FINE GLIMPSE OF WHALING

Press, 21 April 1979, Page 17

FINE GLIMPSE OF WHALING

Marlborough Whalers at Campbell Island, 1909-1916. Edited by I. S. Kerr and N. Judd. Department of Lands and Survey .75 pp. $1.30. (Reviewed by Ted Glasgow) Life on Campbell Island in the early years of this century was hard, and the reward for the men w 7 ho worked there was meagre. But Joe Timms, on whose recollections this booklet is based, makes no complaint. He was one of a gang of whalers from Te Awaiti, in Tory Channel who formed a syndicate and w’ent to Campbell Island to catch whales. At this time attempts were still being made to run sheep on Campbell Island and the syndicate had a contract with the lessee, who was not living on the island, to shear his sheep. (Nearly 7000 were shorn in 1912). The weather was atrqcious, living conditions primitive, and creature comforts few. They chased and caught their whales in a boat rowed by six men, and that is hard work in rough weather off a subAntarctic island.

After the loss of their launch (a fine example of the work of E. R. Lane, of Picton) they had to tow the whales back to base, which is even harder work. (At the risk of a charge of carping one must protest at the

editors’ description of the launch’s engine as a 12 h.p. standard. They mean a 12-horse Standard, a reliable low-tension marine engine which was fitted to two out of every three launches around at that time.) Joe Timms tells a plain unvarnished tale. Campbell Island has long since been abandoned as a sheep run, and is now the site of a New Zealand weather station. It is also mentioned in an apocryphal story, which surfaces from time to time, about a Scotswoman Of Royal blood who was exiled there. Joe Timms’s story, with photographs and maps, makes excellent reading. The Department of Lands and Survey is to be commended for this contribution to the history of a piece of outlying New Zealand territory.