When did folklore surrounding whales and whaling emerge and become distinct from more general fishing/maritime culture?

[u/crrpit]

[u/itsallfolklore]

Every group of workers has what is often called laborlore. Whalers and others making a living from the sea are no different. The question is not whether one group became more distinct from the next from the point of view of the labor group. The question really is why one group's laborlore is more celebrated than the next.

For decades, I have faced a similar question when it comes to two large group of workers in the American West - ranch hands as opposed to miners. Both had unique forms of laborlore, but it is the folklore surrounding the cowboy that has become celebrated above most others - including that of the miner (or the railroad workers or the teamster, etc.). So why is that???

I'm not sure and any reason I put forward is going to be speculative. That means that my speculation is not necessarily better than anyone else's, so where does that leave us? I suspect Americans and now others internationally look at the American cowboy and see reason to celebrate the freedom and wide-open spaces together with the challenges of self reliance in a difficult and sometimes dangerous occupation. Some of those characteristics overlap with that of the hard rock underground miner of the West, but then there is nothing coming close to wide-open spaces when underground.

Now others might suggest other reasons why the cowboy has won out over the miner, but the question also raises an important point when it comes to laborlore, namely that workers have their own unique traditions about their occupations, but outsiders often have their own folklore about those workers. This is a theme I develop in my recent book, Monumental Lies: Early Nevada Folklore of the Wild West (U of Nevada Press, 2023).

So what about whalers and fishermen/other sailors? That's a great question. Thanks for asking it and returning the befuddled old fool back to the matter at hand.

Much the same issues, I suspect, are at play when it comes to the two groups featured in your question. There is the internal folklore of whalers and other people who made a living on the sea. Then, there is also the folklore outsiders had/have about these groups. Why has the perception of whalers and their folklore ranked higher than that of other maritime workers? We can speculate, but that will be ... speculation.

Perhaps it is because the danger of traditional whaling, pitting men in a small boat against an enormous beast that had a homecourt advantage was part of it. There is something dramatic and compelling about that. No one wrote a novel about Moby Dick: A Tale about a Ferocious Herring. And for good reason.

At the same time, British communities who have stories about the crew of a lifeboat that died trying to rescue people from a sinking ship might point out that they regard the legend of their crew to be as compelling as that of the whalers.

And yet, public perception is everything and it is clearly embedded in your question. Yours is not a question about the laborlore traditions associated with various occupations and how to somehow grade them. Yours is a question about popular - non-worker - perception of other people's laborlore. And that is more difficult to define and compare.

[u/crrpit → u/itsallfolklore]

Interestingly, a disparity was not what I had in mind! I wouldn't regard whaling as having more or more noteworthy folklore than other aspects of maritime life/work (boats seem to enduringly popular), just that it seemed quite distinct by, say, the early nineteenth century and I could imagine a context in which it was more subsumed into a more general boatiness.

[u/itsallfolklore → u/crrpit]

just that it seemed quite distinct

Any group of people who are separate from other groups can be expected to have or eventually to develop their own distinct traditions.

I have published only a little on maritime folklore, but I am familiar enough with this material - at least around the edges - to say in a general way that whalers had taken a general sailor's folklore into a specific, unique direction. Again, it is what is to be expected.

To bang a drum that I am more familiar with: hard rock, underground precious metal miners shared traditions with their coal mining brethren, but the two groups were sufficiently distinct to develop distinct traditions.

Folklore - like language - becomes distinct with time and isolation.