WHALING

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 11 September 1926, Page 11

WHALING

TWHALE hunting in southern seas must be a very thrilling affair indeed (says a writer in the Melbourne Age). On business-like little steamers is erected at the bo>v a wooden platform on which is mounted a small gun, from the barrel of which protrudes a great barbed steel harpoon about six feet, in length. The nose of this harpoon is tipped with a long pointed soft iron ;shell, ..and toJ& .Aa_ft£&efcedgfMijty; fathoms of rope.’There is a barrel high up on the mast, and ini this airy place a keen-eyed watcher scans the surrounding ocean. Immediately a whale has -been sighted 'he indicates'the direction which the blubbery-coated denizen of the "deep' has 'taken/ and'the little ship sets off in pursuit. The captain issues orders; tlie vessel shakes and spurts ahead, then she slackens speed, swings, hastens again, and finally stops. The captain now clambers along the icecovered deck and sights the gun, and from this position he also directs the course of the ship. ' Twenty yards' from the bow the surface of the water breaks, and a great whale's head conics into view. Slowly it turns and glides beneath again, while the long grey back and top flanks become exposed as the whale arches his body to sound again. When the small dorsal fin comes into view there is seen a spurt of flame followed by a deafening roar and crash. The leviathan has boon hit and sounds} instantly in a blinding fury of foam and spray. Soon a dull thump is heard, which signifies the explosion of the shell deep in the whale’s vitals. Eventually the whale is dragged to the surface, and compressed air is pumped into it, and the ship slowly-tows the catch back to the mother ship, maybe a hundred miles away. 1 But if the whale bo not

PERILS OF ANTARCTICA

HOW THE LEVIATHAN IS KILLED.

struck in a vital spot there is indeed danger, for blue whales lashed to fury, by the pain of a’ wound have been known to charge madly at the puny vessel and send it a broken mass of scrap iron and matchwood reeling to tho depths. When, the whale has been attached to the mother ship the flensing begins—i.e., it' is stripped of its thick coating of blubber..—. Two men, armed with razor-edged knives do the flensing, and in one section they can take the whole of the corrugated blubber from the stomach, a li'uge sheet 40ft long by 20ft wide. The' whale being .blown up bycompressed iur, the blubber is stretched tight as a drum, and when cut-it opens very easily. But it is said to be a dreadful job, this flensing. Their clothes and faces are invariably encased in ice, so that they are obliged to thaw them-, selvos out everv time' thev come on deck. When the blubber has been hauled on deck, blubber cutters slice tho big sheets into strips. Blubber varies in thiekness from .12 to 20 inches, and when it freezes it is difficult to hack with an axe. The blubber cutters 1 faces become covered with blood, which quickly freezes, and enhanced by their yellow windproof suits, fur caps, and high leather sea boots, they make an awe-inspiring picture. After going through several processes of purification the sweet-swelling' oil is run through pipes to a large open tank, where it is tested, measured, graded, and allowed to settle. Then it is pumped into enorHIBUS. 2000-barrel storage tanks. Some idea of the value of wbalo oil may be gathered from the fact that from nine of them fOHOO - worth of oil was obtained.