WHALE CHASER CALLS

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 54, 27 November 1937, Page 13

WHALE CHASER CALLS

Speedy Crossing Of Cook Strait Racing up Port Nicholson at a speed of more than 30 miles an hour, maimed by a solitary seaman, the 30-foot whale chaser Cachelot, from Tory Channel, arrived at Wellington yesterday morning. She had crossed Cook Strait from the whaling station at Whaekenui to Wellington Harbour in the quick time of one hour and a quarter. The navigator of the Cachelot was the son of Mr. J. Perano, owner of the whaling station and fleet at Tory Channel. He had come over in this spectacular fashion just to spend a weekend in Wellington. As the whaling station is on isolated Arapawa Island, fast motor launches are the usual mode of travel for the Peranos. The traveller tied up. the launch in the boat harbour just as another man might park his car, and came ashore to stay with friends in town. Powered with a 300 li.p. petrol engine, and capable of nearly 40 miles an hour, the launch is a craft of simple and seaworthy design, with a sturdy stanchion forward as a mounting lor the harpoon gun. To the landsman, she seems a tiny vessel in which to tackle a creature very much bigger than the boat itself, yet during the successful season just finished for whalers, a 90-foot leviathan fell to this <>r one of the other two chasers, and those who have seen them at work are satisfied that the craft constitute tiie most deadly ami efficient method used anywhere in the world for hunting whales.