Chasing Whales in Speedboats

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 256, 25 July 1936, Page 17

Chasing Whales in Speedboats

Plea)Zea/andi oldeit indulhip brought up do date

OF all the hard and perilous pursuits whereby men wrest a living from the treacherous sea, surely most adventurous is the hunting of the whale. To venture out through the bitter waves of winter, in a frail shallop, and beard the mightiest of living things in his own chancy element, is no task for s weakling or a coward. A wild and dangerous chase, the hunting of the biggest of all game! Only two hours away from Wellington by steamer, in historic and beautiful surroundings where Tory Channel forms, a narrow ocean gateway to Queen Charlotte Sound, whaing, New Zealand’s oldest industry, is still carried on. But to-day the Cook Strait whalers have evolved a new method of running down their quarry, more exciting and deadly than is practised anywhere else in the world. It is believed that here alone in the Seven Seas is the leviathan dogged to death by powerful speed-boats, tearing across the face of the ocean at forty miles an hour.

This Marlborough industry is in the hands of Mr. J. Perano, for 25 years a Tory Channel whaler. He has adapted to his needs modern resources which ousted the old-time whalemen. At the time when he introduced power chasers, men still rowed out after the whales in long-boats and killed them with hand harpoons and lances. Mr. Perano brought petrol engines, explosives and wireless telephony into the game. Whereas in former years half-a-dozen whales would be deemed a fortunate season’s catch, already this year nearly 70 humpbacks have beeh taken by the chasers, a record season’s haul. As many as eight whales have been towed In from the Strait in the course of a single day.

Let us visit the whaling station, sail aboard the chasers, and gain an insight into the methods of the whalemen at their work. The Home of Whaling Two hours out from Wellington, the Tamahine enters a narrow cieft in the frowning cliffs of the South Island She whistles and stops, and a fishing launch from the shore puts out to see what it is all about. We clamber down a swaying rope-ladder, and ten minutes later, while the twin red funnels of the steamer dwindle down the Sound we set foot on the pleasant beach known in the vernacular as “Old Tar White.” A pretty little farming settlement situated on a sheltered bay at the north-west side of Tory Channel, To Await! is the original whaling base

on the Marlborough coast, one of the oidest settlements in New Zealand. Today it gives little indication of its stirring past. A few rusting trypots at the head of the beach and the rotting bones of long-dead whales are all that mark the footsteps of the early adventurers. The whaling depot here was founded by Captain M. Guard in 1827, after storm had driven his ship into the Sound for refuge. But the Maoris had built their pa at Te Awaiti Jong before that time. When Captain Cook sailed the Resolution through Tory Channel in in 1774,-he noticed as he passed by that on this cove was situated one of the largest fortified villages in ibe Sound. When in 1839 the Tory sailed in to Te Awaiti with the pioneers of the New Zealand Company, it was the most Important European settlement in the South Island—although that signified only that it possessed some 20 sod

huts, thatched with toitoi. Among the local notabilities of this primitive town, most famous wore Dicky Barrett, Captain James Hebberley, Jack Love, Joseph Toms and Jimmy Jackson, names still remembered in Te Awaiti, where many of their descendants yet reside.

What remains of this one-time settlement? Only the old trypots, the mouldering; graves of early settler.-,, and the tumbledown wharf where the schooners used to berth. It is hard, in this peaceful pastoral scene, to realise that this sleepy beach once witnessed the drunken carousals of the lawless whalers, or that here, where we breakfast on Romney chops, the grim Te Rauparaha, returning with five hundred prisoners from the sack of Kaiapoi, celebrated his victory by one of the bloodiest can-

the southerlies, affords protection from the unfriendly elements. On ihree sides the bill itself, into which tne dugout is out, walls its shoreward aspect; seaward an ear them - parapet acts as a partial windbreak. In the centre of the hard-tramped clay floor stands a heating-stove; in a corner cupboard is a small, compact wireless telephone, equipped for both sending and receiving messages. Half-a-dozen homemade packing-case chairs complete the furniture.

This is the whalemen’s eyrie. Throe hundred feet,above the sea, it commands a wide and impressive view out over the Strait At the foot of the cliffs below, the surf breaks upon dogtoothed rocks, and booms in granite arches and caves. North, beyond the channel entrance, a grim, forbidding

high body temperature that when they do so their condensed exhalation is thrown up as a fountain of spume ten feet into the air. From their hill-top lookout, the whalers can distinguish the spouting of a whale even a dozen miles away. The Game’s Afoot “There she blows!” The traditional whaling call to action is many centuries old. It is the signal for a mad scramble down the hill. Two watchers stay at the lookout, to hoist a flag and wireless the steam tender Tuatea that a pair of whales has been sighted about four miles out in the Strait. The dinghy is launched, and their crews board the chasers, Miss Whekenui and Cachalot, leaving Sea Raider for the men on the hill. Powerful engines wake into noisy

nibal banquets in New Zealand history. A mile along the shores from “Old Tar White” is situated the modern whaling factory where the giant earcases are reduced to oil. Yet another mile by a hillside track brings us to a bay opposite the channel mouth, the bay called Whekenui. Here the whaler, Mr. Perano, has his homestead, and the farm which busies him during the offseason. From his veranda, shaded by tall pines, he can look out across the Sound to the open water beyond. Under the lee of the land across the bay, the whaling fleet, tender and chasers, find safe mooring, even when a heavy swell rolls in from the windy Sira it. The Whaler’s Look-out From a crude shelter set liigh on a hill-top by the mouth of Tory Channel the whalemen keep watch over Cook Strait. A low iron roof, sturdily constructed to withstand the violence of

foreland, Wellington Head, runs out into the sea. Southward the coast sweeps in a wide curve to Cape Campbell, 40 miles distant. In front, eastward, the wind-ruffled sea stretches away to the dim hills of the North Island, floating on the far horizon. The sea is every imaginable shade of blue —streaked with turquoise and indigo where sunshine alternates with the racing shadows of clouds in the middle distance, and in the foreground, where wave-crests sparkle, the goid-flecked blue of lapis lazuli. At the lookout, where the whalemen in searboots and shapeless felt hats eat. their picnic lunch, washed down with billy tea, one at least of them is constantly on watch, scanning the ocean witli powerful binoculars for the tell-tale spouting of a whale. These great sea-mammals labour under the fatal disadvantage of having to come to the surface every ten or fifteen minutes to breathe, and such is their

Meanwhile Miss Whekenufs gunner is busy. Standing firm on the lurching deck, oblivious of the movement and the flying spray, he inserts a fat brass cartridge, loaded with blasting powder, in the breech, and thrusts the shaft of the heavy harpoon down the muzzle. The missile has a sharp triangular head, packed with explosives, and fired by a time-fuse, set for eight seconds after the gun is fired. Three six-inch hinged barbs behind the head prevent the harpoon from tearing out of the blubber once it has buried itself in the whale. The maximum range is about sixty feet.

About 12 fathoms of the whale-line attached to the harpoon are now coiled down on the bow, to pay out freely when the shot is fired. Thence the line leads aft, round a loggerhead be-

life, anchors are broken our, and put ting forth from the snug bay the twlaunches head for the channel niout] and the open sea beyond. We are on board Miss Whekenui. J lean 35-foot speed-boat, strongly con structed for rough treatment out am about the sea in all weathers. A shal low-draught vessel, little inure than t modified searsled, drawing about 3( inches of water. Like the other chaser; she is painted red below the waterline dark green above. Her grey decks arc clear, except for a low rail at either side, and a sinister little cannon mounted on a swivel on the bow. There is just room iu the cockpit for two, Under the low cabin-top is the motor, a huge 300 horse-power aeroplane engine, capable of driving the solidlybuilt chaser at nearly -10 miles an hour. As the launches tear out through the rip-tide at a steady 20 knots, the Tuatea slips from her moorings across the Sound, and comes chugging after.

side the -cockpit, to the main coil in an after-hatch. It is the helmsman's duty, beside tending the engine and steering the boat, to look after the Vppe when fast to a whale. He must also lire the bomb with which the coup de grace is administered. This bomb, forming the head of a heavy iron spear,, the gunner now places in the scuppers, with tlie end of the coil of, insulated wire attached to it made fast handy to the cockpit. The bomb contains three plugs of gelignite. By the time those preparations are complete, we are well out beyond Wellington Head, and somewhere in the neighbourhood of the whales. Cachalot, having been delayed slightly at the start, is racing up a quarter of a mile astern. We slacken speed, and cruise at about five knots, watching out for the whales. Hunting the World’s Biggest Game. There! A white feather of spray, swiftly blown aside by the breeze. While it still hangs on the air, another one puffs up beside it. They are about a mile distant, to starboard. Miss Whekenui spins round. Her owner, nt the wheel, onens wide the

throttle. The speed-boat leaps ahead, with a sudden deep-toned roar we have not heard from her before. The slapping of the water on her bow becomes abruptly hard and vicious. Spray flies over her in a continuous blinding sheet. She lurches violent’}’ as she plunges through the waves. Feet splayed, gun pointed slightly downward, the harpooner rides erect on the I ow, while the launch careers madly across the sea. The helmsman, hat pulled down hard over his eyes to screen them from tlie stinging spray, peers ahead from under the dripping brim. Suddenly the chaser rushes into a patch of oilysmooth water, where the whales have been. The engine slows, the vessel loses speed. Cachalot, flying on white wings of foam, comes racing with the wild white horses of the sea. The two

boats cruise at easy pace, on slightly divergent courses, bracketing the way they believe the whales to have taken. They are not mistaken. Two vast black backs, wet and shining, break water 50 yards ahead. The engines roar, the launches leap for the spot, at full speed. But they are still 20 yards away when the great flukes of the sea-beasts’ tails go skyward, showing white undersides, as they sound. Once again the white plumes of their breath are dissipated by the sea breeze. So the chase goes on, greyhounds after a hare. The two whales double and dodge, blowing now ahead and now astern, with tlift relentless hunters

never far behind. They keep together, the two humps showing always side by side. The end of the chase is never in doubt; it is only a matter of time Half an hour—then, as the gunner waves his arm for Miss Whekenui to increase speed, two immense dark shadows can be seen slipping along ahead, with the water shoaling above them. The launch dashes recklessly alongside. A huge flat head warty and knobbed and hideous, like that of some uncouth prehistoric monster, thrusts up through the waves not six yards away on the port bow. Two gaping

down. They leave the sea boiling in their wake. Oiir harpooner, making sure that the line runs freely through the chocks in tlie boat’s bow, stands upright, leaning against the gun. The helmsman takes another turn round the steaming loggerhead, and eases the tension with the motor as the whale takes Misg Whekenui in tow. A fine sight in the sunshine, with the drenching spray flying left and right, and the gunner, lance in hand, poised on her bow, Cachalot races past to give the death-stroke. But when the whales next come up, they are far to port of her. The harpooned whale blows first, spouting bloody foam It is the cow to which we are fast: had we taken the bull whale, the cow would have fled, whereas the greater constancy of the male keeps him by the side of his wounded mate. When next the wounded whale rises. Cachalot ranges alongside With all his strength the harpooner hurls his dart into the beast’s side. Hardly has the whale submerged than the helmsman fires the bomb, by touching the ends of the insulated wire to electric points on the boat. There is a muffled thud under water, and, wnile Miss Whekenui is still pulling up on the

nostrils open on the broad back, and the creature snorts a blast of spume into the air. In at the Death The gunner swings the muzzle round There is a dull report, half drowned by the racing engine. A puff of white smoke is quickly blown away by the wind. We catch a momenta'-y glimpse of the eoils of rope flying through the air, of the butt of the harpoon projecting from the whale’s flank At the same time the second whale blows, between its mate and the rocking launch, right beside us, so close one could step over dry-shod onto its back, with the bight of the harpoon line lying across it. Then both tails fly up together, the broad flukes showering the salt sea over us, as the whales dive deep

harpoon-line, the whale rushes t 0 the surface, blowing dark blood, in its death-flurry. Miss Whekenui draws up to it, and the gunner thrusts the sharp point of an air-spear into its side, leaning on the shaft and pushing it deep in, to pump air through a hose from the engine into the gigandc carease and so ensure its floating. Many a whale of old was lost through sinking, but to-day the air-spear lias lessened that risk.

Foolish, ununderstanding, the bull whale has waited at the side of its dead mate. It falls an csisj victim to Cachalot’s deadly gun The harpoon, placed in a mortal sp'd kills it, and after sounding once, it floats lifeless on the surface, the waves slopping over it.

The excitement of the chase gives

place to hard work. The whale’s tail is hauled as far out of water as possible, and a hole cut in the barnaclestudded fluke A wire strop is passed through this, and when rhe Tuatea comes up, she takes the carcases in tow by their tails, one at either side. Though it. has been a short hunt, and a quick kill, the winter afiernoon is already done, the sun has dipped beyond the land, the bright stars are coming out, one by one. across the sea. We have travelled far from home, and the swift tides of the Strait have brought us farther; it will be a slow voyage home, against a five-knot ebb. The launches pull in astern of the Tuatea, and make fast to her; the chaser crews settle themselves in the cockpits, while the little steamer sets her course up the Strait and starts or. the long tow homo.

Whale Has No Chance The chase has left us tense, and our hearts pounding. Now, while the Tuatea battles with the tide comes the time for reflection. The whue has no chance at all. The hounds are too swift and tireless for the hare. The quarry has not the wit to separate from his mate, and so give one of them a faint chance of escaping. He has not the temper to turn on the frail boats, for which he wou'd be more than a match. He is doomed from the moment the hunters start in chase of him.

The main danger to the whalers is the risk of accident, great'y reduced by the presence of several erasers and of the steam tender, ready to come to the rescue in the event of engine-failure or capsize through a wounded whale blundering up underneath one of the boats. The possibility of accidental tils charge of some of tlie high explosives carried in the chasers is probably the thing most to be feared.

It remains to ask what are the whales doing in Cook Strait? Trey pass through, northward bound, on their annual migration to warmer seas to breed. AU the way from the Ross Sea, they appear in the Strait in June, and cease coming at the end of August The return to the cold South is made by other routes.

These whales are practically all hump-backs. The killing of the right whale, rare on the coast, is prohibited by international agreement and other species, such as cachalots and blue

whales, seldom venture into these waters. Hump-backs, however, are abundant during the season, and it is no uncommon thhrg to neo ten or a dozen during the flay. And, of course, those that happen\witjrfn the whalers’ range are only the onet that pass through the western half of the Strait during the brief winter day-time. As all the whales pass through the Strait in the same direction, the whalers work on a simple system. Setting out at dawn with two chasers, in tow of the Tuatea, to save petrol, they cruise up the Strait toward the Brothers, in quest of any whales that ’have passed by during the latter hours of night. The third chaser stops at the lookout, and keeps in touch with the tender by Wireless telephone. If nothing is seen, the cruising party returns to the lookout, and keeps watch until the welcome cry Of "There she blows!” breaks the monotony of their vigil. The Rendering-Down Of old the boiling-down of the blubber for oil was a laborious and lengthy process. The whale was flensed between tile tide-marks, and-the trypots, like traditional witches’ cauldrons, were set up at the top of the .beach To-day, by modern methods end machinery, a forty-ton humpback can be dealt with in less than three hours. The whale is hauled up on the slip at the factory by means of a steam winch. As It lies there high and dry, it bulks seven or eight feet tali, and about 40 feet long. About a third of it appears tO'be head, its immense distorted mouth and tiny eyes lending it a grotesque and repulsive appearance. ’The shiny back is jet-black, the belly and underside of flukes and flippers snowy white. The blow-hole Is situated at the apex of the back. Inside the mouth is the elaborate selve of baleen with which the whale extracts from the sea-water the minute marlite animals that form his food. The whale-bone of the humpback is short and brittle, the commercial product of Victorian days being derived from the now protected right whale. The flensers, as tough-looking a gang as ever you would see, set to work by cutting a deep groove round the whale’s neck. His skin is little thicker than that of ,a human being; immediately beneath it lies an eight-inch layer of soft blubber. A block and tackle are booked up to the blubber, the winch turns, and the blubber is stripped,oil in great ten-foot-wide blankets. It is hauled up to a slip-way,- and Chopped into small squares, and these in turn are put through a mechanical mincer that phreds them into slivers with a pair of revolving blades. The speed of this cutter is prodigious. It can chop up the blubber as fast as two men can feed it. It can slice up the blubber of a whole Whale in less than an hour.

Onco chopped up. the blubber goes into a steam digester, where it is subjected to a 30-pound pressure of steam throughout the following night. Next morning the oil is run ,ofl’ into vats, leaving only waste matter. The oil from the vats is graded, and is eventually tapped into drums for storage, sale and export.

Meantime the flensers are still busy on the great carcase, chopping away the valuable fat from Immediately under the blubber, stripping the head and preparing it for rendering down in a special boiler, which, at an extra head of steam, 80 pounds to the inch, reduces the bones to a pulp, and extracts every vestige of oil. Further apparatus is being installed so that eventually it will be possible to use every portion of the whale, the waste being manufactured into meat-meal and manure.

Many grades of oil are produced, each being of a different value, • and used for a different purpose. .Most of it is exported overseas. The purest oils, extracted from the blubber at the first boiling, are used in the manufacture of margarine, soap and lamp and lubricating oils of the better class. Other grades of whale oil are used in dressing leather, jute, and vegetable fibre, and for quenching steel plates in the foundries. Oil of the lowest grade, extracted from the head and bones, is used in certain bitumen mixtures for tar-sealing pavements, and for waterproofing.

A humpback whale produces, on an average, five tons of oil. The most ever extracted by the rendering down of a single whale at Tory Channel was 14 tons. This is a high percentage of oil to whale, for the whale scales about a ton dead weight for every foot of his length; a 40-foot humpback, in reasonable condition, weighs probably about 40 tons.

A visit to the factory is not easily forgotten. The colossal carcase with the flensers slashing at it with their knives, the racket of the noisy chopper slicing up the blubber, the figures of the digester men moving in the glare of the furnaces, through an atmosphere of steam, make an impressive sight. Over the factory circle screaming multitudes of gluttonous sea-fowl. The whole locality is pervaded by an overpowering aroma of whale. No doubt at all, it is a picturesque industry.

Well, we have seen it all. from the sighting of the travelling whale to the sealing of the train-oil casks. B c have watched with the whalemen from their lookout, have raced with the chasers across the turbulent tides, been present at the death-flurry, towed home the kill, and seen the blubber stripped from the reeking carcase to be rendered into oil. There is nothing left to keep us here —but it will be tedious and dull in workaday Wellington, after the excitement and adventure of the sea. An experience never to be forgotten.

Willy-waughs drive the drenching rain sheeting across the steel-grey

Sound. Ragged clouds hurry low above the hills. The red-funnelled Tamahine looms bulky and indistinct, a shadowy ghost-ship slipping between the squalls. As Cachalot with roaring engine races alongside the speeding ship, pallid faces of passengers peer down from the steamer’s rail to watch us scale the jacob’s ladder. The chaser, turning In a wide arc, heads shoreward; the Tamahine pitches into the swell of the open sea. Astern the curtain of rain closes down over the land; there is nothing to be seen except the wild white horses, galloping beside us along the homeward way, the whale’s way to Wellington.