Here's a piece of history that should change what's on your rate card: whalers were never paid wages.
Not the captain, not the harpooneers, not the greenest sailor swabbing the deck. Nobody on a whaling ship earned by the hour or by the month. Every man aboard signed on for a "lay" — a fixed share of the voyage's net proceeds, negotiated before the ship left the dock. In Moby-Dick, Ishmael haggles his on the page: he lands the 275th lay, one two-hundred-seventy-fifth part of whatever the voyage clears. A skilled harpooneer commanded a far richer share. But rich or thin, every lay had the same shape: pay tied to the value delivered, agreed up front, in writing, with every soul aboard an owner of the outcome.
Think about what that structure meant. If the voyage came home full, everyone ate well. If it came home empty, nobody got paid for their hours — because the hours were never the product. The barrels were the product. The whole crew was priced on barrels.