Chapter XVII: Finding the New Whaling Grounds

As in the Arctic, so in the Antarctic and approaches, the story of whaling is intimately connected with that of discovery. But we must apply ourselves now to one special section of southern whaling which is officially known as the Falkland Islands and Dependencies. These comprise, besides the Falklands themselves, the following five areas: South Georgia; the South Shetland Islands; Graham Land with adjacent islands; the South Orkney Islands; and the South Sandwich Islands.

And in focusing our attention here we are studying the region where the whaling industry of to-day has settled down and seems likely to continue for the future. It is a part of the ocean which still remains to be surveyed efficiently, whose geographical nomenclature reads like one long catalogue of bygone explorers and their ships. From the Weddell Sea northwards to South Georgia we are in latitudes which have been rendered historical by a long line of gallant, enduring adventurers after whales or scientific knowledge. Weddell Sea, James Ross Island, Port Charcot, Nordenskjold Land, Mikkelsen Harbour, Whaler’s Bay, Frenchman Hill, Biscoe Islands, Erebus and Terror Bay, Dundee Island, Parry Strait, Admiralty Bay, Belgica Strait--you can trace the nationalities and minds of the plucky pioneers who have been there from time to time.

By most people the island of South Georgia was totally unheard of until Sir Ernest Shackleton brought it into prominence, firstly by that marvellous eight-hundred-mile voyage in a 20-ft. whaling boat from Elephant Island, after the loss of _Endurance_--an achievement which I always regard as one of the finest small-craft passages in the history of the world; and secondly, by his return to South Georgia, after the war, to be buried there. But as we glance at the nomenclature along the South Georgia coastline, with its Queen Maud’s Bay, Coaling Harbour, Right Whale Bay, Markham Point, Prince Olaf Harbour, Leith Harbour, Stromness Harbour, Larsen Point, Nansen Rocks, St. Andrew’s Bay, King Edward Cove, Moraine Fjord--we need no telling that British and Scandinavian sailors have been there already.

Some of these European names will leap into further prominence presently as we go through our narrative, but let us see how it comes that the whole present and future of the whaling industry should concentrate on to this neighbourhood. How did it happen like this, and from when? Well, after the introduction of steam into whalers that industry carried on amid the Arctic mists and gales continued to decline until it remained in a long-protracted passing-away condition. But, thanks to the Antarctic explorers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, there was such evidential information about whales that a fresh spirit of optimism broke forth and, notwithstanding some serious disappointments, justified itself. Thus, we are beginning to derive commercial benefits from those daring voyages of the past. Now what were these expeditions?

We may content ourselves with some of the principal ones. We know definitely that Captain Cook took possession of South Georgia, which he named, in 1775, and afterwards discovered the Sandwich group. It was Cook who was the first to report the presence of whales off South Georgia. Captain James Colnet in 1793-4 confirmed this report, especially in regard to black whales. In fact, during the next 125 years whales were certainly seen in nearly 300 places south of latitude 50°, so that Cook’s information was more than reliable. But the South Shetlands, that group of islands stretching right away south of latitude 60° towards the Antarctic Circle, were not named or discovered till just over a century ago, when Captain William Smith landed from the _Williams_ of Blyth in 1819 on King George Island and took possession on behalf of Britain. Here, about 400 miles south-east of Cape Horn, the ground is for ever frozen and barren, but at one spot--Deception Island--there is a landlocked harbour and a whaling station; for off these islands the modern steam whalers carry on their work with great activity. Smith had reported the presence of whales.

Graham Land, that mountainous area of thick snow and ice, with few landings but one good harbour, was discovered and taken possession of by H.M.S. _Andromache_ in January 1820. The Russian captain von Bellinghausen charted the south side of South Georgia in 1819 and came across British whalers there. The South Orkneys, which lie about a couple of hundred miles east of the South Shetlands, were discovered by Captain George Powell of the _Dove_ and charted in 1821-2, and a certain amount of whaling has taken place off here. The inhospitable, volcanic, icebound South Sandwich Islands discovered by Cook in 1775 are not used by whalers.

These, then, are the five British dependencies of the Falklands. Powell, Weddell and others charted the South Shetlands, Weddell also charted the South Orkneys; and Captain John Biscoe, one of Enderby’s whaling captains, in 1832 discovered and sketched the west side of Graham Land. But this first knowledge was added to by British sealers, by d’Urville, in 1838, by Wilkes of the United States Navy, and then came that fine expedition of _Erebus_ and _Terror_ under Captain James Clark Ross, R.N., in the early ’forties, who specially referred to the presence of whales in the Erebus and Terror Gulf, about which we shall have more to say later. This expedition, though sent out by the British Government primarily for magnetic surveys, had a most important result fifty years afterwards.

Weddell’s voyage in the years 1822-4 through the Antarctic Sea was remarkable not merely because he penetrated further south than any previous navigator had succeeded in achieving, but because his craft were both quite small. “Our adventure,” wrote Weddell, “was for procuring Fur-seal skins, and our vessels were the brig _Jane_, of Leith, of 160 tons, and the cutter _Beaufoy_, of London, of 65 tons, both fitted out in the ordinary way, and provisioned for two years. The former, with a crew of twenty-two officers and men, was under my own command; the latter, with a crew of thirteen, was commanded by Mr. Matthew Brisbane.”

The _Beaufoy_, built like one of the Revenue cutters or yachts with the usual contemporary rig of mainsail, topsail, jib, staysail, and that “spread yard” carried athwart ship ready for setting a squaresail when the wind was aft, was one of the smallest vessels which ever got as near the South Pole as lat. 74° 15′. Those thirteen hands aboard her certainly were out on no picnic. Leaving the Downs on September 17, 1822, they took their departure from Portland Bill, and after calling at Madeira, and at the Cape Verdes, they were off the east end of the South Orkneys by January 12th.

Seal-skins were obtained; whales were sighted both dead and alive--the former off the South Orkneys, the latter well to the southward of lat. 70° in what we now call the Weddell Sea, but Weddell in his chart names “The Sea of George the Fourth.” Thus on February 17th he sighted “many hump and finned black whales,” and still going south he writes: “In the evening we had many whales about the ship.” On his chart in the position lat. 74° 15′, on the 20th, which was his furthest south, Weddell wrote “many whales in sight.” Then going north, his crews having suffered much from cold, fogs and wet during all those weeks in the south, Weddell visited South Georgia. After Cook had been here in the late eighteenth century, several ship-owners sent out vessels and captured sea-elephants for their oil, and fur seals for their skins. At least 20,000 tons of sea-elephant oil were brought from South Georgia to London during the fifty years following Cook’s call there, together with a number of seal-skins; “but formerly,” says Weddell, “the furriers in England had not the method of dressing them, on which account they were of so little value, as to be almost neglected. At the same time, however, the Americans were carrying from Georgia cargoes of these skins to China, where they frequently obtained a price of from 5 to 6 dollars a-piece.” South Georgia altogether during that time yielded to British and other visitors 1,200,000 skins.

Weddell, by the way, tells an interesting story about a certain American captain J. Barnard, whose sealing vessel in the year 1814 had called at the uninhabited New Island, one of the Falklands which had not become British until the year 1771. Barnard, whilst on the south side of the island after the fur seals, suddenly came across about thirty British subjects, consisting of the crew and several passengers of a wrecked English ship. Barnard was good enough to take them on board and treat them hospitably. Now, at that time England and America were in a state of war, and, although Barnard had promised to land these people at some Brazilian port, the rescued began to have suspicions as to the captain’s sincerity.

However, all was apparently going well, and the increased company were split up into hunting parties and sent out to obtain supplies. Captain Barnard with four of his men was on such an excursion when the ungrateful and suspicious rescued British, I regret to say, defied the Americans who were on board, and cut the cable, making off with the ship to Rio de Janeiro, and thence to North America. Barnard had never for a moment imagined that such a scheme was on foot, and when he returned to the anchorage at New Island he was amazed to find his vessel gone. And then, as Barnard explained to Weddell, he began to realize that the motive for this theft was the fear of becoming prisoners of war in America, in spite of his promise already given.

The position now was that Barnard was left with his four men, a dog and a boat on a lonely island at a remote corner of the world. What was to be done? The ship had not even left him a few supplies. However, he remembered that he had planted a few potatoes and in the course of the second season these became serviceable. Moreover the dog caught a wild pig, the skins of the seals were used for clothes and the eggs of the albatross were additional food. To withstand the cold wintry blasts of the Falklands, a house was built of stones. Once a captain, always a captain: once accustomed to handling men and preserving discipline, Barnard was not likely to drop the habit even on this island. But in course of time his four men wearied of this control, waited their opportunity, and then made off with the boat, leaving the unfortunate skipper, now utterly alone, to himself. However, he spent his solitary days making seal clothes and collecting food for the next winter, twice daily climbing a hill to look out for the possible approach of some ship. But twice every day he returned to that rough stone house with the same disappointment.

And then, after some months, who should come to the island but those four deserting seamen with their boat, having been unable to manage for themselves. But even now they were still recalcitrant, and one of them even went so far as to plan Barnard’s death, though the plot was discovered in time. And to teach the men that discipline and punishment were still very real things even under these exceptional conditions, Barnard gave the man a few provisions and then landed him on another small island in solitary confinement. It was a bold step for one officer to defy four mutinous men: but the daring was justified. At the end of three weeks this defiant seaman had become so changed that his conduct, from the time when Barnard fetched him off, commenced to be exemplary. There was no further trouble with any of them, and so, for two years, the party continued to live, using the boat to search the other islands for provisions, until at last in December 1815 there called here an English whaler on her way to the Pacific and thus rescued this little party. It is yet another instance of the adaptability of the sailor to whatever state his fortunes may drive him.

Weddell also confirmed William Smith’s report of sperm whales being off the South Shetlands. On one occasion the former even lowered boats and set out in pursuit; but Weddell believed that the whale became “gallied” through having seen the copper sheathing of his vessel, and so went off out of sight. Smith’s discovery of these South Shetlands, which ever since the year 1905 have become such an important whaling station, happened as follows during the year 1819, when he was taking the brig _William_ from Monte Video to Valparaiso, and it was purely chance that brought this discovery about. For, on his way in order to round the Horn, he had stood S.S.E., and at six o’clock one evening, when in lat. 62° 30′ S., long. 60° W., actually sighted land to the south-east, afterwards landing and finding seals. Weddell, who also landed on the South Shetlands the year after, had killed as many as a couple of thousand sea-elephants and many more seals there.

The cutter _Beaufoy_ made a second voyage on a sealing expedition, in spite of her having already been south for those two years. Leaving the Downs in August 1824, she coasted down Patagonia, called at the Falklands and went to Tierra del Fuego, arriving back in the Downs after eighteen months.

Now the net result of these early explorations was to attract attention to an unknown part of the world, and long years afterwards whales were to be discovered. But as not all explorers were themselves whaling experts there has been some confusion in the statements as to their species, whether sperm whale or rorquals. It is supposed by modern critics that those whales which have ever been seen off the South Shetlands consisted almost entirely of two classes: the blue whale and the hump-backed whale. Ross reported that he had seen in Antarctic water the right whale, but as the result of various Antarctic expeditions, scientific authorities now believe that this explorer may have been mistaken; and that what he saw could only have been fin whales.

But it was not till Emile G. Racovitza, the eminent zoologist of the _Belgica_ expedition of 1897-9, applied his efforts that the first methodical scientific study of Antarctic whales was made during the cruise of that vessel. Racovitza was afterwards able to systematize all the reports which had been made on the subject of whales being recorded at different dates and in various Antarctic localities; from which it is now possible to see that these cetaceans have been noted in great numbers in the waters especially of the Ross Sea, South Georgia, South Shetlands and adjacent areas. All this knowledge, so valuable commercially, and of such utility to the convenience of the public, has come only as the result of many expeditions, long voyages and great risks to ships and men.

Historically, the first cetacean which the old sailing ships pursued was the right whale, which has no dorsal fin. In the Atlantic there was the Greenland whale, the nordkaper and the southern right whale. These were remarkable for the size of their whalebone, and at a time when whales were hunted chiefly for the sake of their bone, these became known as the “right” or “true” whale. Moreover, in those days, their harpooning methods prevented the men from attacking the “finners” or rorquals. But then the industry of capturing the sperm whale came in and the chase after right whales became less important. So, also, there came a change in the second part of the nineteenth century arising through Svend Foyn’s invention of the explosive harpoon fired from a ship’s gun. He began this new form operating off the north of Norway, but it enabled the fin whale, so long neglected, now to be hunted. Thus it was that Norway inaugurated an entirely new era in whaling, since, broadly speaking, the “finners” are the only cetaceans found in that country’s waters.

What was more, it opened up an entirely new avenue to knowledge; for, until then, no mammal was scientifically so little understood as the great family of the whale. And the reason for this deficiency was quite simple. Without specimens to study, how could the research student set to work? Whaling ships brought home the produce: not the mammal itself. And only on remote occasions have whales stranded around our coasts. But the Svend Foyn method revolutionized all this: or, rather, part of his plan was a return to that old practice which we have seen existed at Spitzbergen in the early days. The reader will remember that factories were established ashore, the whales towed to the beach and hauled up to be flensed.

Well, this was to be the new Norwegian way in the ’sixties. Land factories were instituted, the “finner” killed by the explosive harpoon was hauled up and dealt with from the land and not from the ship. Thus it was, then, that an opportunity was afforded both to whalers and scientists to examine the shape of the body and the contents of the stomach: in other words, there followed from this a large amount of biological knowledge concerning the cetacean. We know now that the “finner” whether in northern or southern waters is practically the same in form. To the invention of that gun, then, was due the starting of the Norwegian fin-whaling industry: and owing to the inauguration of the latter was it possible to get a greater understanding of whales generally.