DEEP-SEA WHALING

Taranaki Daily News, 15 October 1930, Page 3

DEEP-SEA WHALING

OLD MARINER RECALLS PAST. DANGER AND ROMANCE APLENTY . “Five months’ cruise and 870 whale?, and the work considered a holiday! Hot showers provided . for the men! . What a difference from the old. days. What a difference!” Thus ruminated Mr, H. H. Bootes, of Devonport, author of "Deep Sea Bubbles,” “Deep Sea Pilgrims,” etc., who is an old whaler, when interviewed for the Auckland Star. “For. two, and sometimes three years,” ■:he said, “we roamed all tlie waters of. the earth, from Behring Strait to the Great-Ice Barrier, seeking after these great mammalia, and we considered ourselves lucky if in that time we captured 150 or 200.” “Not in my time was ■ the gun harpoon,” Mr. Bootes. ■ “Sometimes. we kept to a catch all day and then missed it.” He described the scurfy and. orderly; disorder, on the sfeip from the moment the words, of the man in the look-out, "There, she blows, two points on the weather bow,”, was .tossed away adown the wind,, and. the .romance of the old days crept into his tale, and coloured his words, and. unconsciously he made apparent the hardiness: of ; .men in . frail craft venturing to. call such monsters their legitimate : prey. There is no danger, and less .romance in merely chug, chugging-up to. whales in a motor boat, with a deadly gun. , ■ . .Incidentally he mentioned, how the US2 of fast. motor boats exploded . many of the theories of old deep-sea men. “From the . moment we tumbled intQ ,the boats on. the order from -the ’Old .Man,’-. 'No.-1, No. 2 boat .a\vay,’ ’’ said Mr. Bpptes, “rve preserved absolute ~silence, enjoined -by sundry cursings from the steersman. : We even spoke in whispers, and woe betide the man who broke the surface with his oar. ' We thought that the brutes would hear us, take fright arid away. But to-day they merely chug,. chug up to them and the rush of. the swift waters the bows makes enough noise to frighten, anything, but the whale takes not the slightest notice.” From the viewpoint of one of the old hands he described soipe of his experiences in a whale-boat. “When ;we got the order ‘Stand-by,’ ”. he said, “all the running gear was cleared and the harpooner. in the bow sorted out his lines coiled under the thwarts, chose his harpoon and . braced himself ready.. The lines were woven especially for, the. pur.pose and were about,as thick as a man’s little finger. They were,, coiled in three tubs under the seats, and each tub-con-tained half a mile of rope. Then, as the craft, came into, tlie/hprd, about a: dozen feet away from its prey, the liarpooner in his for’ard; position braced himself and waited his chance. The whale gambolled on the surface much in the same way as a porpoise, and the best time for a cast was wiien it reached the top of its plunge. The spot' aimed lor. by the master harpooner was just before, the dorsal fin, under the ‘shoulders’ of the fish. . " r ! “And then the fun began,” said Mr.; Bootes, and he spoke of the chase in. sentences that were tense and words, short-bitten as he lived it again. Nobody knew what the whale would' do. onco it felt the sting of the harpoon, he said, and it wis that minute of uncertainty that counted for the safety of those in the boat. Sometimes the great mammal “sounded,” and then the steersman had to be ready with a flick of the bar to avoid the great tail as it passed the boat.’ Mr. Bootes said he had seen whale-boats smashed to atoms by just being grazed by the tail. "Sometimes the whale would merely circle round in seeming surprise, and then the nose of the boat was turned, ever facing it. “Sometimes, without warning, the monster turned and came straight at us open-mouthed. I was in two ships where that happened, and it' is quite useless to try and describe the feeling. Th® thing came at us like an express, with a yawning cavity in front, about as big as a room in length, depth and breadth. We did not see much, but the, next we knew was the coldness of the water and a few pieces of- splintered board. Ox the whale there was nothing to be seen. Perhaps again, in startled fright, it would make straight fox- the horizon, and, curiously enough, if there wap apy .wind, right into the teeth of it, with the boat tearing along behind at express speed. The line in the boat was searing through itp proper, channel and theta was a man ready with axe uplifted to strike if the slightest hitch occurured. As soon as the line slackened at alj it would be hauled taut again so ground was lost, but it was a ticklish business. It' was possible to tell by the movement of the line on thq boat wftjt the whale was doing. Often, if thQ water was at all ‘shallow’ the whale would make frantiq endeavours to rub the harpoon off on the rock?, and -the line would jerk and tug violently. V hew finally the whale was tired out . enough for them to get within striking distance, harpooner would try and drive lanee home- . . , “The death struggle was ternme thing to witness.. The whale spouted, blood and water and blubber, and the sea was dyed. red. Sometimes ether harpoons were seen in a whale, ana

often its back was scarred and pitted. Sometime? there were great depressions. These were the results of conflicts with gigantic squids, which were the stable diet of the sperm species. The suexers of squids more tremendous than any ever seen by. man tore away great lump? of hide and flesh, bjubber