THE PRESENT WHALING INDUSTRY
The average annual number of whales caught in the Dependencies in the
years immediately preceding the Great War was 8,314: but this has now
risen to 9,915. Many things, such as the varying directions of currents
carrying the whales’ food elsewhere, are responsible for changing the
localities of the cetacean; and therefore it is no fair assumption to
argue in a bad season that at last the whale is being exterminated
owing to excessive fishing. But where 304,002 barrels of oil were got
from the former before the war, 611,372 barrels are now being obtained
from the annual catch. In other words, each whale now yields over 61
barrels instead of less than 37 barrels: and the value has gone up to
considerably more than three times what it used to be.
Well, for this we have largely to thank the Government restrictions,
which not only limit the number of licences, but ever since the year
1921 have compelled the economical utilization of the carcase. The
former practice was simply to remove the most valuable portions of
the whale, leaving the carcase to rot on the beach. All this has
been altered so that waste does not exist. The improved factory
methods, mentioned in the last chapter, have further facilitated this
innovation. In the olden days ships that used Greenland waters and the
Davis Straits used to make more money from the bone than from the oil.
For instance, in the year 1860 there were captured by British vessels
eight whales off Greenland and seventy-six up the Davis Straits. Total
eighty-four whales, whose produce fetched only £70,828, whale oil being
then £1 12s. 6d. per cwt., but the bone realizing £20 10s. 0d. per cwt.
To-day there is very little demand for whalebone, since many cheap
and serviceable substitutes have been invented. The whale is hunted
principally for its oil, and then only in a by-product sense for the
fertilizing guano and meal made out of the meat and bones after the oil
has been extracted.
If we take a fairly representative span of years such as from 1860 to
1888, that is to say, when steam was beginning to come in as auxiliary
to the sailing whalers, we are in a fair position to compare the
results with present-day whaling. And the figures show at once (even
after allowing for the changed value of money) that the discovery of
the Antarctic grounds has made those Victorian times seem ridiculous.
Between those two first-mentioned dates of the nineteenth century
there were several years when the Greenland region yielded not one
single whale, and the highest figure for any season during that period
was only thirty-five. During those same twenty-eight years the Davis
Straits never afforded less than ten whales a season but never more
than 208. The most remunerative year was 1861, when a total revenue of
£112,305 was obtained. From the year 1875, with certain fluctuations,
that whole northern fishing decreased both in whale numbers and in
actual value, so that, when we come to the year 1886, from the two
areas combined only thirty-four whales were taken, and only £34,652
obtained: but this notwithstanding that the price of whalebone had
risen from £18 (in the year 1861) to £82 10s. 0d. per cwt. in 1886.
In the last-mentioned year, when whale oil was fetching only a guinea
per cwt., it hardly paid the cost of getting it, and it was only the
whalebone which made it worth while to undertake these northern voyages.
We can therefore scarcely wonder that the industry gradually faded
away. But if some of those astute old whaling skippers and hardened
harpooners could come back to-day and learn that a fleet of fifty-five
steam catchers had killed in one Antarctic season 9,915 whales and made
£3,056,860 for their owners we should find some interesting comments.
I hate to bore the reader with statistics, but this is the only way of
proving the tremendous change of prosperity which has come about so
recently and so quickly. Since the year 1853 British vessels ceased
to hunt the sperm whale: in other words, confined themselves to the
search for whalebone. And then flexible steel for umbrellas and women’s
corsets was introduced, so that there was but little demand for the
whalebone after the ’eighties.
But in the year 1880 that experienced whaler Captain D. Gray in the
_Eclipse_ of Peterhead began hunting that toothed whale species known
as the bottlenose. And, what was more, he killed thirty-two of this
cetacean in those seas between Labrador and Nova Zembla which had been
fished for centuries. Addressing himself to this particular kind, he
found that the bluenose existed in large numbers; and in 1882 Scotch
whalers killed 463, of which Gray alone killed 203. The year following
the British and the Norwegian whaling ships chased the bluenose with
such success that the market became glutted. But the incident is worth
noting as showing that there were still just as good whales in the sea
as ever came out.
That year 1882 was certainly memorable in the annals of our subject,
and the _Eclipse_ had a short but highly prosperous season: for she
caught her first whale as early as April 27th, but by June 29th she
had done so well that every available space in the ship was full of
blubber. She had even to throw into the sea all her coal--except just
so much as would get her home--in order to find room for her cargo.
The result was that she was back in Peterhead by July 5th, with a full
ship: that is to say, with 230 tons of oil valued at £60 a ton, or
£13,800 for a voyage of only a few weeks. It is perfectly true that
for a long time whalers had occasionally taken a bottlenose, and the
_Chieftain_ of Kirkcaldy had killed twenty-eight off the Frobisher
Strait; but it was not until the year 1877 that the _Jan Mayen_ of
Peterhead, having missed getting seals, captured ten bottlenose whales.
After that date the smaller whaling ships began hunting them every
season, and the larger ones commenced hunting the bottlenose between
seasons: that is, after the end of the seal fishery and before the
start of the whaling proper, coming down to the north-east Scottish
coast for that purpose.
The relation between the seal and whale fisheries in the north is
interesting. Ever since the last quarter of the eighteenth century
sealing had been going on off Newfoundland, but it was not till the
year 1876 that whalers from Dundee began to engage in this occupation,
off there. The right whale had been for such a long time regarded as
the only produce worth hunting that attention at first was not paid
to anything else in the northern waters. Neither seals nor the white
whales were considered worthy of attention. But those British whalers
which went up to the Arctic from about 1882 found the whales were
getting so scarce that they were only too pleased to fill up with seals
as well, if the chance presented itself.
The following brief résumé will show just how the northern, as
distinct from the South Seas whaling, fared from the year 1814, and we
can see at once how extreme was the change from good fortune to bad in
a very few years. Thus the number of whales killed in the waters of
Greenland and the Davis Straits by British ships during the years 1814
to 1823 was 12,907: from 1824 to 1833 it dropped to 9,532, and in 1834
to 1843 it fell remarkably to 1,221. There follows now a serious slump:
for whereas in 1857 Peterhead still sent out thirty-four whalers, she
possessed not one in the year 1893, the pride of place having passed
entirely to Dundee. In the year 1882 there went to the Davis Straits
for whales nine Dundee ships, which came back with seventy-eight
whales, whose oil and bones yielded a sum of £58,876, oil being at that
time £33 a ton, but the value of the whalebone was as much as £1,150
a ton, so rare had it become. The position by 1883 was this: both the
Greenland whaling and the Greenland sealing were getting worse and
worse, though off Newfoundland it was good. It was bad also in the
Davis Straits, and only six vessels went there from Dundee, whilst
one from Peterhead got up to the Cumberland Gulf. One of these seven
vessels was the whaler _Thetis_, and she came home with the loss of
both her carpenter and bo’sun; for whilst they were fast to a whale the
boat was carried under by the fouling of the line. In this same year
only seven vessels went to Greenland waters and they came back with
only nineteen right whales. But whalebone was scarcer than even in the
year previous, and had now gone up to £2,000 a ton. And it was just
this rise which encouraged the ships and made it worth their while to
keep on trying for a time, especially as already the bottlenose, which
had been overfished, was beginning to get wary and scarce.
Two new Peterhead whalers were actually added to the fleet in 1883,
and in the following year several steamers were added to the fleet
of Dundee, so that by 1885 the latter had the largest collection of
sixteen whaling ships, but there was a big fleet working out of Norway
chasing the bottlenose whales. However, the down-grade was still
continuing, and if we take the period of 1893 to 1902 British ships
caught only 172 whales off Greenland and in the Davis Straits. In the
year 1903 Dundee’s fleet had diminished to five whalers, of which one
got wrecked. Thus it was that Arctic whaling had now come down to four
vessels and they were only partially successful, and in 1905, although
there were six whalers at work up the Davis Straits, which were now
the only possible resort, yet this season was so notorious that only a
couple of medium-sized whales and one small one were killed up there.
The _Eclipse_, one of the most lucky of whalers, came home “clean”;
that historic _Diana_, which had once been to the Antarctic, came home
“clean”; the _Windward_, another famous ship, came home “clean”; the
_Balæna_, which had also once been to the Antarctic, came home now
from the Arctic with one whale; and the _Morning_ arrived with one
whale. In each of these cases only fifteen cwt. of bone were obtained,
and the _Active_, that other ship which had once been in that Dundee
Antarctic whaling squadron, now came home from the north with one
small whale that yielded but three cwt. of bone. The _Morning_, by
the way, was another historic vessel. Up till the year 1902 she was a
Norwegian whaler and known as the _Morgen_, but she was purchased by
the Royal Geographical Society and sent out to the Antarctic, where she
discovered a new island, reached Scott’s ship _Discovery_ and came home
in the year 1904, and went back to her career as a whaler.
But this disastrous Arctic season of only three whales had been
aggravated by the long prevalence of easterly winds, which had made
the ice so dense that for the first time since 1878 the whalers were
unable to get through into Melville Bay, and thus could not reach
their favourite grounds near Lancaster Sound. The season of 1906 was
unusual in that for the first time since 1899 whales were killed in
East Greenland waters, that great expert, Captain Robertson (who had
brought the _Scotia_ back from the Antarctic to the Clyde in the summer
of 1904), having captured four small ones which yielded forty cwt. of
bone. But altogether in 1906 seven whalers had been up to the Arctic,
of which three came home “clean,” and the total catch of the other four
from East Greenland, the Davis Straits, and Hudson Straits consisted
solely of eight white whales besides a number of seals, walruses, bears
and foxes. But oil was now £23 a tun, and whalebone had soared up to
£2,500 a ton.
However, at this point Arctic whaling practically fades out of history
and the scene of activity shifts to South Georgia and other islands in
the Antarctic approaches. Nothing is more significant of the manner
in which the Arctic has been fished out than the difference between
capturing over a thousand right whales annually at the beginning of
the nineteenth century and obtaining only eight white whales in 1906,
although in the latter case steam had come in to aid the ships. Since
that time the best use to which these stout vessels have been put has
been either as exploration craft for Antarctic expeditions or for
service with the Hudson Bay Company. It is sad to think that this fine
type of wooden ship with her auxiliary steam power must be relegated to
the golden age of sailing ships, but now that the steam whale-catcher
and the explosive harpoon have so completely altered the industry
it is no use wasting time in vain regrets: we have to face the new
conditions and make the best of them.
When Svend Foyn commenced the fin-whale industry with his explosive
harpoon and shore factories in the ’sixties, he operated off the coast
of Finmarken, that most northerly and most poorly populated part of
Norway. Only the coast became permanently inhabited, the settlers
having been attracted by the fisheries. The fin whale was practically
the only kind of whale found in those parts and Varanger Fjord was
the first station to be the scene of the new methods which Foyn
inaugurated in 1865. But gradually these steamships began to exhaust
the whale supply, and the work moved westward. But in that same year
1886 just mentioned the peak of his success was reached; one station
after another had closed down, the numbers of blue whale, fin whale,
sei whale and humpback (all of them rorquals) became fewer and fewer
so that at last the entire whaling fleet, which by 1886 numbered
thirty-four ships, was obtaining from the whole Finmark Sea only half
the number of whales which in the ’sixties Svend Foyn had been getting
from Varanger Fjord alone.
As to the sperm whale, which at one time was so much hunted by American
and British ships, this species is still found in considerable numbers
and in various localities: but it is indisputable that the sperm is far
less abundant than formerly. The southern right whale has become not
exterminated, but much scarcer than he was formerly in the South Seas.
The Greenland whale was numerous at the beginning of the seventeenth
century, but a hundred years later Davis Straits, as we have seen,
became his home, and now he has practically ceased to be hunted there.
So, too, we have seen the American whalers chase him through the
Bering Straits into the Arctic, but the industry in this part has now
practically ended. The Japanese hunt the Pacific grey whale off the
south-east of Korea, but the rorqual fishery off Newfoundland which
began in 1897 has gradually got worse and worse, and yet at one time
it used to capture an average of 400 whales a year. It is interesting
to note that off the south-west coast of Africa all the whales caught
were thought to be really those making a passage from the southern
ice-barrier towards the waters of the French Congo. But now it is found
that fifty per cent. consist of blue whales, and only ten per cent. of
humpbacks.
The blue whale is the largest animal in the world, and may measure
anything up to a hundred feet in length. He was generally supposed to
remain in cold waters, and like the fin whale is hunted in preference
to the humpback; because whereas the humpback will yield only twenty
to sixty barrels of oil, the fin whale will produce a hundred barrels,
but the blue whale is good for 250. Our knowledge of whaling habits is,
however, still anything but complete, because in the past our ancestors
were too reckless in killing the whale that brought them fortune to
study its mode of life. But thanks to modern study and those factories,
it is possible now to form deductions which were not practicable in
the days of the hand harpoon. For when the whale is hauled ashore,
instead of being brought alongside the floating factory, he is pulled
up the slip to the flensing platform and can be examined like the human
body on the operating table. On the shore are the open boilers for
extracting the oil from the blubber. The pressure boilers deal with the
carcase after it has been flensed, and after the oil has been run off
the dried residue is put into bags as a most wholesome and nutritious
meal for cattle-feeding. At the land station in South Georgia of one
company where the manager earns about £2,000 or £3,000 a year, he has
under him a whole army of foremen, mechanics, blacksmiths, stewards,
cooks, storekeepers, cookers for the open boilers, cookers for the
pressure boilers, workmen, flensers, carcase dividers, meat and blubber
cutters--all additional to the crews.
But in a floating factory the staff consists of three mates, boatswain,
steward, cooks, seamen, firemen, cookers, flensers, carcase dividers
and engineers. The personnel of a whale-catcher consists of gunner,
mate, steward, four seamen, two engineers and a couple of firemen. All
that can be done both ashore and afloat in regard to organization is
there. Rather it is in respect of further detailed knowledge concerning
the whale himself that the industry stands most in need. But the waters
of the globe cover many thousands of miles: so it will take time before
complete information arrives. And whilst we know, for example, that
the humpback and fin whales are generally met with in schools, whereas
the blue whale cruises alone; that the humpback usually goes north
about May, returning to South Georgia about October; and that the
South Shetlands fin whale moves in February with the current from the
south-west to the north-east: yet there is much else besides this that
we wish to know, and can obtain only by much observation and long study.
Thus we desire to settle definitely the question whether the southern
whale does go to the extreme north from the extreme south. There is a
strong probability that he does, for similar barnacles and parasites
have been found on northern and southern whales. Certainly the humpback
whale has been observed to pass the Equator from south to north, and
from the whalebone there seems to be no difference between the fin
whales of the north and south. On the other hand, nothing is less
satisfactory than to draw conclusions from an incomplete set of
premises. At present there is no sure knowledge of fin whales or blue
whales migrating from south to north or north to south. In order to
obtain reliable information on this subject metal cylinders have in
recent years been fired into the whales from rifles with a view to
marking the animals: yet so far none of them has been recovered. But
of the fact that whales do migrate we have definite, though limited,
information from the harpoons discovered in certain whales. Off the
east coast of Africa a whale has been found, still with the harpoon in
him, several hundred miles away from the position where he was first
attacked.
Ross’s erroneous statement as to the right whale being seen in the
south has been responsible for the failure of those expeditions of
Enderby’s Aucklands scheme, of the Dundee whalers, and also of Bull’s
adventure with Kristensen; for Racovitza, the great zoologist, and
other experts believe that what Ross saw were fin whales. Furthermore,
the expeditions of Shackleton, Scott and Amundsen have confirmed the
fact that the Ross Sea and the pack-ice outside its mouth are visited
by many species of rorquals, such as are to-day captured between South
Georgia and Graham Land. Whilst there is still a certain amount of
whaling being carried on off Alaska, Africa, Brazil and Japan, yet
fuller knowledge of the distribution and migration of the whale, the
collection of statistics and so on, would conceivably open up new
grounds.
With the exception of the humpback, the whales in the Dependencies
are just as numerous as ever, though varying with the amount of ice
each season. And when we consider the vast size of the Antarctic and
sub-Antarctic Seas it would seem hardly likely that the whale will be
exterminated there for a considerable period. South Georgia and the
South Shetlands are but tiny dots in a sea far bigger than that old
area between Greenland and Spitzbergen. The whale can go on breeding
and multiplying over such extensive grounds that Captain Larsen, for
one, believes there is no need for anxiety in regard to the future.
And he is a supporter from actual observation of the belief that
the humpback and the bottlenose do cross the Equator. But there are
hundreds of thousands of whales whose habitation is along the edge
of the Antarctic ice and land. In the Ross Sea, as all explorers for
nearly the last hundred years have testified, whales exist not in
dozens but in immense quantities. Two quotations will be sufficient
to substantiate this. The first is a statement by the biologist in
Shackleton’s volume _The Heart of the Antarctic_: the second is
contained in Amundsen’s book, already noted.
“This bay, which we afterwards referred to by the appropriate name of
the Bay of Whales, was teeming with all the familiar kinds of Antarctic
life. Hundreds of whales--killers, finners, and humpbacks--were rising
and blowing all round.”
“The name ‘Bay of Whales’ was given by Shackleton, and is well chosen.
From the time when the sea ice breaks up, this big gap in the Barrier
is a favourite haunt of whales, which were very often seen playing
about for hours at a time in flocks of some fifty strong.”
So it would seem that about this southern whaling there is something
likely to be more permanent than has been the case in the north.
Everything, therefore, that can be learned through scientific inquiry
as to currents and so on will help commerce: yet whether they will
eventually induce the British sailor to forsake his North Sea fishing
for the Antarctic is quite another matter. But if there are whales
to be got, we must leave them to the Norwegians so long as supply
and demand exist, and yet somehow I cannot conceive that British
Dependencies will be neglected by our own countrymen for ever.
It should be mentioned that at the end of the season those factory
steamers, having finished flensing, and having filled up their tanks
with the whale oil, steam back to Europe. The “catchers,” however,
return no further north than Monte Video and Buenos Ayres, where they
pass the winter, refit and eventually start out again to go south
for the following season; the factory steamers, of course, returning
with fresh coal and supplies from Europe. During the Great War half a
dozen of the latter were torpedoed and one mined; for some of these
vessels were employed to carry oil fuel to France and Britain from the
United States. In return for this assistance, the British Government
has not forgotten to deal favourably with the Norwegian whalers in the
Dependencies.
Every one of those whale-catchers is really a pioneer: for these
handy little steam craft poke their bows, during the course of their
hunting, into all sorts of strange bays and bights and corners,
totally unsurveyed, where the factory ships could not venture. Without
instruments, but feeling their way in with the lead, these Norse seamen
are really repeating history: it is the old Viking idea expressed in
action at the other end of the world. No one to-day has such coastal
knowledge of these our Falkland Dependencies. Commerce and science
being interdependent, a complete hydrographical survey of these parts
must soon come: but that which is most pressing is the knowledge of
real harbours and sheltered anchorages where the catchers can anchor
and the factories can be carried on as they normally are, from 6 a.m.
to 6 p.m. Off the islands of the South Sandwich group blue, bottlenose,
humpback, fin and even sperm-whales have been sighted by Captain
Larsen; but this group has not been surveyed since the year 1819, and
it is obviously desirable in such a tempestuous locality that at least
one reliable harbour should be known where ships may rely on finding
safety. But South Georgia, South Orkneys, South Shetlands and Graham
Land all need to be laid out adequately on the chart with proper
sailing directions. Dr. Bruce has suggested the use of aircraft in the
summer for settling the existence of islands hinted at by previous
explorers but never yet established. When the surveys have been done,
it will be possible for the whale-catchers to extend their operations
into the waters around the Sandwich group. But until then, how can you
expect that vessels in that perpetual weather of hard winds and fog
will risk themselves?
Sealing voyages to South Georgia during the eighteenth century,
and British whaling trips thither from 1819, were no mere isolated
instances: rather they foreshadow what is possible down south. For in
the two seasons of 1820-1 and 1821-2, the fur-seal industry was such
that ninety-one vessels came to these islands. But after that date
the seals had been so wantonly slaughtered that they were practically
extinct. Would it not be possible some day to resuscitate the fur-seal
fishery? Perhaps the time will come when by a combination of protective
laws in regard to the seals, and commercial enterprise in regard to the
ships and men, this old industry may be revived like the whaling.
When Captain Cook came to South Georgia and rediscovered it in 1775
he approached it from the north-west. For first of all he sighted an
island of ice, but at noon was not sure whether it were ice or land,
but anyway it bore east by south, distant thirty-nine miles. But
eventually he saw that it was land, but “in a manner wholly covered
with snow. We were confirmed by finding soundings at 175 fathoms,
and a muddy bottom.” He first came in view of Wallis Island, which
lies just off the north-west corner, and “as we advanced to the north
we perceived another isle lying” between that other island and the
mainland. This is marked on the present-day charts as Bird Island,
Cook having noticed so many of these creatures occupying it. The two
headlands Cape North and Cape Buller were both named by him and appear
still in the modern charts.
But Cook’s description of the interior of South Georgia is hardly
encouraging. “The inner parts of the country were savage and horrible,”
he wrote. “The only vegetation we met with was a coarse, strong-bladed
grass growing in tufts, wild burnet, and a plant like moss, which
sprang from the rocks. Seals were numerous, and several flocks of large
penguins were seen. The oceanic birds were albatrosses, common gulls,
terns, shags, divers, etc. The land birds were a few small larks. No
quadruped was seen.” He mentioned that the island “seems to abound with
bays and harbours, the N.E. coast especially, but the vast quantity of
ice must render them inaccessible for the greater part of the year, or
at least it must be dangerous lying in them, on account of the breaking
up of the ice cliffs.” Weddell, who reached South Georgia nearly fifty
years later, was getting rather nervous as to his crew being stricken
with scurvy, and hoped that the island would yield some green-stuff.
There was precious little, but it was better than nothing for men who
had been without fresh vegetables for so long. “Our crews,” he wrote,
“here fed plenteously on greens which, although bitter, are very
salutary, being an excellent anti-scorbutic. With regard to meat we
were supplied with young albatrosses, that is to say, about a year
old: the flesh of these is sweet, but not sufficiently firm to be
compared with that of the domestic fowl” ... “almost the only natural
production of the soil is a strong-bladed grass, the length of which is
in general about two feet. It grows in tufts, on mounds three or four
feet from the ground.”
Thus Weddell in 1823 confirmed what Cook saw in 1775, but neither could
have foreseen what a gold-mine those watery regions were to become in
the twentieth century nor how busy many of those north-east bays were
to show themselves with steam craft and smoke and oil. Cook named that
bold bight, which is just below where to-day the Southern Whaling and
Sealing Company have their station, Possession Bay, and took possession
of the entire group of islands on behalf of Britain.
Apart from the violent weather, one of the worst drawbacks of the
Falklands and its Dependencies is that ancient enemy of all seafarers,
the fog. On October 26, 1921, there left Sandefjord the 8,000-ton
factory ship _Guvernoren_, bound out for the Dependencies for the
season in the usual manner. Originally she had been a Bibby liner, but
had been converted for her special work. At Monte Video she picked up
three whale-catchers which she was to escort south. But about eleven
o’clock one pitch-dark night, when about twenty miles short of Port
Stanley, the _Guvernoren_ had the bad luck to run ashore in a thick
fog. There were ninety-six men aboard her, and they naturally became
a little anxious as to their predicament, but the ship’s boats were
lowered and every man succeeded in getting away from her and put aboard
the catchers. And then to those somewhat nerve-tried, jumpy men there
came quite a dramatic happening. Some of the crew were rowing back
for others which remained to be fetched off the big steamer, but on
the return trip there suddenly came out of that fog a terrifying sound
as of a man crying out for help. So the boats turned this way and
that, trying in the thick atmosphere to find some desperate shipmate
struggling in the water. It was both startling and saddening, for it
was going to be no easy task if he were to be located in that fog.
However, sorrow soon turned to amusement, for the cries were not of men
but of seals: so all was well.
The whale-catchers were able to get fairly near to the wreck, but
there was a very high sea running, and it was a lucky achievement to
have saved everyone. Throughout the night these catchers stood by,
and next morning, after the _Guvernoren_ had settled down on to the
rocks, some of the men went back and pluckily climbed on board to salve
some of their clothes. The catchers then made for Port Stanley--that
port always to be famous for its connection with the Battle of the
Falklands--whence a crowd of shipwrecked mariners embarked for
Liverpool in the _Orcoma_ liner.
Once a liner in the Pacific off Santa Maria was caught in a dense fog,
and since the coast was dangerous, the captain stopped his engine and
waited for the atmosphere to clear. But at six in the morning there
was a strange sound coming up from the sea and suddenly the ship
trembled. Everybody wondered what had happened, for the tremor was too
gentle for an earthquake, and it was accompanied by bumping, as if the
steamship was hitting soft ground. But the anxiety did not last long
in this case: for that noise was unquestionably a whale blowing, and
now there rose out of the sea a great cetacean a good 100 ft. long,
and came floating alongside just as if it were one of those capsized
sailing vessels one used to see after enemy submarines had been busy
in certain waters.
But aboard the liner the mammal caused a sensation, for he now dived,
and as he collided with the steel ship the tremors began again. Once
more he floated alongside, and then the barnacles and shellfish
which had been scraped off by contact with the steamer’s bilge keels
came rushing up to the surface. Evidently the whale was enjoying
himself, for now he proceeded to the other side of the ship, and began
scratching himself once more. The passengers pelted him with potatoes
and coal, but the great animal took no notice whatever until he
swallowed a piece of the latter, and then, sending up a drenching spout
of water, passed majestically on his way.