"Life in the Forecastle," from Browne's Etchings of a Whaling Cruise, 1846

The forecastle of a whaler of the 1840s: the crew’s quarters in the bows, two tiers of bunks, sea chests for seats, a ladder up to the deck, and a scuffle on the planking. J. Ross Browne, who shipped as a green hand at New Bedford in 1842, called it “black and slimy with filth, very small, and as hot as an oven,” filled with “foul air, smoke, sea-chests, soap-kegs, greasy pans, tainted meat” (p. 24). This is how the men before the mast of the Hydaspe and the Globe lived.