Besides, the English
whalers sometimes affect a kind of metropolitan superiority
over the American whalers; regarding the long, lean Nantucketer,
with his nondescript provincialisms, as a sort of sea-peasant. But
where this superiority in the English whaleman does really consist,
it would be hard to say, seeing that the Yankees in one day, collectively,
kill more whales than all the English, collectively, in ten years.
But this is a harmless little foible in the English whale-hunters, which
the Nantucketer does not take much to heart; probably, because he knows
that he has a few foibles himself.
So, then, we see that of all ships separately sailing the sea,
the whalers have most reason to be sociable--and they are so.
Whereas, some merchant ships crossing each other's wake in the
mid-Atlantic, will oftentimes pass on without so much as a single
word of recognition, mutually cutting each other on the high seas,
like a brace of dandies in Broadway; and all the time indulging,
perhaps, in finical criticism upon each other's rig.
As for Men-of-War, when they chance to meet at sea, they first
go through such a string of silly bowings and scrapings,
such a ducking of ensigns, that there does not seem to be much
right-down hearty good-will and brotherly love about it at all.
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