certain path to death.” On the other hand, Pynchon is more alarmed by the story of the Azrael and the Black Island. He attempts to suppress further mention of the island with frosty disdain—“The delusions of a madman. The captain was right to sail away, probably another Samuel Comstock.”

White Leviathan, Chapter 3—Pacific Ocean I
[Back to Encounter 13, El Mar de los Sueños | White Leviathan TOC | Forward to Chapter 4: Background]

Author: A. Buell Ruch
Last Modified: 29 July 2023
Email: quail (at) shipwrecklibrary (dot) com
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