Whaling

From the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries European, American and Japanese whalers roamed the world’s oceans, killing hundreds of thousands of whales. Whales fetched good prices for various reasons. Blubber was rendered down, either on ships or ashore, to make a clear straw-coloured oil used in lamps and stoves and as a lubricant before mineral oil was discovered; their baleen plates (‘whalebone’) were once used to stiffen women’s corsets; the flesh of some whales made good eating.

In the early days humpback, right, sperm and other relatively slow-swimming whales fell easy prey to the whalers. Faster-swimming blue whales escaped this early slaughter because the oared whalers’ boats were too slow to catch them. The following account comes from Felix Maynard, surgeon on the French whaler Asia. In a whaleboat operating off Banks Peninsula in 1834 he recalls:

‘At one bound the captain sprang to the bow of the boat, and, brandishing the lance, cried:  “Ready, lads, ready!”

The harpooner took the steering oar and, according to his commands, the sailors pulled or back-watered, pulled or back-watered again…

The mother whale did not seem startled at our proximity: she frolicked, turned herself about and raised the little calf, tired with following her, upon her fin.

Captain Jay, his lance poised, waited the favourable moment to strike. The moment came, and the lance transfixed, not the whale, but the calf.

I thought at first that the captain had aimed badly, but soon I comprehended his skill and wisdom. He was aware that the first blow from the lance would not kill the mother, and that she would then fly to a distance and be lost to us; but, by killing the nursling she would be detained immovable, no matter what might be her fate; as mother she would allow herself to be killed on the spot rather than abandon her calf. That is precisely what happened. Captain Jay was able to strike at his leisure, one, two, three, ten blows. The monster floundered, spouted blood, flurried, and died, without  moving any farther away than if it had been made fast by the most solid of harpoons. How admirably the power of maternal love dominates the instinct for self-preservation.

Thus at last I was able to say I had both seen and touched a living whale, and this in the very height of the combat. So close had I been to it that I was even covered in blood….

We planted a guidon of ownership in the back of the dead whale and returned on board to prepare the apparatus for raising it, while one of the men climbed the summit of the Olimaroa cliff to give the signal agreed upon, by means of a flag especially erected there, for the boats to return to the Asia.

Part of the day was employed in towing the whale and in hoisting it by the tackle. The Maoris came in crowds to lend our men a hand, and by nightfall the work was accomplished. Scarcely was the last morsel of fat on deck than the native canoes darted towards the floating carcase, which they towed to the strand. It was then a spectacle at once comical and disgusting to see the mob of men, naked and armed with knives, some hanging above the animal’s flanks and others buried within its half-open side, slashing off its flesh in every direction, and choosing enormous steaks, which the women placed on the grass in the rays of the sun.

That evening the fires of rich and poor alike were alight for the cooking of these dainty morsels. The feast began at first with cries of joy and songs improvised in honour of the whalers, while the next day the more thrifty housewives hung from the posts of their koumaras pieces of meat to be reserved for times of scarcity’. (1)

From the 1920s, motorised boats enabled the whalers to chase and harpoon blue whales. In the 1930s, up to 16,000 blue whales, including pygmy blues, were killed each year around the world. In 1950–51, 2200 blue whales were killed in New Zealand waters alone, mainly by foreign factory ships.

By the 1960s it became clear that world-wide, the blue whale industry was collapsing as nearly all the big whales had been wiped out. Since 1963 the International Whaling Commission has forbidden the taking of blue whales. With about 16,000 blue pygmy whales in the world’s seas today, they would appear to be making something of a comeback.

Reference
(1) Maynard, Felix and Dumas, Alexandre. (1937). The Whalers. London: Hutchinson. pp 259–261.

Text originally published in Tai Awatea, Te Papa's onfloor multimedia database (1998).