WHALING REVIVAL.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 26, 31 January 1912, Page 2

WHALING REVIVAL.

NORWEGIAN SYNDICATES. UNIQUE NEW ZEALAND INDUSTRY. One Norwegian syndicate has already obtained a license to erect whaling stations off the south of New Zealand, and now another Norwegian whaling syndicate has been formed to exploit New Zealand waters. Its Sydney agent has cabled an application to the New Zealand Government for the required permission (says the Sydney Morning Herald). ■ • It _is , quite likely that this second syndicate will devote its attention to tneNorthern part of New Zealand, and, it is understood, may seek to acquire ,for its base the station at Wangamumu, just south of the Bay of Islands, where the unique business of catching whales by nets is carried on. Of the migrations of the whale not much is known, except that/ they keep to certain sea tracks with almost the Aame unerring fidelity as ocean liners ; and in the autumn, on their way from tropic to polar seas, schools of whales hug the mainland of North New Zealand, a fair numbei of them passing through a narrow channel near Cape Brett, separating a cluster of rocky islets from the mainland. The generally-ac-icepted theory is that they do , this in order to get rid of the barnacles, with which their huge > bodies become encrusted during their sojourn in warmer latitudes, dislodging these parasites by rubbing against the rocks with which the passage is thickly strewn. Whether this is the caee or not, a lot of whales take this route every season, and this is the spot chosen for the placing of the nets. Of course they are not ordinary hempen nets. To put nets of that sort down to stop monster* swimming with a momentum of a ' hundred-ton mass of bone and sinew would be like setting a cobweb to catch a lion. Made of three-quarter-inch wire rope, they stretch across the channel for 600 ft, and igo down for a depth of 200 ft, being hung on strong wire ropes/ buoyed by immense floats. When a whale ia seen approaching boats are got ready, as the nets do not catch the whale in the ordinary sense, but only entangle, and impede his progress, and make the work of harpooning ea«y ; but, nevertheless, the despatch of a struggling and enraged whale is attended with much excitement and not a little danger. In the days of the Dutch, British, and Nantucket whalers, men engaged the most formidable of \deep-sea denizens with a hand harpoon from a email boat, at a distance of threo or four fathoms. The method of the Norwegians, and, indeed, nearly all engaged in the industry now, is tp discharge an infernal machine on to the whale from a steamboat, and the combat is reduced from a long struggle, lasting over hours, to a short engagement. This ia the way the whales are killed at Wangamumu. The modem harpoon is part torpedo, part harpoon, part cannon, and yet is so easily adjusted that the harpooner can swing it, depress or dellect it, with a turn of the wrist. It is a wonderful lethal weapon, as efficacious as the guillotine, but much more complicated. For instance, there is a dynamito bomb in the nozzle, with a time fuse, which is fired by the jerking out of a wire at explosion ; there is a swivel between the bomb and the four flanges of the harpoon ; there is the shank of the weapon, with a coupling for the thick hempen rope ; and tnere is the barrel of the gun from which this formidable shaft is discharged by l£lb of powder. When the hunter gets within 20 fathoms, and the great glistening back of the whale shows up, ho takes aim, aod the ear-drums tingle to the smashing report. There is great commotion, a passing sight of huge flukes, and the hum of the rushing rope through the sheath. If the bomb has exploded within the huge carcaes terrible havoc is inflicted, and there is a wild quiver of flukes and fins as the whalo "sounds." But presently he is back \o the surface — a spouting, wallowing mass, and woo betide the boat that comes within range of him in his dying flurry ! Sometimes after receiving the bomb the whalo must be lanced, and in the lancing there is imminent danger from the huge fin of the whale as it rolls' over to the thrust. It is a game full of incidents and brimful of the joy of hunting, and there ifc plenty of money in it — if there ova plenty of wnakel