As if it had been a Christian soul, we hailed it in God’s name

All of the personal narratives I’ve been reading of time at sea, including those by Richard Henry Dana, William Bligh, the crew of the Essex, Amasa Delano, spend considerable time discussing the flora and fauna they encounter on their travels. Not a huge surprise, of course—they were all traveling to quite exotic places, with animals very different from what they were used to, and sometimes doing so so early that they were among the first to see them.

The sailors that reach the Galapagos talk about the lizards. Many, many of them also talk about turtles, tortoises, and terrapins (very popular food). Penguins are noteworthy. Birds in general are often mentioned, especially since even the ordinary ones signal the long-awaited nearing of land. But the albatross is probably the most striking creature the sailors discuss.

Striking for me (and presumably most other readers) because of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” Striking for the sailors because the albatross is, apparently, a truly amazing bird. Strange for someone familiar with the poem, in more than one of these voyages do the men leave bait for albatrosses over the stern, hoping to catch one. They don’t actually describe eating them, but one can only assume that they do. In Two Years Before the Mast:

I had been interested in the bird from descriptions which I had read of it, and was not at all disappointed. We caught one or two with a baited hook which we floated astern upon a shingle. Their long, flapping wings, long legs, and large, staring eyes, give them a very peculiar appearance. They look well on the wing, but one of the finest sights that I have ever seen, was an albatross asleep upon the water, during a calm, off Cape Horn, when a heavy sea was running. There being no breeze, the surface of the water was unbroken, but a long, heavy swell was rolling, and we saw the fellow, all white, directly ahead of us, asleep upon the waves, with his head under his wing; now rising on the top of a huge billow, and then falling slowly until he was lost in the hollow between.

The huge white birds seem to be one of those things in life that don’t disappoint. And the sailors are certainly in awe of them, even though they kill them. This seems to be true of a great many things the sailors kill and often eat: whales, turtles, dolphins, Santiago’s marlin. The awe and majesty of the sea imparted to its creatures, even when we must hunt and eat them? I don’t know, but sometimes it feels that way.