Boatsteerer
After the mates, the most important group of men on board consisted of the boatsteerers, or harpooners—one for each boat. These were skilled and experienced whalemen who were given the posts of greatest danger and responsibility in performing the actual labor of a cruise. Their alternative names grew out of their two most important functions — those of flinging the harpoon and thereupon going aft to steer the whaleboat while the mate came forward to wield the lance. Together with the steward, and sometimes the cooper or shipkeeper, they lived in separate quarters amidships, known as the steerage. In location as well as in rank, therefore, they were half-way between the officers, whose quarters were aft in the cabin, and the foremast hands, who were housed forward in the forecastle. Roughly, their position was analogous to that of petty officers in the navy or of non-commissioned officers in the army.*
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- Occupations aboard a whaling vessel Jordan Goffin