ROSS SEA WHALING FLEET LEAVES FOR ANTARCTIC CIRCLE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18012, 24 November 1926, Page 12

ROSS SEA WHALING FLEET LEAVES FOR ANTARCTIC CIRCLE.

Per Press Association. INVERCARGILL, November 23. From an early hour this morning the lonely bays in Paterson’s Inlet at Stewart Island were noisy with the activities of the Ross Sea whaling fleet preparing for its voyage into the Antarctic. Five whale chasers cruised slowly up and down waiting for the huge mother ship, the C. A. Larsen, to leave her anchorage. At eight o’clock, to the accompaniment of much clanking and rattling, anchors were raised- and the vessel steamed slowly in a wide circle towards the open channel, led by the whale chaser Star 8, which was navigated for the time being by Captain Hooper, Government nautical adviser. The whaler made her way safely past the numerous islands scattered about this part of the coast, and with three farewell blasts of her whistle stood away to the eastward. In about five and a half days she will have reached the drift ice which travels away from the icy polar cap in summer time, and which is a serious bar to progress. Captain Nilsexf, who is in charge of the fleet, hopes to get through the ice in about ten or twelve days. Once the Ross Sea is reached the C. A. Larsen will anchor in water between 200 and 300 fathoms in depth, and will transform herself into a vast and complicated rendering-down factory. Besides being the biggest whaler afloat, the C. A. Larsen is also the largest vessel now flying the Norwegian flag. The entire Ross Sea fleet, consisting of the C. A. Larsen, Sir James Clark Ross, ten Star chasers, and the Pagodroma and Karrakatta, chartered vessels, is the biggest and most costly enterprise of its kind that has ever left the shores of the Baltic. The C. A, Larsen is a vessel of 17,600 tons gross, and before being acquired by the Ross Sea Company was an English oil tanker known as the San Gregorio. She has many remarkable features, pehaps the strangest being a big projection directly under her bows. This is a circular plate of iron, sixtyeight tons in weight, and many inches in thickness, which serves the double purpose of an ice crusher and a gateway to the “whale chute.” This is a hole twenty feet in diameter, situated in the bows and leading through a cavernous iron tunnel to the upper deck. Inflated whales are towed alongside by the chasers, and are floated tail first into the hole, which is partly under water. The dead mammals are then hauled by means of steel ropes on to the foredeck. Here flensers armed with sharp spades commence to strip the creatures of their blubber, which varies in thickness from a few inches over the belly to sixteen inches or more on the back, and which acts as a protective covering against the icy water. The stripped carcases are then gripped by further ropes and are dragged up an inclined iron slide to the waist of the ship, where the flesh and bones are hacked into fragments small enough to enter the digesters. Practically the whole of the whale, including the blood, is rendered down for the sake of its oiL The fleet is expected to return to New Zealand waters some time next March.