_16. WHALERS AND WHALING_
_The Nautilus Library_
_THE NAUTILUS LIBRARY_
1. MYSTERIES OF THE SEA _by_ +J. G. Lockhart+
2. SEAMEN ALL _by_ +E. Keble Chatterton+
3. PERIL OF THE SEA _by_ +J. G. Lockhart+
4. SEA WOLVES OF THE MEDITERRANEAN _by_ +E. Hamilton Currey+
5. SEA VENTURERS OF BRITAIN _by_ “+Taffrail+”
6. THE CRUISE OF THE “ALERTE” _by_ +E. F. Knight+
7. THE STORY OF H.M.S. “VICTORY” _by_ +Professor Geoffrey Callender+
8. STRANGE ADVENTURES OF THE SEA _by_ +J. G. Lockhart+
9. SMUGGLING DAYS AND SMUGGLING WAYS _by_ +H. N. Shore+
10. SEA ESCAPES AND ADVENTURES _by_ “+Taffrail+”
11. THE BUCCANEERS _by_ +A. H. Cooper-Prichard+
12. THE LOSS OF THE “TITANIC” _by_ +Lawrence Beesley+
13. GREAT STORMS _by_ +L. G. Carr Laughton+ _and_ +V. Heddon+
14. A GREAT SEA MYSTERY _by_ +J. G. Lockhart+
15. THE DIARY OF A RUM-RUNNER _by_ +Alastair Moray+
16. WHALERS AND WHALING _by_ +E. Keble Chatterton+
WHALERS AND WHALING
_by_
E. KEBLE CHATTERTON
[Illustration: Nautilus]
_London_
PHILIP ALLAN & CO. LTD.
_Quality House, Great Russell Street, W.C.1_
_First Edition_ _1925_
_Second Edition_ (_Nautilus Library_) _1930_
_Printed in Great Britain by_
UNWIN BROTHERS LIMITED, LONDON AND WOKING
PREFACE
I have endeavoured in this volume to present as vivid a picture of
whaling ships, and the lives of those serving in them, as I can obtain
from contemporary accounts, with the object of showing to the reader,
whilst still one sailing-ship whaler survives, what were the adventures
and enterprise of an industry which forms one of the most romantic
sections of maritime history.
This is the story of ships and men whose business took them out not
on a few weeks’ trip, but on long cruises often lasting for several
years north, south, east and west, up to the Arctic, down to the
Antarctic, and round the world. Whaling is at once an ancient and a
modern profession of the sea, which has called forth some of those high
qualities of courage and seamanlike skill which have been exhibited by
Britons and Americans, Dutchmen, Norwegians and others in different
generations and varying vessels.
I have laid particular stress on the hard experiences and mode of life
which these seamen have been compelled to undertake, and have tried to
show the brilliant successes as well as the great depressions through
which the occupation has had to pass. Finally, in the chapters which
deal in detail with that very recent but highly prosperous steam
whaling, the reader will be able to see an amazing revival which links
the Norsemen of a thousand years ago with their descendants to-day.
It is hoped that this record may help to encourage still further that
deep sea call which has sounded throughout the ages, and has become
clearer still during the last ten years. So many letters continue to
reach me from readers all over the world that it has become impossible
to answer them save a few: but with the passing of the last days of
sail it is a joy to know that a new and fresh enthusiasm for the sea
and its ships has grown up so lustily.
I have to acknowledge my indebtedness to Scoresby, Bennett, Weddell and
other authorities of the past; to Mr. Robert McNab’s _The Old Whaling
Days_; and to the interesting Interdepartmental Report published by
H.M. Stationery Office dealing with the Dependencies of the Falklands.
E. KEBLE CHATTERTON
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
PREFACE 5
I. INTRODUCTION 9
II. THE NORTHERN QUEST 23
III. WHALING ENTERPRISE 31
IV. FLUCTUATING FORTUNES 41
V. IN THE DAVIS STRAITS 52
VI. THE OLD WHALE-SHIPS 62
VII. “THERE SHE BLOWS!” 72
VIII. WHALERS AND SEALERS 83
IX. ABOARD AN AMERICAN WHALER 99
X. CREWS AND CAPTAINS 115
XI. WHALING ADVENTURES 122
XII. THE PERSONAL ELEMENT 132
XIII. THE WAY THEY HAD IN THE WHALERS 139
XIV. IN THE SOUTHERN SEAS 150
XV. WAR AND THE WHALERS 159
XVI. THE THIRTY-TWO SHIPS 173
XVII. FINDING THE NEW WHALING GROUNDS 181
XVIII. THE SOURCE OF WEALTH 191
XIX. PROBLEMS AND PRACTICE 201
XX. MODERN WHALERS AND THEIR METHODS 215
XXI. THE PRESENT WHALING INDUSTRY 226
XXII. COLONIAL CONTROL 244
WHALERS AND WHALING
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
The story of whaling is really linked up with that of exploration,
especially of the northern regions, from the very first. Greenland
had been discovered by the Norse in the ninth century, and during the
following century two colonies had been founded there, but later on
there ensued a long interval. However, towards the end of the sixteenth
century there was a wonderful burst of commercial ambition in Northern
Europe and a desire to find both new markets as well as new resources.
The solution lay in discovering fresh territories and unknown sea
routes. Merchants banded themselves together into small companies,
fitted out ships and placed their goods aboard.
Now the Dutch were fired with similar motives to the English. During
long years of herring fishing they had both become wealthy and built up
a fine race of seamen, to say nothing of a splendid fleet of ships. The
desire was to reach China and tap Chinese wealth; but instead of going
all the way down the Bay of Biscay and round the Cape of Good Hope or
the Horn, it was desired to find a route north about. For this reason
we find the Dutch fitting out a squadron of four ships which were
despatched with William Barentsz, a distinguished Dutch navigator, as
pilot, starting off in 1594 to seek for the North-East Passage. This
voyage was fruitless and the ships returned home. Another expedition
under the same pilotage was attempted, and this also failed. But in
1596 by the munificence of Amsterdam a third expedition was sent out,
consisting of two ships, and during this voyage Barentsz discovered
Spitzbergen, doubled the north-east cape of Nova Zembla (which had
already been discovered by the English navigator Willoughby), but
unfortunately one of the two ships became embayed in the drifting ice,
and this was Barentsz’s vessel.
It became necessary to leave her, and the crew built a hut ashore,
where they suffered much cold, many hardships, and the unwelcome
attention of Polar bears. Barentsz died in those winter quarters at
Nova Zembla during 1597, and it was not until 1871 that a Norwegian
explorer came upon these winter quarters and discovered part of
Barentsz’s journal. There arrived in Amsterdam, however, by way of
Lapland, some of his crew. Now the value of these expeditions lay in
the news which was brought back concerning, among other things, the
whales which were to be found in those northern regions, and this
information was presently to be made use of by Barentsz’s countrymen.
But in the year 1630 one of the English syndicates, the Russia Company,
sent out from London three ships to go whaling off the coast of
Greenland. One of these ships was the _Salutation_, and when she had
reached her destination, she sent her boat ashore with eight men to get
venison, having provided them with a couple of dogs, a firelock, lances
and a tinder-box. The _Salutation_ brought up off the shore, but next
day the weather came on thick, the wind blew hard from the north, and
the ship was compelled to clear out to sea. Left behind, these eight
men found themselves in a difficult situation, but they were able to
shoot their deer. They came across a rough house which had been built
by Dutch whalers who fished off here and had been used to protect
the coopers whilst employed making casks for oil. A number of old
unserviceable ships’ boats which other whalers had left behind on the
shore were used as firewood. By means of their harpoon the crew were
able to kill walrus, and they could roast the meat. As the weeks sped
by and the cold increased, and their clothes became tattered, they made
needles out of whalebone, made thread out of rope-yarn and thus sewed
their rags together. For a lamp they found a piece of lead, put in some
rope yarn as wick, filled the lead utensil with whale oil left behind
by the coopers, and thus were able to have a light and make themselves
fairly comfortable.
When the food began to run low, they limited themselves to one flesh
meal a day, but on Wednesdays and Fridays ate of such scraps of whale
fat as had been thrown aside by the previous whalers after the oil had
been pressed out. Finally this also ran short and they killed a bear
and ate that for three weeks. But after months of this kind of life
there arrived off the coast a Hull whaler. And the latter, realizing
that in the previous year eight men had been left behind, sent a boat
ashore to inquire. To their mutual joy the Hull whalers and the eight
men met, but the latter presented a strange, uncouth sight, black with
soot and smoke, and their clothes in tatters. Presently the rescuers
took them aboard, and thus the men reached England, where the Russia
Company made awards to them for the distress endured during those long
nights and days.
During that seventeenth century the Greenland Company of Holland took
great pains to continue their peaceful penetration in that northern
region, and even left there seven volunteer sailors in order to get
definite data concerning the weather and keep a careful journal of
their observations. This was in August 1633, and the whaling fleet then
went back to Holland, and the journal was kept faithfully until the
following April, when it ended on the last day. For when some Dutch
whalers arrived in Greenland in June they found each of the seven men
lying in his own locker dead, since they had perished of scurvy and
cold: so whilst the whaling fleet fired a volley from their guns the
men were buried on Midsummer Day. In that same year 1633 the fleet
which had landed these seven men in Greenland landed seven other
sailors to winter at Spitzbergen. The latter happily survived and were
brought home in the year following.
But seven other volunteers now took their place and kept a journal of
their observations as long as possible, and these men recorded the fact
that there were plenty of whales about. But when once more the whaling
fleet came out from Holland in 1635 they found all the seven men dead,
some of them having apparently died in agony, for their knees were
drawn up to their chin. This seems to have been the last occasion when
the Dutch left winter observers behind, but the information obtained
was to add to the slender knowledge then possessed. It was in 1646 that
a dramatic surprise awaited a Dutch whaling ship that had been sent off
to the Spitzbergen district under John Cornelius.
Leaving the Texel in May, the ship was near Spitzbergen a month later,
but owing to the presence of ice was prevented from anchoring. On
putting out to sea two whales were sighted in the offing, so Cornelius
sent his boat with a good crew after the mammals. But whilst the boat
was rowing up and down, awaiting an opportunity to attack one of
the big creatures, they discovered a large ice shoal floating some
distance away, and something thereon which they supposed to be bears.
The harpooner, however, insisted that these were no bears and persuaded
the rest to row alongside. There was a certain amount of reluctance and
argument, but, behold, when the boat approached it was found that there
was no bear but a man waving a signal of distress!
Thereupon everyone pulled as hard as he could, and finally, to their
utter amazement they discovered four living men and one dead. By the
former’s language they realized that here were four Englishmen, so they
took them into the boat and rowed them back to the ship. The condition
of these men was pitiable, for they had eaten nothing for a long time
except a leather belt, which they had divided up amongst themselves.
The whaler’s surgeon took charge of these four who had suffered so
terribly from cold and hunger, and in spite of his best endeavours,
three of them died within a week, but the fourth was brought back
safely to Delft and so got a passage home. It was from him that the
story was learned, how his vessel had been wrecked on that ice shoal
with a crew of forty-two. Seventeen of them with the captain had
started off in the ship’s boat to make the land, and it was then to
return for the rest: but nothing was ever heard of her, and as a gale
of wind sprang up soon after she had started, the boat unquestionably
foundered before reaching land. The remaining twenty-four on the ice
lived on the provisions as long as they lasted, some of the two dozen
separating on to different ice shoals in the hope that at least one
might drift ashore and so preserve life. But not one of these other
parties was ever seen again, although Cornelius sent his boat to cruise
in search of them. It was indeed a real miracle that even one man had
been picked up: and it would be difficult to imagine any surprise of
the sea more enthralling than when this poor sailor was seen waving
to the whaleboat. But still the whale-ships continued to come north
to these waters, and if we cannot trace every voyage, at least we
know that the rewards were sufficiently tempting and the knowledge
sufficiently reasonable to make the risks worth while.
Modern whaling is just sixty years old, for its period is carefully
marked by the introduction of the harpoon-gun, which was made
successfully in the year 1865. The effect of this was to revolutionize
the industry, which has had a most varied and a most romantic life.
Originally the harpoon, as used for capturing whales and large fish,
was just a flat piece of iron, triangular in shape, with sharp barbs.
This was attached to a wooden handle, and to the latter was made fast
the long rope. But the toggle-iron came as an improvement with its
pointed shaft and pivoted crosspiece, so that after the shaft had
pierced well into the fibrous tissue below the blubber, the crosspiece,
at the pulling of the rope, instead of lying up and down the shaft was
set at right angles and thus prevented the shaft from being withdrawn.
The harpoon-gun, whether fired from the shoulder or from a swivel-gun
mounted on a pivot, enabled the harpoon or toggle-iron with line
attached to be aimed with accuracy and to strike with such force that
the rorquals or finbacks, which had previously been left untouched,
could now be hunted. For in that order of mammals which we call
cetacea, the larger members of the family are the whale, and these
are subdivided into the whalebone whales and the toothed whales. The
whalebone whales, again, are further divided into the right whales, the
finbacks or rorquals, the humpback, the grey whale of the Pacific,
and that rare pigmy whale whose whalebone is so valuable. The right
whale has no dorsal fin, and its cervical vertebræ are fused into a
solid mass. The Greenland right whale, with its great head and arched
mouth, made itself well known in the Arctic, being about 50 ft. long. A
smaller species, known as the southern right whale, became known in the
waters of the southern seas.
The toothed whale class have no whalebone but they have teeth, whereas
the whalebone genus has not. Now in the toothed whale class are
included such species as the cachalot, the bottlenose, the grampus and
the narwhal. The cachalot, or sperm whale, with its great head itself
measuring about one-third of its total length, is sometimes as much
as 60 ft. long, and has over a score of teeth on its lower jaw. It
is a characteristic of this cachalot that he can remain under water
for twenty minutes at a time. The sperm whale goes about in schools,
does not frequent either Polar region, but is commonest in tropical
and sub-tropical seas. And just because it was hunted with great zest
during the earlier part of the nineteenth century it naturally became
scarce. The late Frank T. Bullen in his sea classic _The Cruise of
the Cachalot_ has left for us a most entertaining description of the
methods employed during the old sailing-ship days for hunting this
mammal. The impelling motive which sent those old-time whalers to sea
after the cachalot was the great commercial reward; for the sperm oil
from the blubber, and the spermaceti contained in a cavity of the great
head, are valuable as an ingredient of ointments and in the making of
candles. The use of gas and electric lighting, however, during the
nineteenth century somewhat modified this use. Sperm oil, none the
less, is a well-known lubricant in great demand. Ambergris was yet
a third of the important entities found in the cachalot, and this,
after extraction from the whale’s intestine, was found of great value
as a basis for the manufacture of perfumery. The teeth, too, make
valuable ivory. Thus, in a word, the hunting of the cachalot was a most
important industry.
At the beginning of the twentieth century whaling seemed to be drawing
to its close by reason of the cachalot’s scarcity. But in the year
1904 the discovery of a new whaling ground in sub-Antarctic seas gave
such a fresh impetus that the industry reached a success hitherto
unprecedented. The rorquals have declined alarmingly in numbers, and
it was because of this that at the present time the industry in those
waters depends almost exclusively on the blue whale, which is the
largest animal known, measuring up to 100 ft. There are still a certain
number of sperm whales being caught off the South African coasts.
It is, however, to be noted that the zeal with which the industry was
carried on in the north led to the reduction in the number of whales,
so that no other animals of this class returned to the areas which had
once been so plentiful. The Greenland whaling, for instance, has for
that reason long since become extinct, yet at one time it was very
famous. Spitzbergen, where the whale was once found in great numbers,
has been similarly deserted. But at the date of writing it is quite
possible that the ancient whaling occupation, which has trained some
of the finest of the world’s seamen under sail, may receive a still
further development: for by an arrangement between the British Colonial
Office and the Government of the Falkland Islands an expedition has
been organized for a most detailed study of the whaling problem, and
that historic ship _Discovery_, which Scott used for polar work,
was specially selected, and then in the spring of 1925 fitted out
at Portsmouth. The results of this new expedition, with a mass of
scientific facts, may quite conceivably give an entirely new life to
whaling hitherto undreamed of.
Certainly English ships had been engaged in this important occupation
of whale-hunting ever since the end of the sixteenth century. The
port of Hull was especially noted for this trade right away down till
about 1868, when, owing to the scarcity of the mammals, the industry
died a natural death. The very last whaling voyage from that port was
made by the _Truelove_, which had been built in Philadelphia 104 years
previously. This vessel was one of the most remarkable craft that ever
sailed the seas, and it would be difficult to find many ships in all
maritime history which so ably justified the builders. Seventy-two was
the number of whaling voyages which the _Truelove_ made, and 500 were
the whales which she captured. And besides all this activity she put
in a good deal of time in such voyages as the Oporto wine trade, and
even as a “Letter of Marque.” During the American War of Independence
she was captured by the British and that was how she came to be owned
in Hull and in 1784 began her career from the Humber as a whaler. It
was in 1806 that at the age of forty-two she made her first trip to the
Davis Straits, and went off there again in 1831. Her last voyage as
a whaler was in 1868, but five years later she visited Philadelphia,
where she was given a hearty welcome and returned across the Atlantic
to be broken up.
In these days of steam it is a little difficult to realize how
important was this whaling industry when those old ships with their
somewhat heavy lines went lumbering along to the northern waters.
Whitby, Scarborough and London used to send whalers to the Arctic,
and in the year 1821 no fewer than sixty-one whalers sailed out of
Hull, thirty-two for that area between Greenland and Spitzbergen, and
twenty-nine for the Davis Straits. But it was the English colonists
in America who first got the whaling fishery on a systematic basis,
when they began the sperm whaling about the end of the seventeenth
century owing to the proximity of Greenland and other prolific
breeding grounds. The result of this was to build up a whole chapter
of history and romance which will ever be regarded as one of the most
interesting in the whole maritime development of Northern America. It
is only comparatively recently that the great American people in their
literature, their pictures, and even in their cinematograph films have
awakened to the wonderful importance of that old whaling period, which
did so much towards attracting easterners to the sea and shipbuilding.
Formerly England was chiefly content to import from American colonists
such products of this whaling fishery as she required. But then arrived
the War of Independence, and it became necessary for the old country to
obtain those commodities direct which hitherto she had largely left to
her colonies to supply. Thus it was that even from the year 1775 ships
were sent out from British ports to engage in the sperm whale fishery.
They were only ten in number, and owned chiefly by the firm of Messrs.
Enderby. But in the following year this trade was encouraged by a
Government bounty ranging from £100 to £500, and the number of whaling
ships went on progressively increasing until the year 1791.
In one of Edmund Burke’s speeches of the year 1775 on the subject
of conciliation with America he addressed the House of Commons on
the matter of the New England fisheries, and I cannot resist quoting
here his remarks, for they shed a most illuminating light on what was
the British attitude at the period. With reference to the remark
concerning the Falklands, we must remember that these islands had been
discovered in the sixteenth century, but at first were regarded as not
worth having; in fact, two years before Burke’s speech was delivered
Britain temporarily occupied West Falkland but abandoned it, and
eventually the growth of the Falklands’ importance was attained owing
to the increase of the whale fishery. It was by the irony of fate that
off this territory was to be fought in 1914 the only decisive naval
battle of the Great War.
“As to the wealth which the Colonies have drawn from the sea by their
fisheries,” Burke told the House, “you had all that matter fully opened
at your bar. You surely thought those acquisitions of value, for they
seemed even to excite your envy. And yet the spirit by which that
enterprising employment has been exercised ought rather, in my opinion,
to have raised your esteem and admiration. And pray, Sir, what in the
world is equal to it? Pass by the other parts, and look at the manner
in which the people of New England have of late carried on the Whale
Fishery. Whilst we follow them among the tumbling mountains of ice and
behold them penetrating into the deepest frozen recesses of Hudson’s
Bay and Davis’s Straits, whilst we are looking for them beneath the
Arctic Circle, we hear that they have pierced into the opposite region
of polar cold, that they are at the Antipodes and engaged under the
frozen Serpent of the south. Falkland Island, which seemed too remote
and romantic an object for the grasp of national ambition, is but a
stage and resting-place in the progress of their victorious industry.
Nor is the equinoctial heat more discouraging to them than the
accumulated winter of both the poles. We know that whilst some of them
draw the line and strike the harpoon on the coast of Africa, others run
the longitude [i.e. steer due south] and pursue their gigantic game
along the coast of Brazil. No sea but what is vexed by their fisheries.
No climate that is not witness to their toils. Neither the perseverance
of Holland, nor the activity of France, nor the dexterous and firm
sagacity of English enterprise ever carried this most perilous mode of
hardy industry to the extent to which it has been pushed by this recent
people, a people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle and not
yet hardened into the bone of manhood.”
But so inexperienced were British seamen in sperm fishing that for
some years it was necessary to appoint an American commanding officer
and harpooner to each ship until competent officers could be trained.
At this period whaling was carried on principally off Greenland and
Ireland, off the Western Islands of the Azores, the coast of Africa,
Brazil and the Falklands. It was not till 1788 that the Enderby whaler
_Emilia_ rounded Cape Horn and was the first to inaugurate sperm whale
fishery in the Pacific. It was a brief but successful voyage, and thus
she was a pioneer in that ocean for future profit. For the cachalot
grounds were gradually discovered, and to such an extent that in 1819
the British whaler _Syren_ first revealed that unexplored and valuable
tract off the Japanese coast. So prolific with the sperm whale was this
locality that even after its yield had been considerably diminished by
frequent whaling, it was possible to obtain 40,000 barrels of oil there
by the fleets in the early nineteenth century.
The next spheres of whalers to be hunted were in the Indian Ocean. The
industry went on prospering, and there were few seas in the world that
did not see either British or American whalers cruising. It was these
or none other: for the other nations were now making but feeble efforts
to engage in this work. But by about the time Queen Victoria came to
the throne whaling in the South Seas had already passed its prime.
Money was scarce in those days and the return from the heavy investment
of capital in South Sea whalers was both slow and already risky, so
that not more than thirty or forty whaling ships were cruising the
warmer waters by the year 1840. An additional reason for this lay
in the fact that the colony of New South Wales was now engaged in
obtaining the sperm oil from its fishery at a much less cost of time
and capital, and able to export it into England.
Leaving out the great changes which have taken place in the value of
money during the last eighty years, it is worth while noticing some of
the details of cost. To fit out a whaler in London for the southern
seas--“South-Seaman” was the name they were wont to give her--used to
require anything from £8,000 to £12,000. She was seldom away less than
two and a half years, but this was not infrequently exceeded. And if
the result, as latterly had become the case, were unsuccessful, all
that capital had been tied up uselessly. On the other hand, a whaler
might come back from the South Seas to London with 250 tuns of sperm
oil which would realize £80 a tun: £24,000 in return for the capital
expended, but with the ship still afloat and some of her stores
remaining.
An average cargo in the prosperous times amounted to 160 tuns of
oil, and the largest cargo which an early nineteenth-century British
whaler ever brought into the country was 330 tuns. This was in the
_Rochester_, Captain Smith, the year being 1830; but the largest sperm
oil cargo ever taken into the United States up to that date in one
whaler was 4,050 barrels, or more than 500 tuns. The British whaler
_Tuscan_ was away from 1833 to 1836, and during those three years
sighted sperm whales on 90 different days. She was able to kill and
secure to the ship no fewer than 78 of them, and arrived home with
1,953 barrels, or 244 tuns of oil, which was a remarkably good cargo.
But if we select the period from 1820 till 1832 we find that the amount
of sperm oil brought into Britain by British whalers rose from 2,264
tuns to 5,576 tuns.
We have to remember that the use of lamps and machinery was increasing
during those early nineteenth-century days, and this gave a greater
demand for the sperm oil. One author writing on this subject in the
year 1840 remarked: “The very general adoption of gas for the purpose
of illumination, and which might reasonably be expected to lessen the
demand for oil, has not had that effect--on the contrary, it would
appear that the increased light of the shops and streets rather induces
persons to add to their domestic illumination in a proportionate
degree.”
During those early years of the nineteenth century the American whalers
numbered a fleet of about 350, many of which were engaged exclusively
in hunting the sperm whale. Such an American ship was owned by a
syndicate of small capitalists which included the master and officers.
In Britain the custom rather was for one merchant to own several of
these craft. The size of whalers at that time varied from 250 to 400
tons burthen. The “South-Seaman” and the Greenlander had to go out
light and return with their cargoes already consisting of the produce
separated from the non-lucrative parts of the whale. It was a series of
long voyages, and unlimited time was essential both for the searching
of indefinite areas and for the extraction of the oil when the capture
had been made.