“WHALEMEN ADVENTURERS”

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23500, 14 May 1938, Page 4

“WHALEMEN ADVENTURERS”

THEIR HISTORY IN THE PACIFIC “ Whalemen Adventurers.” By William John Dakin, D.Sc., F.Z.S., professor of Zoology in the University of Sydney. New edition. Illustrated. Sydney: Angus and Robertson: 12s 6d. The early story of whaling reveals, as Dr Dakin observes, some of the most potent forces which went to the making of the dominions of Australia and New Zealand. It was a fact recognised by the classic writer on whaling. Melville, and does not require emphasis in this Dominion, 'where, in the south, every coastal centenary celebration is intimately associated with the memory of the hard-bitten adventurers who came to these shores to venture “ a dead whale or a stove boat ” before any organised settlements existed. In his informal but very comprehensive history of the whaling age in Pacific waters, Dr Dakin never loses sight of this, and it relates his story to that of the very genesis of our lands. But apart from their influence, now bad, now good, but always positive, upon history, these whalers are entitled in their own right to be remembered for the tang of salt and sail, of hardship and daring, that sharpens the tale of their odysseys It is not. of course, always a pleasant storv, one that can be looked to with pride. In 1844. when the American whaling fleet alone numbered 675 vessels, most of them in Pacific waters, Wilkes, the American explorer, was constrained to note of the bays of

Australia and New Zealand, around which whales abounded, that “few places surpassed localities for the commission of all kinds of vice. They were all bad, but those of New Zealand were the worst.” And already by then the survival of the whale, was in Question. Indeed, as early as, 1832 it had been the subject of report to the Royal Geographical Society. Dr Dakin’s references to these two features of the story are necessarily frequent and even at this date distressing. But his history of whaling is the more to be welcomed in that it is dependent for its interest upon realities which, even when they are the traditionally dry-as-dust realities of statistics, obtain a robust glamour in this association. The author has travelled widely, including a visit to Nantucket and New Bedford, and the modern whaling centre Sandefjord, in obtaining and checking material facts for this new edition of his book, which brings the history of whaling up to date. Pictorially also, the work bears the evidence of his selectiveness. While New Zealanders will, perhaps, miss from the pages of “ Whalemen Adventurers” many favourite anecdotes of the-local whaling days (and deplore the author’s continual use of the outlawed term “Australasia”), there will be none of them with a realisation of the rugged romance of the industry who will want to miss reading this book. J- M.