Tribal Profiles: 1800s Peter George, Whaler Whaling ships that sailed from New London in the early 19th century often took Native men as crew members. Peter George was one of several Pequots who are known to have sailed on whaling ships. He was born in 1804, and went to sea at least twice. In 1827 he began a seven month voyage to the Pacific Ocean on the whaler Friends. He shipped out from New London again five years later on the Palladium.  No records exist to tell us what tasks Peter George performed at sea. Some Native people were harpooners, a job that required both skill and bravery. Nearly all hands participated in processing the catch. After a whale was killed, the crew brought it alongside the ship, stripped off its foot-thick layer of fat, and hoisted the blubber aboard. On deck the blubber was cut into pieces and boiled to render it into oil. This was done in the tryworks—huge iron pots set over wood fires in a kind of brick oven on deck. Stirring the smoky pots, on a deck smeared with oil and blood, was exhausting, greasy work. It could take three days to “try out” the blubber of a large whale, during which crew members stood at the tryworks in six-hour shifts. The oil was then cooled in a metal tank and bailed into barrels, where it was stored for the remainder of the voyage. Back home after a long voyage, whalers recounted their adventures at sea to family and friends. The whalers’ rough ways and tall tales sometimes frightened small children—according to a story handed down in one Pequot family, trembling children took refuge from the men under their mother’s billowing hoop skirt.