Fouled By A Finback

How a Whale Ran a Hundred Miles to Sea With a New England Fisherman

Captain Horace Hillman of Edgartown, Mass., a retired whaler, was out in his catboat Thelma, with a Portuguese assistant, Manuel Correiro, a few days ago examining some nets which had been set off Noman's Land, a small island south of Marthas Vineyard.

Suddenly a finback whale leaped out of the water within ten feet of the Thelma. The boat rocked violently, and both men were thrown prostrate.

At the same instant the whale started out to sea, fouling the lines which attached the nets to the little boat and towing the Thelma seaward.

Correiro did not rise, being buried under a heap of nets that had been overturned when the whale fouled the lines. Captain Hillman was stunned by his fall, but regained his feet in a few seconds. He attempted to go to the relief of the Portuguese, but was unable to do so, as the situation was so perilous that he did not dare to leave the cockpit. Captain Hillman estimates that the whale was towing the Thelma at a speed of thirty miles an hour.

So fast did the little boat tear through the sea that torrents of water poured over the broad, flat stern. Captain Hillman was forced to bail continuously to keep the small craft from being swamped.

Captain Hillman was unable to cast off the lines that bound the nets to the boat nor could he cut them, having lost his knife overboard when the boat was rocked by the swing of the whale's monstrous tail. After being towed for four hours in the direction of Europe the Thelma was suddenly freed and by the whale itself. Captain Hillman says it all happened so quickly that he cannot explain it, but he thinks that the whale must have slackened its speed and then dived. The Thelma and her two occupants were alone on the Atlantic more than a hundred miles from land.

Captain Hillman was two days in bringing the Thelma back to port.