PACK ICE PERIL

Greymouth Evening Star, 2 October 1933, Page 10

PACK ICE PERIL

THE HUNT IN THE ROSS SEA. Although whaling operations have been powerfully restricted by international agreement at Geneva, the industry is still a live one. Modern whaling is practically monopolised by the Norwegians, to whom is due all credit for maintaining the industry in Antarctica, says a writer in the “Manchester Guardian.’’ C. A. Larsen, the pioneer, established his first shore station at South Georgia in 1904, using a few dilapidated old vessels that were considered only fit for the junk pile. Good profits were shown, better ships built, and 1 the industry ' has grown steadily ever since. To-day, in addition to shore stations, there are one hundred and thirty odd vessels operating in the Ross and Weddel Seas.

The Ross Sea is the southernmost stretch of water yet known. It is in leality a great bight in the Antarctic Continent, lying fifteen hundred miles south of the Dominion of New Zealand. Its entrance is guarded by an immense field of floating ice that is often over five hundred miles wide. Behind the ice field, which is known as the “pack,” the sea is usually calm and peculiarly free from loose ice, although mammoth bergs, fragments of the Great Ice Barrier, are often seen drifting northward after the gales that are furious, though infrequent, during the summer months.

About December each year thousands of whales which have been feeding outside the pack ice thread their vvay through the ice in search of more food. The whaling fleets attempt to follow them, and although they push quickly through the ice many weeks and sometimes months of peril are spent by the ships before they are able to break through. Scandinavian whaling captains attack the perils of the pack ice with superb confidence. ' It is their job to catch whales, and nothing short of an ice mountain will bar their progress when under way. The factory ship usually takes the lead, and the whale chasers follow slowly through in her wake. Some of the skippers tow their ships through in a string, but this is a risky method. ' In some places the pack consists of great flat cakes of ice, often several acres in extent. In others it is so heavy and hummocky that nothing but a terrific impact will shatter it. The strain, imposed upon the ship’s plates is enormous. Even the modern factories, specially built to withstand ice conditions, suffer from battered plates,loosened rivets, and fractured stanchions within their hulls. The hulls below the waterline are almost entirely divided up into tanks for the storage of oil.

It is quite an ordinary occurrence for a whaler to emerge from a battle with the ice pack carrying hundreds of tons of sea water in her tanks and with her pumps going at full pressure. Brilliant but cold, as though it were on a cinema screen, the sun glows above the horizon at midnight. The wide expanse of dazzing drift ice stirs and changes as the ship steams slowly through. Suddenly she stops dead trembling and swaying from stem to stern. A hea,vy floe has proved too much even for a 22,000-ton steamer. She reverses her twin engines and backs away to make a fresh charge. Crash! The stubborn drift is shattered and' crumbles like chalk. The

ship moves on, ever southwards, towards the solemn silence ofc the frozen Ross Sea. Should the ice refuse to give way, the whaler must back out again and push off in a more promising direction. An experienced ice pilot is always stationed in the “barrel” on the lofty mast, to watch the “leads” and movements of the ice ahead.

GLEAMING VISTA. Seals basking dreamily on the floes are disturbed by the intruding mon-ster,-and they slide silently off into the' dark depths. Penguins stand stiffly in their swallow-tailed coats and cast curious eyes at the steamer as she glides past them. They mistrust her, and throwing dignity to the winds they fall forward on their tummies and go tobogganing away amongst the hummocks. From the barrel one can see a panorama of vast magnificence: gleaming pack ice, brilliant blue patches of water, cloudless sky, a view of simple grandeur. The largest and most up-to-date whaler afloat to-day is the mammoth Norwegian oil-burner Kosmos. With a ’displacement of 22,000 tons, she carries 18,000 tons of fuel oil for herself and her nine whale boats when southing for whales. During her maiden cruise she obtained 120,000 barrels of whale oil. Modern whalechasers, or gunboats, are usually of about 200 to 250 tons displacement. They are fast boats and necessarily versatile in action, and are remarkably good sea boats, although they certainly accomplish every acrobatic poise, except that of standing upsidedown, in heavy weather. Each gunbout is armed with a deadly harpoon gun at its bow; so heavy is the harpoon that it cannot be effectively fired at a range of more than approximately thirty feet. The harpoon head is a hollow pointed bomb which explodes within the creature’s body. If a second whale happens to be sighted when one has been killed, inflated ,and secured alongside, the dead one has to be cast adrift to be picked up later on. A light staff with a flag lor identification is-planted in the carcass.

Wireless is now an indispensable factor in whaling, as if. can be used for reporting catches and the direction of schools to the parent, ships. It is invaluable also during the heavy fogs which envelop the fleets at certain seasons.

The dock on, to which ’whales are hauled bodily through a slipway at tho vessel’s stern is known to (lie Norwegians as the “plan.” Here the whales are first “flensed" —that is denuded of their outer covering of blubber. On a good specimen the blubber coat is twelves inches in thickness. A cooker vent opens, shooting out clouds of steam into the cold air. Blocks of blubber hurtled across the dock and fall into the vent; the cooker fills up and closes, with a clang. Then the blubber begins to pile up again ready for the next batch.

Soon the carcass is reduced to a mere skeleton. The skull is torn off and hauled away to another deck to be sawn up. It is soon followed by the ribs, tail, and gigantic vertebrae, and the deck remains clear for the next whale. As many as sixteen carcasses tier day can be dealt with in this manner. Nothing is wasted. Bone, blubb.er and meat are boiled and baked until every ounce of oil has been extracted.