But the tale refused to die and was rerun in many papers over the next two decades. The yarn continued to be published right up until , when the Sunday Mail even reported how Bartley had settled down as a cobbler in Gloucester, England. Historians have since concluded that the Star of the East was not a whaler, and there was no James Bartley on its crew manifest, while scientists confirm it is not possible to survive for 15 hours in the stomach of a sperm whale.
For nearly years the media largely swallowed this whale of a story without once trying to interview or find a picture of Bartley. As Melbourne Cup Day dawns, new research shows gambling participation in Australia is dropping. Close Menu. Facebook Twitter Instagram Instagram Adventure. Popular this week A long way from home: Antarctic penguin makes it all the way to New Zealand New Zealand conservationists have released an adelie penguin back into the sea after the Antarctic-based bird swam thousands of kilometres to make a rare visit.
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The oarsmen readied themselves to pull for their lives. Without warning there was a splintering crash which sent the longboat spinning into the air.
The whale thrashed about wildly, snapping at the men and the wreckage with its huge jaws as the water turned to a bloody froth before he sounded again. Another longboat picked up the survivors of this encounter, but two men were missing - one of them the young apprentice, James Bartley.
The wind now deserted the Star of the East and for hours she lay becalmed, wallowing in a light swell. Shortly before sunset, the now dead whale floated to the surface a few hundred yards from the ship.
In a longboat, the crew hastily fastened a line to the whale and the winch brought it to the ship's side. The hot weather climate made it imperative that the whale be cut up at once.
Having no means of raising it to the deck, the men took their flensing spades and peeled off the blubber as they slipped and slid along the immense back of this giant mammal. Late that night, working by lantern-light, the tired crewmen removed the stomach of the whale and slowly winched it to the deck for flensing. We recently posted about Michael Packard, a Cape Cod diver, who found himself scooped up inside the mouth of a humpback whale. As one might expect, Mr. Pollard was promptly spat out by the whale, fortunately with minor injuries.
Perhaps ironically, some of the largest whales are filter feeders which feed on krill, plankton, and small fish. They have throats too small to swallow a human. Toothed whales are a different story. Sperm whales, the third-largest whale species, are toothed and prey on giant squid. Some sperm whales have an esophagus several feet in diameter, large enough to swallow a squid or a human whole.
Indeed, there is the story of James Bartley , who in the late nineteenth-century on a whaling expedition off the Falkland Islands, was said to have been swallowed by a sperm whale and was found to be still alive days later in the stomach of the whale.
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