A REMINDER OF OTHER DAYS: THE WHALING BARQUE SPLENDID

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22398, 20 October 1934, Page 25

A REMINDER OF OTHER DAYS: THE WHALING BARQUE SPLENDID

This photograph of an old pain ting shows the whaling barque Splond id and other ships. The correspondent who has kindly sup plied the photograph for reproduction writes as follows: —“ The Splendid, 357 tons, was purchased from New Bedford, U.S.A., by an Otago firm, Messrs Cormack, Elder, / and Co. (the date William Elder, chemist, Port Chalmers, being manager), and earned a Government bonus of £SOO as the first whaling ship owned in, and sailing from. New Zealand carrying five apprentices, one of whom, probably the only survivor, now lives in Wellington. The Splendid sailed from Port Chalmers under Captain Mellon on October 27, 1874, on her first cruise for her Otago owners, and ended her days when wrecked at Kaipara on February 7, 1890, while engaged in the timber trade. Many incidents. related in Frank T. Bullen’s “ Cruise of the Cachalot ” actually occurred on the Splendid, and many other whaleships mentioned in that book cruised, off the Solander Island in her company, but the Splendid is not mentioned. The painting depicts one of the boats harpooning a sperm whale off the Solander Island, at the entrance to Fovcaux Strait, on April 2, 1876. The sailing vessel in the distance is the barque Chance (Captain Gilroy, of Bluff), and the steamer is the s.s. Ringarooma, in the painted ports of Messrs M’Meekau, Blackwood, and Co., bound from Melbourne to Bluff, prior to becoming one of the Union Steam Ship Company’s fleet. The modern whaler Sir James Clark Ross could carry the Splendid on her deck.