TWENTIETH CENTURY WHALING OPERATIONS AT WHANGAMUMU AND CAMPBELL ISLAND

Turnbull Library Record, Volume 10, Issue 1, 1 May 1977, Page 4

TWENTIETH CENTURY WHALING OPERATIONS AT WHANGAMUMU AND CAMPBELL ISLAND

John O’C. Ross

The Nineteenth Century Background The extensive nature and the eventual decline of the whaling industry in New Zealand waters has been well enough recorded, principally by McNab, 1 Dawbin 2 and Rickard. 3 Although the statistics are only imprecisely recorded, Dawbin estimates that at its peak in the early years of the nineteenth century, pelagic whaling off the New Zealand coast probably employed up to 200 whaling vessels, chiefly American, in the season and that in their peak seasons their catch probably exceeded 1000 sperm and right whales. 4

A concurrent and also extensive feature of nineteenth century whaling was the development, from 1827 onwards, of shore whaling. At one time or another approximately 100 of these shore stations appeared on the coast and to these could be added the occasional appearance of bay whaling—whaling operations based upon pelagic whaling vessels anchored in convenient bays and inlets, using their boats for off-shore whaling, sometimes in competition with the shore based whalers.

Dawbin estimates that at its peak shore whaling in the early nineteenth century probably accounted for about 400 right whales in a season, 5 but, like sealing before it, indiscriminate slaughter by both pelagic and shore whalers led to a decline in the industry. Pelagic whaling continued, but in declining numbers, until the late nineteenth century, the American sperm whalers continuing to visit the Bay of Islands and Mangonui until the 1870 s, but by 1880 they had all but disappeared from the coast. 6 From 1850 until the turn of the century shore whaling was confined to a few shore stations in the vicinities of Kaikoura, Tory Channel, Mahia Peninsula and the Bay of Plenty where the later catches were small. 7

The Twentieth Century Revival An essential feature of nineteenth century whaling was its technical simplicity. The whales were caught from the traditional open oared whaleboat and their killing was by the hand operated harpoon or lance. Although there was some trade in whalebone and baleen, a product of the right whale, was in demand for corsetry, the whale was principally killed for its oil. Although the catches were never to rival those of the past, modern techniques gave rise to a moderate revival in the trade. By the early years of the twentieth century, new developments included the invention of the explosive harpoon, the advent of the steam whale-chaser and in

some instances the use of fast motor launches. The establishment of shore whaling factories capable of processing the whale carcass for a a higher oil produce and for such by-products as bone dust for fertiliser and in some rare instances, whale-meat, fostered this revival.

Although in his annual reports the Secretary for Marine 8 reported in some detail of developments in the New Zealand fisheries, it was not until 1909 that he first took note of the ‘considerable developments’ in the whaling industry in New Zealand. Mr L. F. Ayson, the Chief Inspector of Fisheries, had been ‘looking into the matter’ and in his opinion the revival in the trade was in part due to ‘the fact that the whales have been very little disturbed for the last thirty years, from his own observations and from information received from the officers of the steamers, they are very plentiful round the coasts and south of New Zealand’.

Mr Ayson thought that ‘whaling on modern lines— i.e. from whale factories—would mean establishing a very important industry as a large amount of capital would be invested in buildings and plant and a large number of persons would be employed in manufacturing the various products obtained from the whales’. He was ‘strongly of the opinion that every encouragement should be given to anyone else who may wish to engage in the whaling industry with factories on shore,’ but he also emphasised that ‘killing whales for the oil alone is now considered by Canadian, American and Norwegian whalers to be simply waste as the carcase, when treated at a properly equipped whale factory can be made to yield other products of considerably more value’. 9

Although modern techniques and to some extent, the return of the whale were undeniable factors in the twentieth century revival of the whaling industry, there is also evidence that latter day whaling, rather than a modern phenomenon, was at least in part a survival from the past and a derivative of a strongly entrenched tradition and of family background. Names such as Heberly, Jackson and Thoms which will recur in the narrative which follows, were examples of families whose forebears were whaling on the New Zealand coast when the Tory arrived and before and, also writing in his report of 1909, the Secretary for Marine made special reference to the ‘considerable attention now being given to whaling in the Dominion by Messrs Cook and Co. who have been engaged in the industry for some years at Whangamumu’.

The Cook Family In fact the Secretary’s reference to the Cook family was somewhat belated, for by 1909 they had been whaling at Whangamumu for the better part of two decades and their names spring to prominence, not only for their whaling operations in the north and later at Campbell Island, but also as members of an historic New Zealand family. 10

The founder of that family was William Cook, a ship’s carpenter and later a shipwright, who had served in the Navy but who in 1823 had been landed sick from an unnamed vessel at the Bay of Islands. Here he settled at the future site of Russell and married a Maori girl named Tira who is alternatively described as a niece or a sister of the Chief Tamati Waka Nene who settled upon the couple some land at Hawenga in Pomare Bay, Kororareka.

In 1825 their first son G. H. (George) was born at the Bay of Islands, but early in 1826 William Cook and his family, together with a small party of sawyer-shipwrights, joined Captain William Stewart of the schooner Prince of Denmark in a venture to establish a small shipbuilding community at Port Pegasus, Stewart Island, on behalf of Stewart’s principals, the Asquith brothers of London.

At Port Pegasus, where work was started upon the construction of a small schooner, the small community was abandoned by Stewart who embarked upon a separate ship-building venture at Hokianga. The sealer John Boultbee, who visited Port Pegasus late in 1826, reported that they were living in a state of some privation and intended to leave when the schooner was completed. Another son, H. F. (Bert) Cook, was bom at Port Pegasus in 1827 and two years later William Cook first ventured into whaling when he joined Peter Williams who established the first southern whaling station at Preservation Inlet in 1829. However, probably in 1833, Cook and his family left the south and after a short sojourn in Sydney they returned to the Bay of Islands.

The fortunes of the Cook family in the period following their return to the Bay of Islands is only uncertainly recorded. It was probably shortly after their return that another son, W. H. (Willie) was born and family papers indicate that he was followed by another son named Joseph, who married Mary, daughter of Robert Day. Day appears to have landed with William Cook in 1823 and is described as his partner, both at the Bay and later as a member of the Port Pegasus community.

William Cook senior appears to have taken up ship-building at the Bay on his return and at least for a period in the later sixties his son George was described as a publican at Russell. This, however, must only have been a temporary occupation, for later in the same decade George Cook is discovered serving in the Auckland built schooner Sea Breeze in the trade to the Pacific Islands, and in the seventies had taken to whaling as the Mate of the New Zealand whaling vessels Crusader, Othello and Splendid —the latter vessel deriving some fame as that in which the author Frank Bullen served and which he is said to have used as his model for the Cachalot in his Cruise of the Cachalot. This was the family which, towards the end of the nineteenth century, turned to shore whaling in Whangamumu harbour, just below Cape

Brett, where they established what Dr Robert McNab, writing in his Murihiku, was later to describe as ‘the most remarkable whaling station in the world’. 11

Whaling at Whangamumu

Dawbin records that the whaling station at Whangamumu was established in 1890 by H. F. (Bert) Cook, the son who had been born at Port Pegasus and who was thus then 63 years of age when the venture was started. Family papers in the Old Land Claims appear to support the contention that Bert Cook was the prime mover in the enterprise and in her memoirs of early Russell, 12 Louisa Worsfield states that it was Bert Cook who travelled down to Auckland in 1889 to search for financial backing. However the Whangamumu station was almost certainly a joint family venture. In several works on early Russell, the owners of the Whangamumu station are referred to as the ‘Cook family’; in her Port in the North, 13 Marie King identifies the principals as the three Cook brothers, Bert, George and Willie, while later references by the Secretary for Marine to the firm as ‘Messrs Cook Brothers’ also appear to confirm the joint nature of the venture.

Very little was recorded of the early years of whaling at Whangamumu and it has already been noted that the Cook brothers’ venture appears to have passed unnoticed by the Marine Department until much later in the twentieth century. The Hall photographs 14 suggest that the station was established on Arkow Beach in Whangamumu harbour and that the station comprised quite substantial buildings, outhouses, a wharf and a slip for hauling out the whale carcasses (see Plates I and II). But the chief feature of the Whangamumu whaling station, upon which the Secretary for Marine refrained from comment, but which had prompted Robert McNab to describe it as ‘remarkable’, was that it was the only whaling station in New Zealand to adopt an unique method of capturing the whales.

In her memoirs of Russell, Louisa Worsfield records 15 that it was Bert Cook who had noticed that in their migration down the coast, the humpback whales, passing close inshore off Cape Brett, appeared to take a course between some rocks off Whangamumu a short distance to the south of the Cape, and that it was Bert who conceived the notion of catching the whales by the use of heavy steel nets strung between the rocks off the entrance to the harbour. Cook’s men, operating at first from the traditional open whaleboats, would drive the creatures towards the nets in which they became enmeshed and, thus obstructed, were more easily despatched by harpooning. A Hall photograph of 1912 shows the scene in Ohutu Bay of ‘Wiweri

and Nett [sic] Rock where the whales were caught in nets’ and another photo, reproduced in Way Up North by Harold Thomas, 16 also shows a good view of the scene at the turn of the century, the heavy nets supported by a line of buoys between the rocks and a whale in contact with a section of the net. The Cook brothers’ whaleboat can be seen in the background coming in for the kill.

Comment has already been made on the official silence of the Secretary for Marine about this extensive and unique whaling operation at Whangamumu —a silence which is all the more curious as it was the particular responsibility of the Marine Department not only to approve the use of the foreshore for wharves and fishery activity but also to promulgate by means of ‘Notices to Mariners’ information on any obsruction to navigation on the coast. No record has been discovered of any such action by the department in respect to the Cook brothers’ business at Whangamumu, an omission which suggests that Bert Cook and his brothers, in establishing the station, did so without obtaining the formal blessing of that department.

However, from his report of 1909 onwards the Secretary for Marine, apparently turning a blind eye to this lack of official sanction, continued to report upon progress at Whangamumu; indeed in his report of the following year (1910), he reported at some length, noting: The whaling-stations in New Zealand are at Whangamumu, Tory Channel, Kaikoura and Campbell Island. 17 Hump-backed whales are caught at Whangamumu, and all their products are utilised. Last season sixteen whales were taken [at Whangamumu], which produced 80 tons of oil, 20 tons of manure and 10 tons of bonedust. Right and humpbacked whales are taken at Tory Channel from which the oil and whalebone are the only parts utilised. No more than two or three whales are usually obtained at this station. At Kaikoura a few right whales are usually taken during the season, of which the oil and the whalebone are the only portions utilised. 18

By 1910 Cook brothers had been whaling at Whangamumu for 20 years; Bert Cook the founder of the station was 83 years old and approaching the end. The years 1910 and 1911 marked a period of considerable change and expansion at Whangamumu and much of this change appears to have been associated with a change in ownership at the station. Something of that change was forecast by the Secretary for Marine who also observed in the 1910 report that: Messrs Cook Bros., who own the station at Whangamumu are procuring an up-to-date whaling-vessel, built by Smith’s Dock Company at North Shields. They propose to use it at Whanga-

mumu during the coming season, beginning in June and ending in October, and later to use it at Campbell Island. 19

In his report of the following year, written in May 1911, the Secretary for Marine for the first time recorded that the Whangamumu station was now under the ownership of Messrs Jagger and Cook. The introduction of new blood into the firm appears to suggest that the expansion programme which included the new whale chaser and extension of their operations to Campbell Island probably demanded the injection of additional capital and, to obtain this, recourse appears to have been had to the merchants of that name of Auckland.

The exact identity of the Jagger who joined forces with the Cooks at Whangamumu is uncertain, and he may have been one of several of that name. In White Wings 20 Sir Henry Brett refers to Messrs Jagger and Harvey as ship-chandlers of Auckland and Clifford Hawkins in his Out of Auckland 21 also refers to S. Jagger as an Auckland shipowner. Other references in R. C. J. Stone’s Makers of fortune 22 give some indication of the extensive business interests of Frank and Samuel Jagger.

Whatever the exact nature of the new arrangement, from here on the Whangamumu firm now appears as Jagger and Cook although for Bert Cook, the founder, his association with Jagger was destined to be of only short duration. On 2 September 1911, at the ripe age of 84, Bert Cook died, and indeed his approaching end may well have provided an additional reason for the new partnership. Nor did Bert Cook, whose lifetime of whaling had been associated with five oared open whaleboats live to experience the introduction of the new whale chaser. This was the Hananui 11, a steam vessel of 44 tons, 93 feet long and fitted with a harpoon gun, which was given her first New Zealand certificate of survey in 1911. 23 Reporting her arrival in his report of the same year the Secretary for Marine wrote:

During the year there has been considerable development in the whaling industry. Messrs Jagger and Cook have brought out a modern whaling steamer and although it was late in the season before all the fittings arrived, yet they were able to get more whales at Whangamumu than in any previous season. 24

The Hananui II (of which the Hall photos show several action shots operating off Whangamumu in the years 1912 and 1913) was to make a considerable improvement in the catch at that station, the appended table showing that although 16 whales had been considered a good season’s catch prior to her arrival, thereafter the annual catch was maintained at an average of about 50 whales. But, also in his report of 1911, the Secretary for Marine took note of another important development. ‘The firm,’ he wrote, ‘has now extended

their operations to Campbell Island where they have established a station for right whaling’.

Whaling at Campbell Island

Although the Secretary for Marine continued to record his interest in the whaling operations at Whangamumu, apart from the briefest references he failed to display any marked interest in the firm’s venture at Campbell Island, despite that island being New Zealand territory—an omission which fortunately has been repaired by lan S. Kerr in his recent history of Campbell Island. 25

Campbell was principally a sealing island, that trade attracting a brief but intensive period of activity immediately after its discovery by Hasselburg in 1810, but, during the 1870 s, under the impetus of a bonus offered by the Otago Provincial Council to encourage New Zealand whaling, a few ships from southern ports engaged in an also brief period of whaling at the island. This in effect was bay whaling, the vessels anchoring in Campbell Island harbours and using their boats off shore to capture the whales which were processed on board for their oil and bone. 26 One of the vessels taking part was the Splendid in which George Cook served as Mate. 27

Although whales were reported to be plentiful off the island, the boisterous weather conditions of the Southern Ocean were hardly suited to open boat whaling and the brief interest in whaling developed into a revival of sealing, 28 although there were sporadic whaling ventures at the island; by the Hobart barque Helen in 1888 and 1889 and by the Southern Cross in 1899. 29

In the latter year also, the Helen endeavoured to establish shore whaling at North West Bay by the remarkable expedient of dragging two whaleboats overland from Perseverance Harbour but although a number of whales were taken, rough weather again prevented the success of the operation. 30

A period of more or less permanent occupation of the island began in 1894 when both Campbell and the Auckland Islands were gazetted as sheep runs, the Campbell Island lease being taken up first by James Gordon of Christchurch and later, in 1897, by Captain W. H. Tucker of Gisborne, the headquarters for this pastoral activity being established at Perseverance Harbour.

Bedevilled by isolation and lack of regular shipping, pastoral activity at Campbell Island was only moderately successful. In 1909 Tucker made a proposal to combine sheep farming with whaling at the island, the number of whales appearing off the island convincing Tucker that the men employed could profitably occupy themselves with tending sheep and hunting whales in the winter. 31

Tucker’s proposal captured the interest of the whalers at the longestablished station at Te Awaiti in Tory Channel and early in 1909 a party of eleven men sailed for the island. They were led by Jack Norton and the party included whalers such as Thoms, Heberly and Jackson, descendants of some of New Zealand’s oldest whaling families. The Norton party established themselves with a shore station, whaleboats and a launch at North West Bay where at Windlass Bay a capstan was erected for hauling out the whales. In the first season 13 whales were taken and this evidence of moderate success soon attracted the attention of the Cook brothers of Whangamumu who, it has been seen above, were reported by the Secretary for Marine in his report of 1910 to be planning to use the Hananui II at Campbell Island when she arrived.

This was also the period when the Cook brothers were joined by Jagger and it was probably in anticipation of the need for regular shipping communication between the island and the mainland that the firm also invested in the purchase of the Huanui, a 59 ton topsail schooner fitted with an auxiliary oil engine which had been built at Auckland. 32

Sailing in the Hananui II and the Huanui, the Whangamumu whalers arrived at Campbell Island in January 1811 and established themselves at North East Harbour. The Hall photos later show a substantial factory which Kerr records 33 had facilities for trying out the blubber which were not possessed by the Norton party on the opposite coast. Another Hall photograph of ‘the shore crowd at Campbell Island’ (see Plate III), shows a party of eight men amongst whom Captain Hall identified Charlie Serle, Clem Wood, ‘Baker’, ‘Mac’ and Albert Cook. The latter was probably a son of one of the original Cook brothers and Kerr also records that Cook’s wife lived on the island over the 1911 season, one of the few women to do so at Campbell Island.

Very few details were recorded of Jagger and Cook’s operations at Campbell Island and the meagre interest displayed by the Secretary for Marine has already been noted. In his 1911 report the Secretary observed that ‘the firm has now extended their operations to Campbell Island where they have established a station for right whaling. Heberly and party who have been right whaling at Campbell Island for the last two seasons are reported to have had a very successful season,’ but in his report of the following year (1912) the Secretary ‘understood that the number of whales taken is not large’. In referring to the ‘Heberly party’, the Secretary meant the Norton party at North West Bay and Kerr gives further details of their catches which were 13 whales in 1909, 10 in 1910 and 8 in 1911. 34 While Norton and his men continued with sheep farming in the off

season, the pattern adopted by the Cook party was different in that after the Campbell Island season they returned to Whangamumu to continue whaling in the northern season, a pattern they repeated for three years. Again Kerr records that the Cook party caught 13 whales in their first season of 1911 and in 1912, their most successful on the island, 17 whales were taken. 35

There was no conflict between the rival parties on the island, who Kerr reports came to an agreement upon the boundaries of their respective hunting grounds and indeed the Huanui, which ran between the island and Bluff, was ‘a godsend’ to Tucker, providing him with a much needed means of shipping out his wool clip. 36

For both parties, however, the Campbell Island venture into whaling was short-lived. In 1913, having caught only one whale, the Norton party abandoned the North West Bay station when their launch was lost in a storm and, although they continued sealing for a while, left Campbell Island in 1916. 37 The Whangamumu men never repeated their success of 1912, and their failure in the 1913 season stood in sharp contrast to their successes in the north where in the same year 56 whales were taken off Whangamumu. They did not return to Campbell Island for the 1914 season and to follow the fortunes of the Cook brothers the narrative returns to Whangamumu.

Back to Whangamumu Seen in contrast with the poor catches at Campbell Island, those recorded at Whangamumu from 1913 onwards in the appended table reveal that when Jagger and Cook abandoned their Campbell Island venture they were embarking upon a period of comparative success at Whangamumu which was to continue for over a decade.

Beyond the bare statistics recording regular catches of an average of 50 whales each season, very little else was recorded of these latter years at Whangamumu. The firm continued under the name of Jagger and Cook; its management over its later years was in the hands of Neville Cook, a son of H. F. (Bert) Cook, and it was reported that the station normally employed 11 men at the factory and 14 men at sea in the Hananui II which had two tenders.

As before, the catches were the humpback whales and the output of the factory continued to be oil and bonedust, their principal rivals the Tory Channel station —now in the hands of the Perano brothers whose introduction of fast motor launches as whale chasers had led to a successful revival of whaling at that station. The catch for the 1915 season was not recorded and there was some reduction of the catch over the war years. In September 1918 the Hananui II emerged briefly from the comparative obscurity of whale

catching to play a brief role as a minesweeper when, off Red Head, she discovered a German mine which had broken adrift from the field laid off North Cape by the German raider Wolf. The Hananui II was at the time under the command of Neville Cook who, with some members of his crew, attached a line to the mine and towed it into a cove in the Bay of Islands where it was later disposed of by the Navy, an act of unprecedented danger for which Cook received a medal for meritorious service. 38

Whaling at Whangamumu recovered after the war and indeed 1927 was a record season with 74 whales taken, but this was a success that was never repeated. Thereafter there was a steady decline in both the catches and the value of the products of the station for which there were several reasons.

Economic depression was just around the comer, paraffin and tallow were in competition with whale oil and electricity was in vogue rather than lamps. However, probably the greatest impact upon the industry was the arrival in 1923 of the huge Norwegian floating whale factories which began whaling in the Ross Sea under an arrangement with the New Zealand government. In the seasons of 1929/30 and 1930/31 they had taken a total of no less than 3265 whales, creating an inevitable decline in their numbers and, as well, a serious over-production of the end products.

In the 1930 season the catch at Whangamumu fell to 31 whales and, because of falling prices and inability to dispose of their products, the Whangamumu station ceased their operations in 1932. 39 In the season of 1933 only three whales were taken and these only for the purpose of recording a movie film on the whaling industry. Reporting the decline in the industry, the Secretary for Marine stated that the sales of whale oil were improving and that he expected the industry to recover in the next season, 40 but this was not to be. Although the Tory Channel whalers continued with a catch in the 1934 season of 52 whales, the Secretary for Marine only briefly noted that ‘the station at Whangamumu is still closed down’. 41

It never reopened. Te Awaiti remained the last surviving whaling station in New Zealand and in 1940 a record catch there of 107 whales evidently prompted a spirit of renewed optimism at Whangamumu. The Secretary reported ‘preparations have been made during the year to resume operations at the old station at Whangamumu where the fishery has not been carried on since 1932, 542 but once again the Secretary’s optimism was misplaced and no more was heard of resuming operations at Whangamumu.

With these brief official comments, an unique whaling operation on the New Zealand coast disappeared after 42 years of operating at Whanga-

mumu and the names of the Cook family faded into obscurity after over a century of association with the coast and the whaling industry.

APPENDIX

* NR: not recorded

NOTES 1 McNab, Robert. The old whaling days. . . Christchurch, 1913 (reprinted Auckland, Golden Press, 1975). 2 Dawbin, William H. 1., “Whaling” in McLintock, A. H., ed. An encylopaedia of New Zealand. 3 vols. Wellington, 1966, v. 3, pp. 638-42. 3 Rickard, Lawrence S. The whaling trade in old New Zealand. Auckland, 1965. 4 Dawbin, op. cit., p. 639. 5 Ibid, p. 640. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid. 8 The head of the Marine Department. 9 Marine Department Annual Report 1909, p. 6. The Department’s annual reports (H. 15, A.J.H.R., each year) subsequently referred to as MDAR. 10 The annals of the Cook family are only uncertainly recorded in Dr Robert McNab’s Murihiku (Wellington, 1909) and Basil Howard’s Rakiura (Dunedin, 1940). Additional material has been taken from the correspondence and biographies files of the Alexander Turnbull Library, as well as from the following sources: Old Land Claims (OLCs) Nos. 26A, 126-7, 1360 (National Archives of New Zealand); Worsfield, Louisa, A history of Russell (typescript, ATL); Boultbee, John, Journal of a rambler (manuscript, ATL; see Turnbull Library Record v. 9 (n.s.) (1), 1976, pp. 18-30); King, Marie M., Port in the North; a short history of Russell (Russell, 1949). 11 McNab, Murihiku, p. 362. 12 Worsfield, op. cit., p. 113. 13 King, op. cit., p. 103. 14 The ‘Hall photographs’ are an album of photographs relating to whaling life at Whangamumu and Campbell Island in 1912-13. The photographer, Captain George Patterson Hall (1875-1958), was born in England and in 1910 came to New Zealand where he worked on the Cook family whaling operations. He subsequently became Superintendent of the Mercantile Marine. The Library has been lent the album for copying by a descendant of Captain Hall and three of the collection of approximately 100 are reproduced here. 15 Worsfield, op. cit., p. 113. 16 Thomas, Harold T. Way up North. Auckland, 1970, plate 6, pp. 55-6. 17 The Campbell Island operations are discussed below. 18 MDAR 1910, p. 7. 19 Ibid. 20 Brett, Sir Henry. White wings. 2 vols. Auckland, 1924-28, v. 1, pp. 69, 303. 21 Hawkins, Clifford W. Out of Auckland. Auckland, 1960, p. 124. 22 Stone, Russell C. J. Makers of fortune. Auckland, 1973, pp. 47, 109. 23 MDAR 1911, p. 36. 24 The actual catch was not recorded, see appended table. 25 Kerr, lan S. Campbell Island; a history. Wellington, Reed, 1976. The writer gratefully acknowledges Mr Kerr’s permission to quote from his work in this paper. 26 Kerr, op. cit., p. 47; Howard, op. cit., p. 227. 27 Cumpston, John S. Macquarie Island. Canberra, 1969, p. 86. 28 Kerr, op. cit., Chapter 6. 29 Ibid, pp. 59-60. 30 Ibid, p. 60.

31 Ibid, p. 82ff. 32 Ibid, p. 84. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid, p. 83. 35 Ibid, p. 84. 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid, pp. 85, 88. 38 King, op. cit., p. 121. 39 MDAR 1933, p. 10. 40 MDAR 1934, p. 13. 41 MDAR 1936, p. 13. 42 MDAR 1941, p. 17.

Season Whales caught Oil (tons) Bonedust (tons) Value (£ ) 1909 16 80 10 NR* 1910 NR- — reported to be considerably above 1909 1911 NR — reported a successful season season 1912 27 1913 56 270 60 NR 1914 57 270 60 4950 1915 NR 1916 25 100 20 2120 1917 52 240 40 5040 1918 41 224 38 7176 1919 61 300 56 1030 1920 44 200 40 9600 1921 40 181 40 8000 1922 35 178 35 7400 1923 62 340 50 9000 1924 55 30 50 8000 1925 48 250 40 6400 1926 35 150 35 3350 1927 74 388 70 7210 1928 50 237 45 5766 1929 53 241 40 4101 1930 31 140 30 NR 1931 48 240 44 NR 1932 Ceased operations 1933 3 — — for filming purposes

Whales caught and Production at Whangamumu (Source: Marine Department Annual Reports)