WHALING ADVENTURE

Taranaki Daily News, 26 November 1935, Page 4

WHALING ADVENTURE

GIANTS OF ANTARCTIC GREAT INDUSTRY DEVELOPED. WHALER’S ENTERTAINING STORY. CHASERS AND MOTHER SHIPS. To play a great “fish” with the sprung mast of a 120 ft, vessel as rod, and a mile of immensely strong rope as a line, is perhaps the greatest and most lucrative sport of all. The whaling industry of the Antarctic seas to-day is the last remaining industry in which there is the strong element of adventure. As such, Mr. E. Aagaard, an ex-member of the famous C. A. Larsen’s crew, hopes it will long endure. In one of the most entertaining addresses delivered this year to the New Plymouth Rotary Club Mr. Aagaard yesterday related something of the history and practice of whaling—now grown to an industry of immense proportions in the Antarctic, and so profitable that factory ships can afford to pay £2OOO insurance for every day they spend in the perilous waters of the Ross Sea. In the first place he explained the whale was not a fish, but the greatest of all living mammals, depending for its life on an ability to come to the surface and breathe, and giving birth to live, developed young. Roughly, whales could be divided into two classes —baleen whales and toothed whales. Baleen whales were, generally speaking, the type most sought after commercially, and of these the blue whale reached a length of between 80 and 90 feet. The finwhale was from 70 to 75 feet long when fully grown, and the humpback about 50 feet. The sperm, of the toothed variety, was roughly the same length as the humpback, but much heavier. Baleen whales had peculiarly small throats, and although they might weigh anything up to 100 tons dead weight they could swallow nothing larger than a hferring. Consequently Antarctic waters, in which an immense number of small shrimps abound, were the favourite feeding grounds of the baleen types.

PUGNACIOUS FELLOW.

The sperm whale, on the other hand, was a more pugnacious fellow and lived chiefly on giant squid and octopus, which it seized in its mouth and killed by crushing the body of its prey against the bottom. This peculiar habit of feeding was provided for in the immense mass of a sperm whale’s head, which occupied a third of its mass and was provided with three oil chambers and a great mass of fatty tissue to absorb shock. It was not uncommon to see great masses of squid tentacles adhering to the sperm whale’s jaws. Having thus explained the peculiarities of the chief commercial types, Mr. Aagaard traced briefly the history of whaling as an industry. It had begun, he said, in the 15th. and 16th. centuries, not with Norwegians, as many thought, but with Portuguese fishermen off their own coast. The Norwegians had entered the game when the adventurers who went in search of the North-East Passage came back with tales of immense whale schools in Arctic waters. For more than two centuries Spitzbergen was the home of the whaling industry, and so great was the activities of the whalers that the “right” whale was almost exterminated. If those early-day whalers had made immense profits they had. also undergone immense hardships. The industry had shifted to the Arctic rather by accident than design. For some seasons the Norwegian fishermen off the coast had experienced bad seasons and advanced the ingenious explanation that the whales had driven the fish inshore and that now the whales were being exterminated the fishing industry was doomed. Consequently legislation was brought down to prevent whaling by Norwegian shipowners, but so much capital was wrapped up in the industry that the whalers merely went to the other end of the earth to pursue their business. FASTER AND HARDER. The Antarctic whaling industry was under a great disadvantage because the type found there were faster and harder to harpoon than the right-whale of Arctic waters. But in 1893 the harpoon gun with an explosive charge in the missile was invented and the industry began to go ahead. The discovery of the Ross Sea had opened up an immense whaling ground, and the development of the factory ship was only a matter of time. In 1923, said Mr. Aagaard, the C. A. Larsen, named after the inventor of the explosive harpoon, was the last word in factory ships. Of 17,000 tons deadweight, she employed fiVe chasers—small craft about 120 feet in length, of great speed and mobility. The factory ship’s bows were so designed that the whole carcase of the whale could be lifted bodily and flensed on the forecastle head—an immense advantage on flensing in the water alongside the ship. Five chasers had not proved enough for the Larsen, so quickly could she handle the catch. Some of the newer types of whalers employed 12 chasers and were ships of 30,000 tons, The chasers, Mr. Aagaard explained, mounted the harpoon gun forward and were in charge of men who, by long years of experience, knew the habits of the whale thoroughly, Having been detected by their “blow” the whales were pursued by the chaser, whose skipper estimated where the great animal would reappear on the surface. It was known that a whale once it dived would continue to travel in one direction and that the usual duration of its dive was 10 minutes. The great error to avoid was to over-estimate the distance and so find the whale out of range of the swivelled gun forward. Good gunners, said Mr. Aagaard, killed nine out of 10 whales with the first harpoon bomb. But when one was not killed and sounded it was not uncommon for the wounded animal to run out a mile of line. The whale was played on the mast of the ship like a giant fish until it was exhausted and then killed by a second shot. The latest method was to electrocute the whale by closing a circuit on the harpoon when it struck the animal’s body. Death occurred in about four seconds. When the whales were killed they were inflated with compressed air to prevent them sinking and, were towed back to the factory ship where, after being hoisted on the bows, they were flensed of blubber and the bone and meat drawn aft for cutting up. The pieces were placed into great “digesters” which were steam-heated and which extracted the oil by gravity. The oil floated to the top and was drained off into settling tanks and thence pumped into the main tanks. Because space on the whaling factory ships was so precious the meat and bone were tipped overboard, although it would make excellent fertiliser.

' Whale oil, continued Mr. Aagaard, was used mainly in the manufacture of soap, and one great soap company had no fewer than 12 factory ships operating in the trade. Other uses to which it was put was in the manufacture of candles, of high grade lubricating and of oils and fat-substitutes such as margarine. It was also extensively used for the manufactory of frSJlkrsinw, and for this rca-

son sperm oil brought as much as £3OO per ton during -the Great War. Sperm oil, however, was not greatly sought after now, because it would not mix with other whale oil and thus required special accommodation. He recalled One amusing incident on the Byrd expedition supply ship, the City of New York, being rather unwilling to traverse the sea on her own. When, as the ship was paying £2OOO a day insurance nyoney, the Norwegian skipper was unwilling to wait for her the American calmly sent out an SOS —short of food and water—and the Norwegian had no option but to wait an as unwilling escort.

“I hope to see the whalers back in New Zealand before long,” said Mr. Aagaard. “When conditions became difficult in the Hoss Sea it was necessary to transfer the base to the Cape of Good Hope, but the latest advice received from the polar expeditions show that things are improving in the Ross Sea and it may be possible to operate from New Zealand again bsfwe lap#.”