"Thar" SHE BLOWS

Cue (NZERS), Issue 32, 30 September 1945, Page 33

"Thar" SHE BLOWS

TUCKED away in a corner of Queen Charlotte Sound, its little cluster of houses around a factory forming a monument to colourful days gone by, is the last active link with one of the oldest industries in New Zealand. It is the Tory Channel whaling station which, with its small fleet of modern, thirty-knot launches and up-to-date harpooning methods, brings in at least fifty, and sometimes seventy, whales a year.

It’s just bad luck for any stray humpback that comes cruising up towards Cook Strait, serenely oblivious of the fact that watchful eyes in the look-out on the South Head of Tory Channel are? noting its progress and that already plans for its pursuit and destruction are in hand. In a matter of minutes the speedy launches have put to sea and the chase is on. A flash from the gun in the bow of the foremost launch, a fifteen-pound bomb harpoon speeds- on its way, a handthrown harpoon follows in its wake, a pound and a-half of gelignite in the second missile explodes as it enters the great bulk —and another monster of the deep is ready for towing back to the station.

It was not always as easy as that. More than a century ago men hunted down their quarry on the New

Zealand whaling grounds in light, thin-skinned boats, with the luck of the chase depending on the strong right arm and accurate eye of the harpooner, not to mention their survival of the fury of the stricken mammal after the barb had been driven home. Hairraising adventures, untold hardships and the constant risk of death or serious injury all had to be faced, but for the hardy whalers who came to the South Seas at the beginning of last century it was all in the day’s work.

New Zealand owes a big debt to the whalers, who were the pioneers of western civilisation in the country. Their dealings with the Maoris were not in all cases exemplary, and the Maoris for their part regarded the whalers’ encampments as fair game for plunder and murder. Nevertheless, the whalers who settled on the shores of New Zealand found that the goodwill of the Maoris was a necessary prelude to freedom from molestation, and it is safe to say that their corrupting influence on the natives was of less serious proportions than that of the many unscrupulous traders who called in from time to time to barter muskets, rum and. blankets for such items as flax.

By a strange coincidence, Tory Channel, which is the last head-

quarters of the whaling industry in New Zealand, also provided the site for the first shore station. This was established in 1827 by 'Captain John Guard in a bay adjoining that in which the present station stands. Not long afterwards another station sprang into being at Preservation Inlet, followed in a few years by others at such places as Kapiti and Mana Islands (including stations on the small islands off Kapiti), around Queen Charlotte Sound, in Otago. Harbour, at Port Cooper, Peraki and the New Plymouth Sugar Loaves. Following Maori attacks on the Cloudy Bay and Otago stations in 1833 and 1834 and the holding to ransom of the crew of a whaler wrecked at Cape Egmont in the latter year, a British warship, H.M.S. Alligator, was dispatched from Sydney to release the captives. The fact that the soldiers and seamen from the ship were forced to fire on the Mapris was regrettable, but news of the incident swept through the Maori tribes and brought a noticeable, improvement in the conduct of the chiefs.

The quarry of the early whalers were the sperm whale'and the southern right whale, both of which could be overcome with hand-flung harpoons. Today the sperm whale has retreated to its last haunt, the Indian Ocean, and the right whale is virtually extinct, but. modern methods fill the breach by making possible the killing of „the humpback and rorquals, and even the blue whale, all of which were too dangerous to be handled with the frail whaling boats of the early days. The blue whale, often as long as a hundred feet, is the largest creature in existence, and is a good deal bigger than the sperm whale, which reaches its maximum growth at about seventy feet.

The hazards faced by the early whalers were tremendous. Their ship was usually a tiny vessel of about three hundred tons, from which at least five boats would be put out to engage in the chase. The boats were

small and light, with both ends bowshaped in order that they could backwater swiftly from the flailing tail of the stricken whale. The men had to be prepared for every trick to which the mammal might resort. Once the harpoon had been driven home, the whale would immediately sound, diving to a great depth in its agony while the two hundred-fathom line was paid out through a groove in the bow of the boat. This was a tense moment for the < crew, who- could not be certain that the line would be long enough to prevent the boat from being dragged under, although such occurrences were fortunately rare.

The moment the whale returned to the surface for air it would race away at top speed with the boat in tow, the crew all the while manoeuvring their craft ever closer for the ’’kill’’. Then, with a skilful thrust the harpooner, who was usually in command, would finish" off his prey with his lance, sending the whale .into its frenzied death flurry. The crew were always wary of the whale’s threshing tail, to immobilise which they usually tried to sever the sinews of the monster’s back with a razor—sharp blade on a long handle —in the case of the sperm whale there was a double danger in that it could not only reduce a boat to splinters with its tail, but also possessed a gigantic mouth in which it could crush both boat and occupants.

In the course of the chase the whale boats frequently finish a day’s work as much as five or six miles from the ship, and the usual practice was to plant a black flag in the carcase to mark it until it could be claimed. When the ship drew alongside' the carcase the laborious process known as ’’cutting in ” and ’’trying out’’ began. Cutting in was carried out with the aid of long knives, with which the men sliced up the blubber before it was hoisted aboard by means of a block and tackle. Here it was cut into smaller pieces and placed: in the trypots, 'great iron cauldrons heated by

fires stoked in the brick furnaces beneath, and rendered down into oil. To cut up a fair-sized whale required about ten hours’ work; it took two days in all for the whole process to be completed down to the casking of the oil. With the sperm whale an additional operation was necessary in extracting the twenty or more barrels of spermaceti—the waxy fluid used for candle makingcontained in the mammal’s head.

Whereas operations in the South Seas were at first confined to deepsea, or pelagic whaling, the establishment of shore stations in New Zealand

brought new methods and increased competition among the ships’ crews. American, French, British and oven Portuguese and German ships hunted from bases on the coast, and although some ships teamed up in the course of their operations, among many of the crews there was grim competition, often for the same whale. In the rough code of the whaling grounds there was a strict understanding that a whale went to the first boat which lodged a harpoon in its carcase. The coming of the harpoon gun revolutionised the industry —a n d

resulted in the serious depletion of the whale herds. As early as the eighteenth century a harpoon gun had been tried, without success, while another tried successfully in 1821 never found a market. The modern gun was first used in Norwegian waters in 1886, and in its usual form is about four feet long, weighs up to a hundred pounds and is fired from a swivel gun mounted in the bow of the whale chaser. There is a time bomb in the tip of the harpoon, on which four hinged barbs open up inside the whale after being driven home. • .

In recent times the development of the Antarctic whale fishery' has been largely undertaken by Norwegian interests, though British and Japanese ships have also- steamed south to join the hunt at intervals. By international agreement, efforts have been made to control the destruction of whales, expert opinion being that with conservation the supply of blue whales and humpbacks in the Antarctic seas could be made to last for a long period. Although electric lighting, gas, the competition of vegetable and mineral oils and other factors have served to displace whale oil from its old peak of importance, the number of uses to which it can be put even in modern times is still legion.

Fifteen years ago there was a whaling station in active operation at Whangamumu, in the Bay of Islands, but this is no longer in use. It remains for the Tory Channel station to carry on the traditions of the old whaling days, that picturesque era in New Zealand’s history over which the dim shadows of the past have long closed. Occasionally the whalers of Tory Channel fire a harpoon into the massive back of a blue or even a right whale, and such instances are events in the still exciting routine of the men who man the chasers. But it is the humpbacks that mostly find themselves between the sights of the harpoon gun —and once there it’s a bleak outlook for the humpback!