Modern Whaling & Bear-Hunting / A record of present-day whaling with up-to-date appliances in many parts of the world, and of bear and seal hunting in the Arctic regions

Old and New Whaling

The Greenland whaling was practically given up in 1912, and the Southern whaling for sperm and cachalot and the Southern Right whale, which in the first half of the nineteenth century employed five hundred to six hundred vessels, practically stopped forty years ago.

Why the Old Styles of Whaling stopped

The growing scarcity and wariness of the Greenland Right whale and the fall in the price of oil and whalebone gave the Balæna Mysticetus or Greenland Right whale an indefinitely prolonged close season, and in the Southern Seas the sperm and the Southern Right whale (Australis) fishing almost entirely ceased, owing to increased working expenses, smaller catches, and the fall in the price of oil.

“Modern Whaling” in North Atlantic

In 1886 Captain Svend Foyn of Tonsberg, Norway, invented the plan of capturing the powerful rorquals, commonly called Finners, that are very numerous, but were too strong and too heavy to be killed in the old style from row-boats, and which till his time had not been hunted. By his process a small cannon on the bow of a small steamer could fire a heavy harpoon, one and a half to two hundredweights, attached to a four-and-a-half hawser. This steamer and line were sufficiently buoyant and strong to play the whale and to haul its body up from the depths when it sank dead. The Greenland whale and sperm both floated when they died. Fortunes were made from the firmer whale hunting off the Norwegian coast.

Commercial Aspect and Method of Modern Whaling

Some of these companies work with shore factories, others with both shore factories and large floating factories on board steamers of up to seven thousand tons burden, and each company hunts the whales with, on an average, three to four small steamers, which harpoon the whales within a radius of eighty or ninety miles and tow them in to the shore factories, or the floating factory which is at anchor in some sheltered bay. The bodies are rapidly cut up at a fully equipped land station, and both the blubber and carcass are entirely utilised. At a floating station the bodies, as a rule, are cast adrift.

Whale Meat Meal and Guano

Whale meat meal is made from fresh whale flesh; it is used for feeding cattle. It contains 17½ per cent. proteid, and guano is made from the remaining flesh and about one-third bone. The analysis of this gives 8·50 per cent. ammonia and 21 per cent. triboric phosphates. The whole of the dried bones and meat may be made into one product—a rich guano with 10 to 12 per cent. ammonia and 17 to 24 per cent. phosphates. The best whale meat is better to eat and tastes better than the best beef; it is “lighter” and more appetising. The writer proposed to supply an immense quantity to our military authorities, but the offer was not accepted.

Whalebone or Baleen

The baleen or whalebone of these finner whales is only worth about £30 per ton. It hardly pays to cure it and market it. The whalebone of the Australis or Southern Right whale has fallen to £85 per ton; it is occasionally caught. Its bones and that of the finner brought down the price of the Greenland whalebone, which a few years ago was sold at between £2000 and £3000 per ton, one good whale having a ton in its mouth, which paid the expenses of the trip.

During the short season, 1st November till end of April, in a recent year the catch in South Georgia by twenty-one steamers amounted to five thousand whales, finner, hump-back and blue whales, which gave two hundred thousand barrels of whale oil and eight thousand tons guano.

Returns from Whaling

Taking in the other islands of the Falkland Islands Dependencies in the neighbourhood of Cape Horn, the catch in a recent year amounted to four hundred and thirty thousand barrels of oil—eight thousand three hundred and seventy-five tons guano, the gross value of which may be reckoned at £1,360,000. Practically the whole of this goes to Norway.

For forty-eight years this Modern Whaling has been carried on in the North Atlantic, and since 1904 the Modern Whaling which we advocated in Edinburgh in 1895 has been prosecuted by Norwegians in the South Atlantic from desolate barren British possessions, with the great results mentioned above. There are vast areas of ocean teeming with these whales where, so far, they have not been hunted, and still the general British public stands aloof and takes no share in it. Whaling to-day, from the Norwegian point of view, is an industry: three generations have been brought up on it; but from the average British point of view it is still a speculation.

Ambergris

Ambergris is a biliary concretion generally found in the alimentary canal of a feeble or diseased sperm whale. Sometimes it is found exteriorly near the vent. It is also found floating or drifted ashore. It is of great value, and is principally used as the basis or vehicle for perfumes.

Some years ago Norwegians found four hundred and twenty kilos in a sperm on the Australian coast; this was valued at £27,000. This is much the largest piece I have heard of.

It is a solid, fatty substance of a marbled grey-and-black appearance, and generally contains the beaks of cuttle-fish, which form the principal food of the cachalot or sperm whale. When fresh it has an intolerable smell, but after exposure this goes, and leaves what some people call a “peculiar sweet earthy odour.” It burns with a pale blue flame and melts somewhat like sealing-wax.

The Whaling Industry

The St Abb’s Whaling Limited, of which the writer was appointed chairman, found whales at the Seychelles in great numbers in 1913, and we got permission from the Government there to start an up-to-date whaling station with licences for two whaling steamers, which we chartered and had sent out to us from Norway.

Our capital was about £20,000, and our station and factory was nearly completed, and we were catching numbers of sperm and some “finner” whales, when war broke out. Our supply of coals was cut off; barrels could not be obtained for oil; sacks could not be got for the whale guano (which is made from bones and whale meat); and freight completely failed us owing to the congestion caused by war material on the various lines. We could neither get supplies nor send away our products to Durban and other ports, except in some small consignments on our Diesel motor tank whaler, the St Ebba, which finally we were obliged to run on sperm oil at about £28 per ton!

We could not “stop down” owing to contracts; and the difficulty of raising more capital under war conditions finally forced us to voluntary liquidation.

This promising industry, therefore, had to be stopped in the meantime, and it occurs to us that as one of the “Empire’s resources” the Government could very easily put it into working order again, with great profit and for the benefit of the Islands, Africa and the Old Country. For we found immense numbers of sperm and finner whales round the Seychelles, and even before getting into our stride we had secured one hundred and forty whales and shipped home two thousand three hundred barrels of oil, besides what was lost before the station factory was completed and what we were obliged to use locally for our Diesel motor in place of common solar oil. Six barrels of whale oil go to the ton.

With the experience before them of the vast revenues from whaling at South Georgia and South Shetlands going almost entirely to Norway, our Government has, we think, wisely restricted the granting of whaling licences at the Seychelles to British concerns. Our company rented land for our station, built the factories and has some years’ lease to run, and the best season for fishing begins about 1st of May.

The vast whaling industry in the Falkland Island Dependencies—the South Georgia and South Shetlands—was started as a result of the information that Dr W. S. Bruce and the writer brought back from there in regard to the immense number of finner whales we had seen there in our Antarctic voyage of 1892-1893 to the Antarctic and Weddell Sea; and in one of the first of the Norwegian companies, which is still successful to-day, the writer took a considerable interest at its start. This company is to-day paying a dividend of over 150 per cent. But for the war I consider the Seychelles whaling should have paid handsomely now.

In regard to this great modern whaling industry in the sub-Antarctic seas we may here say that, previously to the Norwegians starting it, Dr Bruce and the writer held meetings in Edinburgh and urged the leading business men, merchants and shipping people to take it up. We foretold the fortunes that were to be made, but they did not rise. A little later the Norwegian who we hoped to have as manager for the first whaling station in South Georgia, Captain Larsen, succeeded in raising capital in Argentina, and I am told began with a modest 70 per cent. profit in the first year. Norwegian companies quickly followed his lead and utilised our Empire’s resources for Norway!