WHALING RECORDS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23044, 23 May 1938, Page 10

WHALING RECORDS

material in dominion PROPER COLLECTION URGED The suggestion that all the material dealing with whaling in New Zealand should be collected to be made proper use of was made yesterday by Mr. M. G. Lee, when giving a lecture on whaling at the Auckland War Memorial Museum. When illustrating his talk with lantern slides, Mr. Lee drew attention to the fact that they all related to American ships and methods, and said it was a pity that New Zealand had not placed equal importance upon the safe keeping of records of her own whaling industry, which had played a most important part in her history. "Although they would have been the first to laugh at the idea," said Mr. Lee, "the early whalers who worked from the shores of New Zealand were the forerunners of civilisation in the country, the spearhead of European culture." Mr. Lee covered not only the types of whales, their size, from the gigantic 100 ft. blue whale to the more familiar but smaller hump-backs and sperms, and their commercial value, but he also traversed the history of the industry. The Eskimos, he said, were credited with having been the first of the whalers, and after them came the North American Indians and the Norsemen. Later still the Basques formed the hunting of the whale into an industry and looked for it richt across the Atlantic to Greenland. But the British were the first to make whaling a real industry, and after them came the Americans, who in 1790 nosed into the Pacific and began the whaling invasion which was to mean so much to New Zealand.