WHALING OF TO-DAY.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLVI, Issue 118, 16 May 1912, Page 2

WHALING OF TO-DAY.

: REVIVAL OF THE INDUSTRY. ■ MODERN METHODS.

With.the decay of.the British whal-' ing indnstty-—Dundee is now the only ■port..iii'Great".Britain which still possesses a whaling ileet—many pe6plo. ..says the Manchastvr Guardian,) suppose that the Whaling industry litself iias shrunken, but Mr Theodore E. •Salveseri,. our greatest authority oil tho. subject,".said on March 2?th at tho Royal Society of Arts, in the coarse of a fascinating address, on "The. Whaling Industry of To-day,V that;during tho last three or four gears' the industry, conducted on mo- , <l?rn lines, has 'developed' enormously. This is chiefly due to two causes. One is the disoorery by the Norwegian Svend Foyn. ana' tlie subsequent' improvement of a -contrivance for killing and securing -the large firmer y-hale,' which-up to 1886 was not hunted because when dead it sinks and its weigh* would haul under airy , rowing" boat secured to it. The other cause is the development within .the ] past eight years of the whaling; mdus-.l-.*ry,,in>the.^o.«th^ii\H.<^isplier.e;'Tho-- - i^^^ljvrid-Hv3j^e/' ; 'iH\;>iio\\ r hunted ' -iby, ■qniy-ifi^ bar^.tierrA^t>d,. Avoodeu !iiuxi■'.,liaxy. • sfceathV.iioe-proteptad 1 vessels, of j ; abbiit/400 :toris ; About - nfty j tie-nosed whale "in the' Norwegian Sea", "but last year's take was only 900 tons ■of "oil. jcsland ' sends-, out 27, steam whalers belonging to six * companies, but the industry^ is declining, and the same may be said, of whaling off the Faroe Islands and Spitsbergen. Eleven steamers work off Shetland and the Hebrides, and in 1509 two stations were ersoted on the west coast of Irelaud. with licenses .for five whalers, but t-h^e-'return has been unsatisfactory. Across the Atlantic only five whale-1-* remain of the large Newfoundland fleet,- and various recent efforts in the, St. Lawrence River and the Davis Straits have had little success. In the North Pacific, San Francisco, and New Bedford have still a number of old-f assumed wooden barques—all that is left of the 827' sail that worked thess seas m '1840. Ten modern .British Columbian.' whr.lers, however, h.-ivo. had prosperous - seasons oi? thw Alaska coast. A HARVEST "IN SOUTHERN . • , SEAS, The great increoi-e in the whaling industry has como from the Southern Hemisphere. Tho island of South Georgia, where it was initiated about eight _ years ago, has disclosed the most lucrative grounds yet known. Eiglit companies are working twentyone whaling'steamers. At the South Shetland*.- and Graham Land ten • licenses nave been granted by the British Government .for thirty steam ' whalers. In tho Falkland Islands a j British cofpany operates five whalers. In the South of Chile, in the Mssgel-.: lan Straits, one- company has its sta- ; tien and factory, and two others are j situated on the west coast, of Chile, j African whaling was started about j four years ago in Durban,- and- the | success' wft's so striking that we have companies operating at Lobita, three /'in Elephant Bay, on-? in Mossamedes (a Portuguest company), one in Port ■ Alexander, und one in Tiger Bay—all in Portuguese West Africa. ..Concessions have beou-granted for'Wnlfissh •■^Bay, and -■pro^a'bTy -whaling will be Itegun thorn 'duriiig the coming...season. Two- compii,aifXs work from-Sal-danha Bay, one from Mossel Bay on the soutV coast, a?7fi three from Durban. AltogeWior thirty whalers were employed off South Africa, 'but during the coming; season this number will be greatly augmented. Already several largo ventures have been Started to exploit thy waters round the Australian continent. Tasmania, Nw 'Zealand, and other islands. '.;.-,;;- : - ';■ .[ k ' HUNT. W The l^ot-arer ghv?- .on exciting ncifouritibl^ihe^hunt of *lt« Inrge finnor -Wh4^<oimo^r^ n-little over'loo '"'■ # ionkA w'sJj '^iheevMh- of about 20ft, nISi f:'- dut .away-fore ; "and af^ y Th^harpoon, which is about 6ft in:Jfch^h^ Wnd weiglis. about a .tuDdremveight,-has four prongs which '■• ■ ■ '■■■ .. ■■••■■ ■' v ■■' -.' '■'(.■/.■- '.'• ■■ ■

■'spring out '.at': -right angles while the. dine, is 'tightened after the .harpoon -is (in tile '-whale's body. On the top oi the 'harpoon' is an explosive sheii. A large steam -winch is fitted abaft the maot. and along the keelson are arzaiiged double rows .of steel springs. When the whalo.is killed it sinks, drawing with it the whale line paid out from the winch. The vcssal is brought't'; a standstill, and when the lino is vortifi/il it is wound in and tho . whale ■ brought to the surface llie &t--K'-\ springs compeusato for the lise and fall oi the .whaler on the waves. To make the carcase float and lessen the towing weight a hole is pierced into the lungs or stomach, unci the whale ia inflated by a steam air pump, if the whalo is not shot dead oil the s]>ot* the gunner has to play it like a salmon by mampuaiting the si>eam winch and the steamer's engine. Very often the line is snapped, and this is as often the cas^ with a record Avhale as with a record salmon. Killing and taking whales by rowing boat is still practised, by the way, by some Dundee whaleio.

As to the value of the industry, Mr Salvesen mentioned that ia.st season the total capture of ali the 120 steam whalers in., the Northern Hemisphere was 5000 whales, yielding about 156,000 barrels of oil of a value of £625,000. In the Southern Hemisphere the nineteen South Georgia whalers alone caught 7000 whales yielding 200,000 barrels, or nearly 40 per cent, more oil than the combiufc.d captures of the whole of the Northern fleets.