We recently posted about Michael Packard, a Cape Cod diver, who found himself scooped up inside the mouth of a humpback whale. Most of the media reports used the term “swallowed” by the whale. If the word “swallow” is defined as “cause or allow something to pass down the throat,” the description is impossible. A humpback’s esophagus is only about 4 to 5″ in diameter, far too small to swallow a diver, especially one wearing a SCUBA tank. 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.

It was said that Bartley was inside the whale for 36 hours, that his skin had been bleached by the gastric juices, and that he was blind the rest of his life. In some accounts, however, he was supposed to have returned to work within three weeks. He died 18 years later and his tombstone in Gloucester says “James Bartley – a modern day Jonah.”

Looking into the tale, it appears to be a good sea story, without any real basis in fact. According to the account, Bartley was lost and then found again on the whaler, The Star of the East. Investigators have found that a British ship by the same name existed and could have been near the Falklands at the right time, but the ship was not a whaling vessel and its crew list did not include a James Bartley.

The other issue is that while the sperm whale’s esophagus may be large enough to swallow a man, the whale’s four-chambered stomach would result in the sailor being either crushed to death, asphyxiated, drowned, or dispatched by the digestive juices in the whale’s stomach. Anyone swallowed by a sperm whale would almost certainly end up dead.

The most interesting thing about James Bartley’s sea story is how readily it was accepted and how widely it was repeated.

The story originated in American newspapers. The anonymous article appeared in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat of Saint Louis, Missouri, then the note appeared in other newspapers with the title “A Modern Jonah” or something similar in multiple newspapers.

The news spread beyond the ocean in articles as “Man in a Whale’s Stomach. “Rescue of a Modern Jonah” on page 8 of the August 22, 1891 issue of the Yarmouth Mercury newspaper of Great Yarmouth in England.

The story was particularly popular among fundamentalists who viewed it as proof of the Biblical story of Jonah. 

Bartley’s story continued to be recycled well into the twentieth century. Wikipedia notes that George Orwell refers to this incident (twice) in his 1939 novel Coming Up for Air (though not in his 1940 essay “Inside the Whale”). Julian Barnes references the event in his novel A History of the World in 10½ Chapters, as did Arthur C. Clarke’s novel Childhood’s End and J. M. Ledgard in his novel Submergence, the latter albeit using a different name, John More, for the swallowed victim. Clive Cussler also refers to the James Bartley story in his novel Medusa. James Bartley was also mentioned in the 1965 “Jonah and the Whale” episode of the Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea television series.

The story of Bartley and the whale may say more about the nature of sea stories than anything else. If the story is good enough it is worth repeating whether there is an ounce of truth behind it. Or, to phrase it another way, one should never let facts interfere with a good story.