Can a Whale Swallow a Man?

Most who have preached on Jonah have come across the story of whaler James Bartley.  Here is an article I clipped from an Ohio paper back in 1989:
 

Most of the “lists” of top stories of 1988 included the dramatic rescue of the two gray whales trapped in the ice off northern Alaska.

It was a marine cliff-hanger of sorts, but for sheer melodrama it couldn’t compare with another whale story that took place in the South Atlantic in 1891. The whale in this saga swallowed a British seaman named James Bartley. The whale died, but Bartley lived.

The story unfolded in this fashion. A whaling expedition off the Falkland Islands spotted and mortally wounded a huge sperm whale. In the struggle between th seamen and the giant creature of the deep, the whaling boat was upset and the seamen were thrown into the sea.

When the survivors were picked up, two men were missing. One of them was James Bartley, age 21.

Just before nightfall the same day, the dying whale floated to the surface. With their long flensing blades the men removed the thick blubber which would be cooked down into oil.

Shortly before 11 that night, working by lantern light, the tired crew removed the stomach and the huge liver. As they did, they were startled to notice movement inside the great paunch - a slow, rhythmic movement that looked like something breathing.

The captain called the ship’s doctor and a great incision was made. A human foot became visible - shoe and all. A few moments later they pulled James Bartley out. He was doubled up and unconscious - but alive!

For nearly two weeks he lingered between life and death. Gradually he recovered his senses. But it was a month before he was able to tell what had happened.

He remembered being flung into the air when the whale crushed their longboat and, as he fell back into the sea, he saw the great mouth open over him. He screamed and found himself being swallowed. Then oblivion.

He had been inside the whale’s stomach for 15 hours. As a result he lost all the hair on his body. His skin was bleached to an unnatural whiteness and he was almost blind for the rest of his life, which he spent as a shoe cobbler in his native Gloucester.

James Bartley was visited by medical men from many lands, so the story goes. He lived 18 years (till age 39) after his incredible adventure. On his tombstone are the words:

    JAMES BARTLEY - 1870-1909
           A MODERN JONAH

Is it possible then that Jonah really WAS? To those who don’t believe the story in the Bible, the saga of James Bartley probably won’t convince them.

Those who already believe need no such reinforcement for their faith. But they can be excused if, after hearing the story of the “modern Jonah,” they look at us skeptics with a “told-you-so” glint in their eye.

It wouldn’t be the first time the skeptics have been outfoxed by the Bible-believers. One such doubter went up to a minister who had just finished a sermon on the historicity of the Jonah story.

The unbeliever said he had heard that the throat of the whale was too small for a man to pass through.

“I have heard that too,” said the minister. “And it bothers me. I guess I’ll just have to wait until I get to heaven. Then I’ll ask Jonah about it.”

“But what if Jonah isn’t IN heaven?” replied the cynic.

“Then you ask,” said the quick-witted parson.

________

George Plagenz, Coshocton [Ohio] Tribune newspaper, February 2, 1989; (c) 1989 Newspaper Enterprise Assn.

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One of our readers, Andrew Appleton, wrote to ask: ‘Is the story of a Japanese man who survived three days in the stomach of a whale true, or is it an urban myth? I have heard it told several times as proof that the story of Jonah is scientifically possible.’

I haven’t heard the Japanese story, but there have been numerous books, articles and sermons that have dealt with the feasibility of being swallowed by a sea creature and surviving. Most of the articles either speculate about the possibility of various fish or mammals being able to swallow a human, but if you survey Christian literature, you will find one story in particular which is the most cited.

MAN OVERBOARD!

The story dates back to the late 19th century and involves a whaling ship named the ‘Star of the East’, operating off the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic. According to most accounts, a whale was sighted, the harpoon boats were launched, and the whale was successfully speared. In the violence that followed, however, one of the smaller boats capsized, throwing two crew members into the sea. One of them drowned and the other, said to be a man named James Bartley, disappeared. The whale was eventually subdued and its carcass hoisted onto the ship where the crew started carving it up for blubber.

After a couple of days of work, they got down to the stomach, where some workers noticed something large inside, ‘doubled up’, and showing signs of life. They cut the stomach open and there lay James Bartley, unconscious and somewhat digested, but alive. They doused him with sea water, put him in the captain’s cabin and after a couple of weeks of recovery, he was back on the job.

Most accounts of the story also include a detailed description of what Bartley experienced and felt during his whale of a journey. He is quoted as saying that he remembered flying through the air when the whale struck the boat with its tail – and then suddenly being in darkness and slipping along a smooth passage of some sort. He then came into a larger area marked by a slimy substance that seemed to shrink from his touch. He finally realized that he was in the whale. He said that he could breathe, but that it was very hot in there. At some point he lost consciousness and the next thing he remembered was being cared for by the crew.

Some versions of the story say his skin was permanently affected by the gastric juices in the whale, and that he had a bleached white appearance for the remainder of his life. Other versions describe his skin as having been left with a bluish color.

HARPOONING THE TALE

There have been a few other, similar stories, but researchers suspect that they all have the same origin. The story of James Bartley is therefore of greatest interest, since there are so many accounts of it and they include enough information to allow some good digging to be done.

The definitive research into this story has been done by Edward B. Davis, a professor at Messiah College in Grantham, Pennsylvania. He was curious to try to document the story since it was so often repeated by fundamentalist biblical apologists and had even found its way into several Bible commentaries. His research is summarized in an article in ‘The American Scientific Affiliation’, published in 1991.

Davis not only scoured newspaper files, original documents and libraries, but spent time in England tracking down some of the sources. He verified, for example, that there really had been a vessel named the ‘Star of the East’ and that its captain was a man named J.B. Killam. He followed the trail of the great British engineer, Sir Francis Fox, who was so struck with the Bartley story that he included a chapter on it in his autobiography, published in 1924.

The result of Davis’s research was that he could not find any credible evidence to support the James Bartley story. In fact, he found evidence which made the story seem more questionable. He checked out a report that Bartley had been treated at a London hospital for the effects of the whale’s gastric juices on his skin, but could not find any substantiation for it. When he read through the documents about the particular voyage during which the alleged whale incident happened, James Bartley was not listed as a crew member.

More damaging to the story was a letter written by the wife of the captain of the ‘Star of the East,’ Mrs. John Killam. The contents of her letter were published in 1907 in ‘The Expository Times’ by a reader who had corresponded with Mrs. Killam about the whale story. She said:

There is not one word of truth to the whale story. I was with my husband all the years he was in the Star of the East. There was never a man lost overboard while my husband was in her. The sailor has told a great sea yarn.

Despite this, the story has been repeated by a number of conservative Christian writers, including Bernard Ramm, Harry Rimmer and the creationist Henry Morris; and also in the Tyndale Old Testament Commentary on Jonah and the IVP Bible Dictionary.

ORIGINAL WHALE?

One of the alleged sources of the James Bartley story was a newspaper report published in Great Yarmouth, on the east coast of England. Davis visited the port and found an article that gave an account of the story, but it offered nothing to help support the facts of it. He also found a whale story dated 1891 – the same year as most of the James Bartley accounts. According to the story, a 30-foot rorqual whale caused a stir when it came close to the shore off the town of Gorleston, near Great Yarmouth. It ran against the town’s pier and beached itself while being chased by several boats.

The whale became a local celebrity and was known as ‘the Gorleston Whale’. The carcass was hoisted, became an exhibit for a couple of days, and then a taxidermist stuffed it and it was displayed in the London Westminster Aquarium. According to Davis, two of the clippings he found about the Gorleston Whale, including one written within days of the event, reported that the story had ‘inspired a number of exaggerated tales.’

Has there ever been another human being besides Jonah who has survived being swallowed by a sea creature? We can’t say, and it is not our purpose to doubt the scriptural account. Stories such as the one about James Bartley, however, have not measured up to a standard of reliable evidence.