THE WHALE FLEETS

Evening Star, Issue 22804, 12 November 1937, Page 1

THE WHALE FLEETS

• -► ; THEIR LAST DRIVE? VANISHING OF THE QUARRY END OF A TRADITION Thirty-six floating factory ships and some 200 chasers will operate against the surviving whales of the world in their last stronghold, the icy waters or the Antarctic, this coming season. Norwegian, British, Gorman, Japanese, American, and possibly also Russian fleets will participate, writes Alan Vmliors, in the ‘ Dally Telegraph. For some years there has been, some mild alarm at the decline in the number of bine whales, and the latest investigation shows a serious decrease both in the number of mature blue whales captured and in the average length of the whales taken. Last season some 40,000 whales died, of which the most were blues. In the coming season some of the admittedly enefficient restrictions which existed then are to he lifted, for at the whaling conference there was no agreement. The Norwegians for years have been anxious for some proper method _of international control for the whaling industry; but the entry of the Japanese and the Germans into the field would seem to have made this impossible. The Japanese showed little readiness to agree to anything, and the Germans insisted upon an extension of the season. For three months and one week 200 ships will be firing bombheaded harpoons into defenceless whales, and there will be no surprise in Norway if this is the end. PESSIMISM RULING. On a recent visit to the great whaling ports of Sandefjord and! Tonsberg, I found some pessimism about the future of the industry; and I found the whale ship owners interested in the prospects of the tankea - market. I remember, of course, that when Carl Anton Larsen took the old converted Anchor-Brocklehank steamer Mahronda (renamed Sir James Clark Ross for the voyage) into the Ross Sea on the first modern whaling voyage into the Antarctic in 1923-24, there was some pessimism about the extinction of the whales. That was 14 years ago; we killed, that season, some 400 whales for a paltry 17,000-odd barrels of oil. Since that day Antarctic whaling has prospered, except, of course, for the depression years. The old-type ships were improved upon. Ramps were cut in the sterns of the factory ships in order that pelagic whaling might be carried on, the dead whales being hauled on board by their tails. Messrs Melsom’s old Lancing was the first of these! Captain Larsen’s company, quick bo seize an idea so important in ice whaling, converted a big oil tanker into the factory ship C. A. Larsen, with a slipway cut into her bow, opened and closed by a huge steel gate, to draw in whales and cough out carcasses. The Larvik steamer N. T. Nielsen-Alonso appeared on the scene late in 1925, with a slipway aft and no intention to come within any nanatioual limits. Real pelagic whaling in the Antarctic then began, and control by more or less ineffective agreements and legislation became largely inoperative. AGREEMENT IN EXISTENCE. The pioneer Larsen had been wise enough to enter into an agreement with the British Government whereby whaling rights in the Boss Dependency—or at least in the territorial waters thereof—were reserved to his company; but pelagic whaling put an end to any effective control in this manner. The Antarctic was open to all. New grounds were opened up in all sectors. There was a, rush of activity such as those cold seas had not - previously known. The peculiar suitability of the Norwegian temperament to ice-whaling, coupled with the fact that the whaling

industry had long been left almost exclusively bo Norwegian nationals, gave the Norwegians a monopoly in the field. For their own sake, and for the sake of the profitable continuance of so valuable an industry, there were frequent attempts to get together for the effective_ control of he slaughter,, for it took little foresight toi see that it might soon pass beyond all bounds. These attempts do not appear to have achieved very much. Whaling was too profitable in the few brief years before 1929; and the Norsemen are noted for their co-opera-tion. Tho industry expanded and expanded. Foreign capital—much, of it British—was largely employed.- Already other nationals cast covetous eyes on the rich harvest. THE DEPRESSION COMES. Then the depression came. Whaling, like most other industries not wholly sound, shook and toppled a little of its own weight. Debenture holders began to take ever ships. Flags changed; the Bed Ensign was hoisted on several fleets, though, the nationality of the crows showed little change. Whaling was still a Norwegian industry, and the mere changing, of a port of registry did little to alter that. There was a glut of oil. I chanced to drop in at Sandefjord at that time, to visit Captain Larsen’s grave and see my friends. I counted 15 factory ships deep laden in the harbour, and a thousand long faces deep laden in the streets. The end of tho depression has not quite lightened the pessimism in Sandefjord. The outlook for the whalers is had, and the Norwegians know it. When whaling declines •it will be they who must suffer first, for many of their competitors are subsidised. Germany must have whale oil; the Japanese, using some Norwegian gunners andtheir own, have several fleets; the American factory ships are protected by high duties for their product. I saw a Soviet fleet come into Honolulu a year or two ago, hound out to Kamchatka somewhere. The Russians, however, are not regarded as serious competitors, at least by the Norwegians. It is reported that they are as interested in the canning of the whale carcasses for meat as they are in the oil. CONTROLS FIVE FLEETS. The other day in Sandefjord 1 talked with Consul Lars Christensen, one of the chief figures in modern .-■’dialing. Consul Christensen’s is a modest office full of charts and photographs and models of ships. Behind his Desk is a large painting in oils of an old sailing fleet working through some heavy ice. On his table, covered with papers, stands a model of a four-masted, fullrigged ship in a bottle, exquisitely done, and the ash-trays are carved from the teeth of sperm whales. , Lars Christensen controls five of the largest whaling flfeets in the world today. The son of a shipbuilder and shipowner, he has been a whaleship owner since 1905. It was he who, sent the sturdy little Norvegia on her epic circumnavigation of the Antarctic continent, voyages which resulted in the charting of new land in at least _ four different places. It was he who wished to annex Bouvet Island-for Norway; it was he who opened up the last great whaling grounds in that sector. He stands pre-eminent as a whaleman in these days, but I found him, too, somewhat pessimistic about the future of the industry, more than pessimistic of Norway’s future share in it. “ I am training my son to he a shipowner and not a whaling manager,” he said, “ for it is more than likely that whaling as w;e know it will soon be gone It will be tho Norwegians who will leave it first, for when it ceases to be profitable they must leave it. It will not be the Norwegians who will kill the last whale.”

Indeed, as far as the whale may have any hope for survival, it must lie in the very magnitude of the efforts against him. These modem expeditions are expensive and must kill many whales to be worth while. It takes anything over 1,000 whales a voyage to give the least of them a cargo. They will never hunt whales to the last whale, as the old sperm whalers did. They can kill only to the last cargo. There are, of course, numerous restrictions; inspectors are sometimes carried; the whole of the carcasses must be used; immature whales and cows -with calves must not be killed, and so forth. But the Antarctic is a large area and difficult to police. There is an understandable impression among whalemen generally that he who has the nerve to seek his livelihood among the whales of the Antarctic ice may consider himself entitled to kill, pretty largely, What comes his way. There is enterprise enough, to be sure, in this strange industry. But on our recent two-year amble round the globe in tho ship Joseph Conrad we saw no whales beyond a friendly old blue bull which stayed with us a week, near the Falkland Islands, and a sperm or two near the Solomons. It seems inevitable that tho fate which long since destroyed the Antarctic fur seal also awaits the whale, and it cannot now be long delayed.