After a ship has her provisions, water, and every thing necessary for the voyage on board except her crew, she is “hauled into the stream,” ready for sea as soon as the ship’s company can be got on board, which generally occupies a day or two, as many of them are having their last “spree,” spending their “advance,” and often coming on board half intoxicated. Some of them, when they ship, are in that condition, and hardly know, until they are at sea, their true situation and how they came there. The majority of a whaler’s crew (foremast hands) are “greenies,” hardly any of them ever having smelt salt water, and knowing nothing of a seaman’s life, its hardships, its exposures, its joys, or its sorrows. But the poor fellows soon learn, and many of them, before they have been clear of the land a week, vainly wish themselves at home. Many of them are picked up by “shipping agents” throughout the country, who send them on to their respective shipping-houses in New Bedford. They are then furnished by the shippers with second or third rate boarding-houses, the board to be paid out of their advance. It is a common practice for the shippers to make contracts with owners to furnish them with so many “green hands” at so much per head; the shipper receiving his price from the owner, and then, in addition, charging poor “greeny” ten dollars for “getting him a ship.” [Illustration: NEW BEDFORD FROM A WHALEMAN’S POINT OF VIEW.] He is then, after being shipped in a vessel of whose captain, officers, destination, etc., he is entirely ignorant, consigned to the tender mercies of the “outfitter,” who is to furnish his wardrobe for a five years’ voyage. The poor fellow is here sadly taken in. The outfitter will spin him a nice yarn, and promise him a splendid outfit, “enough to last him the whole voyage,” which he manages to postpone giving him until the ship is just ready to sail, when he will “fit him out” with a wooden box, made of pine boards, which he calls a chest, size about seven by nine, with perhaps a broken lock, and “stowed” with his five years’ clothing. As a general thing, this clothing is made in such a manner and of such material that it gives out before the ship gets into the Pacific, and the “slop-chest” is resorted to for a new supply. It is a common remark among whalemen who have been “bit,” that the cloth is “made of bull’s wool and dog’s hair, woven together by thunder and lightning.” The “five years’ supply” generally consists of two red or blue woolen shirts, two under-shirts, two pairs of drawers, one pair of woolen pants, one round-jacket, one monkey-jacket, two pairs of thin pants, two “hickory” shirts, a sou’wester or tarpaulin, two pairs of stockings, one pair of shoes, a jack-knife, comb, looking-glass, paper of needles, one quarter-pound of thread, five pounds of tobacco, a keg of oil soap, a tin cup, pan, and spoon, mattress, pillow, and blankets. For this lot of _stuff_ the outfitter charges