living in the past

  Abraham Miller King, my third great grandfather was a whaler. In todays world , an occupation to be despised. His brother, Oliver Gibson King was also engaged in that activity. They both sailed out of the port of Sag Harbor on Long Island. Sag harbor today is more of a tourist attraction than anything else. The rich and famous make their homes there. I wonder what Abraham and Oliver would think about all of that now. Abraham, it has been recorded made seven trips around the horn, Cape Horn that is. Rounding that they entered the pacific ocean in search of those elusive beasts. Journeys could last for years. There was no assurance of success, no guarantee of any kind besides long days of nothing followed, hopefully, by a day or two of intense excitement and very hard and dangerous work. Beyond the danger of actually catching the whale, rendering the carcass was equally as fraught with danger. The whale hanging alongside the ship, dripping blood into the water, attracted sharks. The men standing on the platforms attempting to strip that flesh were in constant danger. One slip. one careless moment, and you became part of the feeding frenzy. Abraham and Oliver survived all of that and indeed, saw the end of the industry itself. Neither became wealthy, neither became famous, they are just names in history. I have uncovered a few bits of information about them, snippets of their lives. Although both were long gone before my arrival I did hear their names and some of their adventures. Oliver served in the civil war, I'm not certain about Abraham. Oliver met his fate in New York city. He had travelled there in an attempt to secure his pension and rented a room for the night. There was a gas leak in that room and he succumbed to that during the night. Abraham traveled to New York to bring his body home. Of Abraham I know little else after that not having spent any time in researching that. It's something that I'm always going to do one day. I do have a picture of Abraham and Oliver in a sort of locket type case. It originally belong to Abrahams' wife Agnes. Agnes gave it her daughter Lucy. I got it through my father who got it from his grandfather Floyd. 

 It is with some pride that I claim that lineage. Yes they were whalers but that was an honorable profession in their day. I feel no responsibility for whatever actions they may have taken in the pursuit of their profession. They were just trying to make a living, taking care of obligations. Today it is a rather romantic notion, this being a whaler, at least for me it is. I am not distraught over the plight of the whale and cursing my ancestors for there contribution to that. Seems rather silly to me, you can't change history by being mad at it. Now I make no claim to being a whaler or a great sailor of the seas. It's true I spent twenty years in the Navy and sailed all over the world. Didn't go 'round the horn though, went through the canal to reach the Pacific, a shortcut not available to Abraham. And my cruises were far more comfortable than any those brothers may have made, on any ship! I did think about that at times, wondering if they had sailed the same area I was in. The oceans are vast places, far larger than you can imagine unless you have sailed upon them. I have stood on the deck at night, the sky full of stars and the moon resting on the horizon. Nothing but an expanse of water and waves for as far as the eye can see, and sometimes as far as you can see through a telescope. Surely they were on a ship that crossed those waters somewhere. It's a thought anyway. It is something I think about when I'm living in the past. A place I visit to escape today, for a while.