Chapter III: Whaling Enterprise

The effect of over exertion in the Spitzbergen area had been to break up that sectional monopoly arranged between nations. The whale had gone elsewhere, the hunting was now of the free-for-all kind, and the scene had shifted to Greenland.

This free trade naturally caused a greater number of ships to be fitted out than before, both in Holland and England. In the latter country there had been formed “The Company of Merchants of London trading to Greenland” with a subscribed capital of £40,000, which was presently increased. But within less than a decade every penny was lost owing to bad management and lack of supervision. The eighteenth century was hardly a period of high ideals, and morality was at a pretty low ebb. Honour and trustworthiness were conspicuous enough by their absence. What then could you expect? If you sent men in such an age to the desolate regions of Greenland, at a fixed salary, without any interest in the business, and simply ordered them to get whales, how can you wonder if these men, far away from the vigilance of their owners, preferred to come ashore, hunt the deer and make themselves as comfortable as they could without chief consideration for the shareholders? They were sure of a certain pay whether they got a thousand whales or none. Thus it was that financial disaster came to the company, and by the irony of fate the last ship, after having made the really excellent catch of eleven whales, got wrecked.

But this unfortunate company’s failure was of national importance, seeing that other countries were becoming rich by the industry. You will remember that this was a period of reckless finance. The wealth of the country was beginning to increase, thanks to overseas trade and the growth of the Mercantile Marine, principally in respect of the Honourable East India Company. But in those days investment was not easy, and it was difficult to get interest for one’s savings. Then came the South Sea Scheme in 1720, and the resulting “Bubble,” when sane men seemed suddenly to go mad, all save Walpole. The South Sea Company was dealt with leniently in the end, it was not even dissolved, and carried on a legitimate business. Turning its attention now to whaling, it placed a great deal of its capital in this enterprise; for the Government was encouraging, and exempted from all tax the produce of the country’s whaling.

In the year 1725 the South Sea Company built a dozen fine large whalers, and gave them a thoroughly good equipment with all the necessary cordage, casks and gear. In the spring this squadron set forth and returned with only twenty-five whales, which hardly paid the cost of equipment. In 1730 twenty-two ships were sent out, but they returned with only a dozen whales, so that the loss this year was £9,000; and eventually after eight years the company had to give up whaling altogether. It was a sad blow to British enterprise, and the more so since it concerned the sea. The very existence of the nation during the next critical hundred years was to depend on ships and crews; whatever could be done by way of encouragement must be attempted, but who was likely to invest his money where so much had already been lost?

In 1732 the Government again tried to help, by offering a bounty of twenty shillings a ton to every ship engaged in the whaling trade exceeding two hundred tons. This caused several private individuals to come forward, but the success was not great. In 1749 the dying industry was still further helped by increasing the bounty to forty shillings, and this made the undertaking worth while, so that three years later there were forty whalers sailing out, and their number even rose to eighty-two after still another three years had passed. That which was at the back of the Government was the value of whaling as a nursery for seamen, of whom the country possessed a comparatively small number. If crews could be trained in merchant ships, there was always at hand a large crowd which could be impressed for the ships of war.

But this bounty system, like all such arrangements, was an artificial stimulant; and it was very costly. Thus, when about £600,000 had been expended by 1769, it was thought that whaling was now able to support itself; so eight years later the bounty was reduced to thirty shillings. The effect of this was to show that the industry was not yet sufficiently strong to exist unsustained, for the number of ships dropped to about a third, and the forty shillings had to be granted as before. But by this time, as we have already seen in a previous chapter, the War of Independence had made a great difference, and British whalers were about to use the southern seas to great advantage. So well did whaling now prosper that in 1787 the bounty was able to be reduced to thirty shillings, and eight years later to twenty shillings, but still the industry went on increasing.

Thanks to American tuition at first, British sailormen now relearned the art which their forefathers had excelled in. Continental politics wiped out Holland as a rival in fishing and whaling for twenty years, and this period was too long to allow of the old habits and the old Dutch whaling crews to return. The future, therefore, in respect of whaling lay between British and American ships until the firm establishment of steam vessels. And that which may be called the golden age of whaling followed during the next fifty or sixty years. We shall now be able, with this outline clear before us, to consider the whalers in far greater detail.

The building and fitting out of whaling fleets was no small matter, and it is a matter for deep regret that with the extermination of the Greenland right whale these fleets gradually diminished, and with them disappeared in time those fine builders of strong wooden ships. These artists of the adze must not be forgotten, for on them and the designers depended the very safety of the ships. These early nineteenth-century whalers no longer carried on their work in bays and on the outer rim of the icefields. Starting out early in the season, they would penetrate into the heart of the Arctic, and had to be able to withstand the crushing and collision by the ice pressure. Every whaler was of the nature of a discovery ship, specially strengthened externally by iron plates at the bows and hardwood sheathing, with stanchions and cross-bars inside the hull so as not to locate but spread the ice pressure over the whole construction.

Dundee became at last the final British whaling port as long as it was possible. Even after the Greenland industry fell on evil days, stout wooden whaling vessels were built at this port, and as late as the period 1893 to 1911 right whaling was still undertaken by an average of seven or eight vessels from here. By the year 1912 there was only a single whaler sailing out of here, and I believe that to-day Dundee commissions not even her. When Captain Scott’s Antarctic Expedition of 1900-4 was being got ready he had for this venture built the _Discovery_ at Dundee, practically on the lines of a whaler. And for this purpose some of the veteran shipwrights came back to their old work in order to construct this special type of ship. No riveter of steel plates could have done the job.

On Derby Day, June 1910, I was on board Scott’s last ship, the _Terra Nova_, and watched her start half an hour later from the Thames for his final expedition to the Antarctic. This auxiliary steamship was a genuine whaler, barque rigged, of 399 registered tons, built at Dundee in 1884 of wood by A. Stephen & Sons. That great whaling expert Scoresby used to recommend 350 tons as the most desirable size for a whaling ship on the grounds that its hold would normally be filled with whale produce, and it could carry the requisite crew and boats: but that it was usually difficult to fill a vessel of greater tonnage, and thus there would be empty, unearning space for the proprietor. The Dutch held the opinion that the ideal whaler should measure 112 ft. long, 29 ft. beam, and 12 ft. depth, carrying seven boats and about fifty men. The _Terra Nova_, which is representative of the finest achievement of the whaler after auxiliary steam had been introduced into these ships, measured 187 ft. long, 31.4 ft. beam, 19 ft. depth. The engines were placed right aft, the funnel abaft the mainmast, and the bows were specially strengthened. The modern steel-built steam whaler measures from 98 to 115 ft. in length over all, 18 to 22 ft. in beam, with moulded depth 11 to 12 ft. 9 in. But we shall deal with these in a special chapter.

Most noticeable, of course, in these old-time wooden whalers was the crow’s-nest placed high up on the main topmast or t’gallant-mast. It was made of canvas or light wood, from which a careful look-out was maintained for the whales. Here, too, the captain when farthest north would sometimes remain with spy-glass and speaking trumpet, conning the ship as in a temperature many degrees below freezing-point he watched the surrounding ice through which his vessel must needs thread her way. The Greenland whalers usually left their home port so as to make a departure from the Shetland Isles about the first week in April and arrive within the Polar Seas before the end of that month.

Scoresby’s Land is still shown marked in modern maps of Greenland, and it was customary at one time for the whalers to spend a few weeks along this coast in what was known by the crews as the Seal-fishers’ Bight. They would go farther north among the icefields a little later. But in the early nineteenth century it was the practice to sail straight away north without delay. Let us follow with them and see their methods, which are so different from modern whaling but resembled the custom of the South Seamen already noted.

Having once reached the Greenland icy seas, the seven boats were kept ready for immediate launching, and aloft a constant watch was kept for ice and whales. These boats, whose design can be traced right back to those early Viking craft, and is largely copied in the oared “whalers” of the Navy to-day, were 25 to 28 ft. long, and about 5-1/2 ft. in beam. Sometimes in rowing off to the unsuspecting whale a circuitous route was taken, and strict silence was maintained to prevent the mammal becoming alarmed. We mentioned on a previous page the importance of the harpoon-gun which was made in the year 1865. But even by 1830 a gun of sorts was in use, though not generally employed. When the first boat had got the harpoon fastened into the whale and the line was about to be run off entirely, the boat would signal to one of the other boats by holding up one, two or three oars to indicate the need of more line.

The handling of the line once fast was the work of an expert, like the playing of a fish by a skilled angler. It had to be veered in such a manner that the bows of the boat were not pulled below the level of the water. And the turns round that bollard had to be done smartly without any bungling. The way the line went whirling round the bollard was likely to surprise a novice, and the friction was so severe that water had constantly to be poured over it to prevent it catching fire. So, also, the boat that was signalled to come along for his line to be bent had to be equally smart: for if it was not in time, then the first boat having come to the end, might be compelled to cut, and thus lose not merely the whale but harpoon and lines too.

The activity with which the city fireman to-day tumbles out and rushes to his fire-engine on the ringing of the bell was rivalled only in the old whaler days when the look-out from aloft had sighted a whale. The watch on deck would rouse those below by stamping with their feet and shouting “A fall! A fall!” This word was taken from the Dutch “val” meaning a whale. And out the men would tumble in their sleeping garments, with no time to dress, in spite of the atmosphere being well below zero. To a fresh hand this first experience was alarming, and he imagined that the ship was foundering.

These early nineteenth-century British whalers were self-contained without a shore station; and having caught the whale, his tail was pierced after death with two holes through which ropes were passed, and then the mammal was towed to the ship. He was secured alongside and then the flensing began. There is a Dutch word “spek,” which means blubber or fat. And the leading hands in this flensing operation were known as “speak koning” or blubber kings. Another important personage was the “speksioneer,” who directed the cutting. To each seaman the captain would go round with a dram of grog, giving a double allowance to the blubber kings and speksioneers. Under the direction of the last named the harpooners set to work with their blubber spades and great knives to make long parallel cuts, and the two kings on deck stowed the pieces in the hold, the carcase being turned round as convenient by blocks and the windlass. Of course as long as the station at Spitzbergen lasted all the oil was extracted ashore: but when the whale migrated to Greenland it was customary to take the blubber back to the home port.

The dangers to the Greenland whalers were increased by the fact that the cetaceans were mostly found on the very borders of the ice-barrier, and in the heyday of prosperity the wonderful sight of a hundred vessels has been seen along this ice-margin. Multiply this by the number of the boats, and you can picture what a sight it was in those latitudes with several hundred craft strung in a continuous line, making it almost impossible for any whale to escape: for he was hemmed in from diving below the ice and he was surrounded by boats as soon as he showed himself in the clear water. The height of the sport was when the ice was not solid but broken up into numerous small islands: for then the men would have to leap on to the frozen surface, run along with harpoon and lance, and attack in the opening wherever the whale came up to breathe. In such chases anything might happen before the whale was killed, possibly with the loss of a man or two. And then would come the difficult and arduous task of cutting the creature up small enough to be dragged across the ice to the ship.

But besides the Greenland whaling there was also the region of the Davis Straits which began to be hunted by the Dutch at the beginning of the eighteenth century and by the British ships somewhat later. The Davis Straits whaling was found very remunerative, but it was found also very dangerous, for many fine vessels got wrecked. In the year 1814 the British whaler _Royalist_ was here lost with all hands, and three years later a similar disaster overtook the _London_. Icebergs, of course, were the great peril here.

Possibly no section of the Mercantile Marine ever ran so many continuous hazards as the whalers of the North. Quite apart from the usual perils of the sea were the special risks arising from boat-work, and the dangers to the ship itself in uncharted seas with bergs and ice of all kinds. Add to this the incessant bad weather with bitter cold, and you can appreciate that only tough, hard-case seamen were likely to make a second voyage. But those who persisted, after the manner of Scoresby, amassed such Arctic knowledge as would have filled a whole shelf full of books. Perhaps these men could hardly realize it at the time, but they were building up a national seamanhood whose descendants were to form the backbone of our steamship companies and trawler fleets. As to the value of these to a country we can wish for no better evidence than those long eventful years of the Great War, when troops and material were moved all over the seven seas, when thousands of mines were swept up and enemy submarines chased and sunk. It takes generations to build up a race of seafarers, but when once the tradition has been set going, when once it has become the thing for the son to follow in his father’s steps aboard a vessel, you have one of the most valuable national possessions imaginable. And in those ports there grow up a number of yards, with slips and docks, building better and better types of ships as the years go by. The whaling industry was certainly responsible for a great deal of good to Britain, quite apart from the amount of money obtained from the whale produce. And on the Atlantic coast of America, is it not true that the home ports of the whalers have always been those of the finest seamen in the country? Certainly it was the English colonists and their zeal for the Greenland fisheries which were responsible in that country at the first.