P.H. Whipple

All your sea-omens are of disaster; and of course, with man in his present unhappy state, huddled together in numbers far too great and spending all his surplus time and treasure beating out his brother’s brains, any gloomy foreboding is likely to be fulfilled; but your corpse, your parson, your St Elmo’s fire is not the cause of the tragedy.
—Patrick O’Brian, H.M.S. Surprise

P.H. Whipple, Third Mate of the Quiddity

Statistics
Age: 26, Nationality: American, Birthplace: Kingsport 1818.

Combat

Skills
Accounting 15%, Anthropology 15%, Appraise 65%, Archeology 5%, Art/Craft (Blacksmith) 15%, Art/Craft (Carpentry) 15%, Art/Craft (Cooperage) 25%, Art/Craft (Gambling) 60%, Art/Craft (Scrimshaw) 85%, Artillery 1%, Charm 25%, Climb 90%, Credit Rating 20%, Cthulhu Mythos 5%, Demolitions 5%, Disguise 45%, Fast Talk 75%, First Aid 45%, History 10%, Hypnosis 1%, Intimidate 75%, Jump 40%, Law 10%, Leadership 35%, Library Use 20%, Listen 75%, Locksmith 45%, Mechanical Repair 65%, Medicine 10%, Natural World 40%, Navigate 50%, Occult 5%, Operate Heavy Machinery 40%, Persuade 50%, Pilot (Boat) 75%, Psychology 25%, Read Lips 75%, Religion (Catholic) 10%, Renown 20%, Ride 10%, Science (Astronomy) 10%, Science (Meteorology) 20%, Seamanship 60%, Sea Lore 55%, Sleight of Hand 85%, Spot Hidden 60%, Stealth 75%, Survival 85%, Swim 65%, Throw 45%, Track 20%, Whalecraft 70%.

Languages: English & Portuguese native; Spanish 30%, Italian 10%.

Description

P.H. Whipple is a tough, wiry man with dark features, long hair, and a pointed goatee. He has a generally disagreeable expression, with shifty eyes and a sneer perpetually haunting his lips. His voice is raspy and peppered by swearing, and his general manner is that of a bully. Despite these imperfections, a certain type of rough sailor is drawn to Whipple, and he surrounds himself with cronies who cheerfully carry out his dirty work.

History
Whipple’s mother is a former Valparaíso prostitute named Fatima Soares Whipple, the daughter of Doroteia Soares and Alexander Whipple, a Portuguese nurse and a naval gunner from Providence, Rhode Island. Whipple’s father was a Nantucket harpooneer named Obed Hendricks. Conceived in a Valparaíso brothel, Whipple was born in Kingsport. After Fatima realized she was pregnant, she relocated to Prospect Hill to live with her mother, who had settled in America just before the War of 1812 claimed the life of her husband.

Baptized Jericho Gomes Hendricks, the lad was already two years old when Obed returned from sea. Taking her son to Nantucket to meet his father, Fatima begged the harpooneer to marry her. Alas, Hendricks was not willing to settle down and sarcastically referred to the lad as “P.H.”—an abbreviation he believed meant “Portagee Whoreson.” Hendricks didn’t hang around too long, and departed for the Pacific on the whaleship Essex. As history famously records, the Essex was stove by a whale and destroyed, and Obed Hendricks was cast adrift in a whaleboat to perish at sea. Fatima returned to Kingsport, changed Jericho’s surname to Whipple, and raised the lad herself. But young Rico liked the sound of P.H., and since neither mother nor son knew the meaning behind it, he cheerfully adopted it as his own. Whenever someone asks Whipple what P.H. means, he offers a witty reply that satisfies the moment: “Pequeno Hendricks,” “Portagee Hellion,” and “Pissed Harpooneer” being three common rejoinders.

In His Father’s Footsteps
Whipple grew up in the Portuguese bairro of Prospect Hill, but he had plenty of exposure to the docks. By the time he was fifteen he’d already emerged as the leader of a gang of young hoodlums. A hard drinker, a skilled gambler, and an intemperate bully, it wasn’t until he decided to go whaling that he truly broke his mother’s heart. At the age of seventeen, Whipple set sail on the Sweet Mary, a ship owned by the Illsley family. Taking to the job as if born to it, he distinguished himself admirably, learning to throw the iron from an old mate of his father’s. When he returned in 1838, he shipped out again as a boatsteerer. Again he made his mark; in fact, he harpooned two Parmaceti in one day, the second mangling his iron so badly it was saved for Roland Hall at the Knotted Iron. (It was rejected; a minor source of bitterness to Whipple, who still gripes about it every time he drinks at Hall’s tavern.) Deaf to his mother’s warnings of “terrible nightmares,” he shipped out on the Quiddity as third mate in 1841.

Whipple loved being an officer. He knew that he lacked the brains and temperament to make captain, but being a mate was everything he wanted—power and authority without the terrible burden of command. Although his own captain, Jeremiah Joab, was a bit strange—though remarkably skilled!—he bonded with Second Mate Elijah Watts, and the two officers became fast friends. It was turning out to be a perfect voyage. Until they met Mocha Dick.

Fine Young Cannibals
After two days chasing the white Leviathan the Quiddity finally lowered her whaleboats. It was a disaster. Mocha Dick went through the hunters with a vengeance, smashing the boats like toys. Whipple’s crew was the only one to harpoon the monster. When the beast rocketed away, his boatsteerer Ezra Clay tumbled into the frothing sea. Dragging them across the waves at an alarming speed, Mocha Dick carried them halfway across the ocean before sounding, swamping the boat and snapping the line.

And so began a terrible ordeal. The Quiddity was nowhere to be seen, and the remaining five men—P.H. Whipple, Suresh Joshi, Ousamequin, George Washington Baker, and Enoch Fisher—were stranded with precious few supplies. Bailing their boat and setting its sail, they began searching for the Quiddity, but a sudden squall caught them off guard. The savage blow almost capsized their boat. After a long night buffeted by the storm, morning broke with a preternatural calmness. The storm had completely dissipated, leaving only the merciless sun.

For the next few days, the men roamed the burning sea looking for the Quiddity. Finally they reckoned a course for Chile and set to the East; but the winds were not in their favor. A week after the disaster, they were no closer to land. The men were exhausted, scared, and…very hungry. Although an errant flying fish gave them some respite, they no longer had enough food to sustain themselves. Despair begun to paralyze their hearts. No rain, no shore, no wind. Three days later, the fresh water was gone, and the following day, Whipple parceled out the last crumbs of biscuit.

Of all the men, the young Quaker “Nucky” Fisher was faring the worst. He was starting to hallucinate about home, and his ravings were unsettling the entire boat. George Baker was scarcely any better, and Whipple and Ousamequin had to restrain themselves from drinking seawater. That evening, while the others slept, Whipple and Joshi discussed killing and eating Baker, the Negro oarsman. Waking in time to overhear the conspiracy, Fisher became outraged, and threatened to rouse the sleeping men. Gathering what strength they could muster, the two would-be cannibals struggled with Fisher, pushing him over the gunwale into the sea. When Nucky tried to claw his way back in, Joshi drove a harpoon through his chest. Hauling him back into the boat, the two sagged back and watched Fisher expire. Whipple and Joshi explained the situation to their horrified comrades: Fisher had gone insane, and was about to kill and eat the sleeping Baker! Within an hour, Whipple, Joshi and Ousamequin butchered Fisher’s body and drank his blood. Although he lapped up some of the steaming blood, Baker refused to eat Fisher’s flesh, despite knowing he’d surely die of starvation.

Two days later, Baker was on death’s door, fluttering in and out of consciousness. His three surviving crewmates conceived a horrible idea, and at sunset they executed their plan. Seizing the exhausted sailor by the throat, they knifed several shallow cuts into his limbs, freeing up a few sluggish trickles of blood. They tied a rope around his ankles and flung him over the side. Attracted to his blood and feeble spasms, a pair of sharks began snapping at his legs. Joshi harpooned one of the sharks, but the second clamped his jaws on Baker and dragged him down.

The next several days they devoured raw shark, but within a week after the murder, the hunger and thirst returned with a vengeance. The castaways realized that one of them would have to be sacrificed, and they decided to draw three unequal lots: the short straw would be the victim, the long straw the butcher. The lots were selected: Whipple drew long, Ousamequin picked the middle, and Joshi was left with the short. Muttering something in Portuguese—a language which Joshi understood but the Gay Head Indian did not—Whipple lifted his barb to the Lascar’s throat. Held down by Ousamequin, the “submissive” Joshi met Whipple’s eyes and blinked his understanding. The mate’s harpoon plunged into Ousamequin’s belly. Joshi and Whipple leapt onto his flailing body, sucking the blood from his throat even as he tried to push them off.

The following morning delivered a miracle: the Quiddity. With Captain Joab feverish from the loss of his leg and Mate Nathaniel Warnock dazed in a stupor, the tragic ship was commanded by Elijah Watts. After twenty-nine days adrift, Whipple and Joshi were rescued. The official story was that Clay, Fisher, Baker, and Ousamequin had been lost during the struggle with Mocha Dick; the remaining men survived on rainwater and harpooned shark. Nobody asked any questions about the bloodstained boat, the broken tooth under the clumsy cleat, or the wild look in Whipple’s eye.

Return to Kingsport
Whipple returned to Kingsport a different person. Always a hard man, he was now a murderer and a cannibal. Haunted by nightmares, he sought refuge in the company of whores and thieves, again breaking his mother’s heart with refusals to stay at home. To add insult to injury, Whipple discovered that the agents were not promoting him to second mate, but were bringing in a new man, a connie named Joseph Coffin. Of course! A bloody Coffin! But still, the Quiddity was his mistress and savior, and he could not bid her farewell. And so he signed on again as third mate, and by God, he will prove himself an officer if he has to break every man on the ship.

Roleplaying P.H. Whipple

Whipple represents a certain banal evil, a low wickedness; a man who has risen to a position of power and will rise no further, so adopts the trappings of petty tyranny. But the reasons for this are complex, and Whipple is not a one-dimensional character. Born a bastard in an unforgiving town, Whipple knows no other way to survive, and his love for the sea and the rough camaraderie of sailors is genuine.

Ranking officers feel that Whipple does an excellent job of getting the men in shape, but lacks the imagination to inspire them. The crew is divided in their opinions of Whipple. Many consider Whipple one of their own; a fellow who has “made it,” and deserves his place among Tuttles and Macys. These sailors are generally among the coarser men of the crew, and include Suresh Joshi, Wampum Jack, Pig Bodine, Henry Swain, and Paddy Garcia. Others see him as a traditional sea-bully. As Peter Veidt remarked to Quentin Shaw, “Whip’s a little ship with too much sail, afraid of deeper waters.” Greenhorns generally fear him, for Whipple works them mercilessly, and he’s never afraid to mock their inexperience. But having said that, he’s also the first officer to hand them a tot of rum when they do well, and after crossing the Line, he begins treating them like real seamen.

Whipple has a natural affinity for Suresh Joshi and Ulysses Dixon. Joshi of course, because they share the terrible secret of their lost whaleboat; and Dixon, because they were both unfairly stifled in their advancement by Joseph Coffin. Whipple distrusts “the gentleman Quaker” Mr. Coffin, dislikes (but obeys) “the molly” William Pynchon, and views “the righteous old skipper” Jeremiah Joab with a sense of awe that approaches worship.

Whipple is almost perversely incurious about his father, Obed Hendricks. Though some of the sailors freely circulate the “rumor” that Whipple’s dad was a harpooneer on the Essex, he himself has no desire to learn more, and has not read Owen Chase’s famous account. Of course, there’s an irony to this. Whipple’s father was also cast adrift in a whaleboat, and may have made some of the same terrible decisions that Whipple made. Indeed, ever since his ordeal, Whipple has felt like some sort of “doom” has been following him: “This goddamn cachorro preto—the black dog on my heels.” A superstitious man, he’s convinced that God is preparing some form of punishment for his sins; but he’s also hopeful he can outwit or outfight whatever fate delivers to his doorstep. This attitude contributes a certain caginess to Whipple’s personality, and he’s become even more distrustful of strangers than usual.

Goals
Whipple’s goals are to break in the crew, to bully the ship into shape, and to get rich on sperm oil. Whipple is completely ignorant about the darker goals of the Quiddity, and doesn’t feel it’s his place to ask awkward questions. The captain is the captain, and his word is law.

Mythos Knowledge
Whipple’s Mythos score reflects his knowledge of Innsmouth tales, but nothing more. Whipple couldn’t tell the difference between the R’lyeh Text and the Holy Bible, and even if he could, it would all be the same. Although he was raised a Catholic, Whipple’s only god is the sea; his savior, the Quiddity; his devils, the whales; and his religion, shipboard routine. Everything else is for men such as Joab to ponder.

Possessions
Whipple is a master scrimshander, and most of his possessions involve scrimshaw, from the handle of his razor to the buttons on his tattered pea-coat. He is currently working on his masterpiece: a revolving spice-rack for Jane Hall, upon whom he has a bizarre and unhealthy crush (see “Chapter 1, The Knotted Iron”). His sea-chest contains several sets of playing cards and dice (some of them marked, rigged, or loaded); a generous supply of hashish with three Turkish pipes; some pornographic letters written for him by Marguerite, Jenny, and Elena, his favorite prostitutes from the Judy Blue; a series of lacquered plates with pornographic images from Canton; no less than four bowie-knives, each with its own story; and a scrimshaw case with several buttons of peyote, some dried amanita powder, and a vial of “black widow venom” he bought from a gypsy in Valparaíso, and has never used on anyone. (It’s not really black widow venom, but a mild poison with a 3D6 minute run time, causing vomiting, cramps, and 1D10 damage.)

Notes & Inspirations for P.H. Whipple

Obviously Moby-Dick is key to understanding the roles of various officers on a whaling ship, but characters like Whipple appear in every rough-and-tumble book about sailors. One touchstone is third mate Flask as played by Shane Connor in the 1998 miniseries Moby-Dick, although Whipple is more charismatic and dangerous. If White Leviathan were a movie, Whipple might be played by Robert Carlyle, perhaps as a cross between Begby, the hooligan from Trainspotting, and Ives, the cannibal from Ravenous. (The photograph used to portray Whipple was borrowed from that movie.) There’s also a touch of Richard Sharpe in Whipple, the main character from Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe series and portrayed by Sean Bean on television.

White Leviathan > NPC Profiles
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Author: A. Buell Ruch
Last Modified: 16 September 2021
Email: quail (at) shipwrecklibrary (dot) com
White Leviathan PDF: [TBD]