WHALING OF TO-DAY.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LX, Issue 143788, 11 May 1912, Page 4

WHALING OF TO-DAY.

REVIVAL OF THE INDUSTRY. With the decay of tho British whaling industry—Dundee is now the only port in Great Britain which still posaesses a whaling fleet—many people (says the Manchester Guardian) suppose that the whaling industry itself has shrunken, but Mr. Theodore E. Salvesen, our greatest authority on the subject, said on March 27 at the Royal Society of Arts, in the course of a fascinating address on “Tho Whaling Industry of To-day,” that during the last three or four years the industry, conducted on modern lines, has developed enormously. This is chiefly due to two causes. One is the discovery by the Norwegian Svend Foyn and the subsequent improvement of a contrivance for killing and securing the largo finuer whale, which up to 1886 was not hunted because when dead it sinks and its weight would haul under any rowing boat secured to it. The other cause is the development within the past eight years of the whaling industry in tho Southern Hemisphere. The Greenland whale is now hunted by only live barque-rigged, wooden, auxiliary steam, ice-protected vessels of about 400 tons gross. About fifty vessels, mainly sailers, hunt the bottle-nosed whale in the Norwegian Sea, but last year’s take was only 9UO tons of oil. Iceland sends out 27 steam whalers belonging to six companies, but the industry is declining, and the same may be said of whaling off the Faroe Islands and Spitzbergen. Eleven steamers work off Shetland and the Hebrides, and in 1909 two stations were erected on the west coast of Ireland with licenses for five whalers, but the return has been unsatisfactory. Across tho Atlantic only five whalers remain of the large Newfoundland fleet, and various recent efforts in the St. Lawrence River and the Davis Straits have had little success. In the North Pacific, San Francisco, and New Bedford have still a number of old-fashioned wooden barques —all that is left of the. 827 sail that worked these seas in 1840. Ten modern British Columbian whalers, however, have had prosperous seasons off tho Alaska coast.

A HARVEST IN SOUTHERN SEAS. The great increase in the whaling industry has come from the Southern Hemisphere. The island of South Georgia, where it was initiated about eight years ago, has disclosed the most lucrative grounds yet known. Eight companies are working twenty-one whaling steamers. At the South Shetlauds and Graham Land ten licenses have been granted by the British Government for thirty steam whalers. In the Falkland Islands a British company operates five whalers. In the South of Chile, in the Magellan Straits, one company has its station and factory, and two others aro situated on the west coast of Chile. African whaling was started about four years ago in Durban, and the success was so striking that we have companies operating at Lobita, three in Elephant Bay, one in Mossamedes (a Portuguest company), one in Port Alexander, and one in Tiger ' Bay—all in Portuguese "West Africa. Concessions have been granted for Walfisch Bay, and proh-ab-y whaling will be begun there during the coming season. Two companies work from Saldonha Bay, one from Mossel Bay on tho south coast, and three from Durban. Altogether thirty whalers wore employed off South Africa, but during the coming season this number will bo greatly augmented. Already several large ventures have been started to exploit the waters round the Australian continent, Tasmania, New Zealand and other islands. A WHALE HUNT. The lecturer gave an exciting account of the hunt of the largo finiier whale. The vessel is a little over 100 ft. long, with a breadth of about 20ft., decked all over and cut away fore and aft. The harpoon, which is about 6ft. in length, and weighs about a hundredweight, has four prongs which spring out at right angles while the line is tightened after the harpoon is in the whale’s body. On the top of the harpoon is an explosive shell. A large steam winch is fitted abaft the mast, and along the keelson are arranged double rows of steel springs. When the whale is killed it sinks, drawing with it the whale line paid out from the winch. The vessel is brought to a standstill, and when the line is vestical it is -wound in and the whale brougnt to the surface. The steel springs compensate for the rise and fall of the whaler on the waves. To make the carcass float and lessen the towing weight a hole is pierced into the lungs or stomach, and the whale is inflated by a steam air pump. If the whale is not shot dead on the spot, the gunner has to play it like a salmon by manipulating the steam winch and the steamer’s engine. Very often the line is snapped, and this is as often the case with a record whale as with a record salmon. Killing and taking whales • by rowing boat is still practised, by the way, by some Dundee whalers.

As to the value of the industry, Mr. Salvesen mentioned that last season the total capture of all the 120 steam whalers in tho Northern Hemisphere was 5000 whales, yielding about 156,000 barrels of oil of a value of £625,000. In the Southern Hemisphere the nineteen South Georgia whalers alone caught 700 whales yielding 200,000 barrels, or nearly 40 per cent, more oil than the combined captures of the whole of the Northern fleets.