Chapter XXII: Colonial Control

When Captain Cook described these islands as “a country doomed by nature never once to feel the warmth of the sun’s rays, but to lie buried in everlasting snow and ice,” and went on to suggest that this “coast which, when discovered and explored, would have answered no end whatever, or have been of the least value, either to navigation or to geography or, indeed, to any other science,” he could scarcely have foreseen that more than three millions sterling would in the twentieth century annually be derived from this neighbourhood.

At South Georgia, with its mass of high snow-covered mountains, its valleys of glaciers, but its coastal area in the summer free from snow, there is a Resident Magistrate; but at the other Dependencies a representative of the British Colonial Government accompanies one of the expeditions. In the case of South Georgia the Resident Magistrate is located at Grytviken Harbour, King Edward’s Cove, on the east side of the island. In fact, all the whaling stations are on that side, beginning from Allardyce Harbour at the north down to New Fortune Bay about half-way down the coast, some thirty-five miles to the south-east. The numerous bays and natural harbours lend themselves there most conveniently to the use of the headquarters for the various companies who have leased the sites.

The Government of the Falklands has allowed five shore stations at South Georgia, each site of 500 acres being taken up for a period of twenty-one years at a rent annually of £250; but there are also five unoccupied sites on that east coast for which rent is still paid. The leases include the right to use two whale-catchers without further licence. With the South Shetlands fleet there go a Magistrate and a whaling officer, leaving in November and coming back with it in April. South Georgia is the only portion of these Dependencies which is habitable all the year round, for the harbours elsewhere are ice-bound for seven months out of the twelve; so the flensing and boiling down are done in the floating factories, which can steam off before the ice sets in. Besides South Georgia there are shore stations at Deception Island and at the South Orkneys, the personnel for running them arriving and returning with the whaling fleets.

Thus we have one of the most interesting nomadic communities in the world and one intimately connected with the sea. It was decided in 1912 that the number of licences issued in any one year for the South Shetlands with Graham Land should not exceed ten, and not more than seven for either the South Orkneys or the South Sandwich Islands. Since October 1914 no further licences or whaling leases other than in South Georgia can be issued, but renewals of existing licences are permissible. It is to the credit of the British Colonial Office that all the revenue derived from these Dependencies is, as far as possible, devoted to the further development of their resources. For the sake of practical politics the South Sandwich Islands have not yet entered into this consideration. But it is possible that when surveys have taken place and a safe harbour assured, we may find matters going ahead, yet owing to the poisonous fumes it is doubtful if there will ever be a land station.

During the war there was an increased demand for oil, but all over the world, except off South Georgia, the whale was being hunted far less. It therefore became advisable to allow the temporary employment of a greater number of catchers down here. Legislation wisely limits the extent to which whaling may take place, and minimizes the amount of waste. Under the former decision we have the restriction of the number of licences, but there is no direct regulating of the number of whales to be caught. One may mention in passing the financial side of these Dependencies, which is not without interest. If we take the latest figures--that is for the year 1923--we find that the Government revenue derived from them in that period amounted to £160,221, the local expenditure being only £7,436. But at the end of that year there was a surplus of £315,795 assets over liabilities, of which £300,302 became earmarked for the Research Fund. It is thus that the research vessel _Discovery_ was able to set forth from Portsmouth in the summer of 1925 on these investigations about which so much is expected in the future.

Formerly the catch consisted chiefly of humpback whales, though latterly it is the blue, and also the fin whale, which have predominated. But a greater incentive has been offered towards capturing the two last; for the bonus to the gunner, additional to his monthly pay, works out in the following number of kroner:--for that somewhat rare right whale, 200; for the less rare sperm whale, 100; for the blue whale, 80; for the fin whale, 50; for the humpback, 30 kroner. The reason for this becomes obvious when we state that a blue whale usually yields from 70 to 80 barrels of oil, a right whale 60 to 70, a sperm whale 60, a fin whale from 35 to 50, but a humpback from 25 to 35 only. We spoke some time back of New Island, one of the Falkland group. Here in the year 1908 the British firm of Messrs. Salvesen & Co. of Leith established a whaling factory which continued until 1916, when it was dismantled and removed to South Georgia, which is now the only one of the Dependencies where whaling can be carried on in both summer and winter.

In the old sailing-ship days one of the customs was to attack a whale calf, well knowing that the mother whale would not desert its young; and thus the elder and more valuable whale would fall to the hunter. This cruel and wasteful method is strictly forbidden in the Dependencies. Neither a calf nor a female whale accompanied by a calf may be killed. Apart from sentimental reasons this is sound policy unless it be desired to endeavour to exterminate the species. And as further illustrative of the broad, sensible lines of the whaling legislation in these parts it is worth noting that the lessees are required to keep an accurate record of meteorological observations and to maintain a stock of coal and provisions which are to be supplied at cost price to any ship requiring them. We know that both Shackleton and Charcot availed themselves of this privilege.

In reckoning the amount of oil we count six barrels to the ton, and it is worth while to consider now the relation which the whale to-day bears to commerce. Before the war whale oil was used for burning, for lubrication, for soap-making and currying leather. It then found itself in great demand in the manufacture of glycerine for munition-making, and also for the different fabrication of margarine. Sperm oil is used for such delicate machinery as sewing-machines and watches. The demand for whalebone is not what it once was, but in the thirteenth century it was used among other purposes for the plumes on helmets. From the meat and bones are obtained whale-meat meal, largely used in feeding cattle; whale guano, which is rich in phosphates; and there is produced from the bones alone what is called bone meal, also rich in these phosphates. But the entire carcase may be turned into guano after extracting the blubber for oil. Ambergris is used in order to make perfumes more lasting.

During the war whale oil was so invaluable to the British Government that one of the greatest authorities has remarked that without it we should have been able to produce the required amount of neither food nor munitions. It seems strange to think that a number of whales cruising innocently in the neighbourhood of the Antarctic can have the slightest effect on a war being fought many thousand miles away in Europe: but it shows the interrelation of affairs and mutual dependence in our modern civilization. Glycerine we all remember to have been difficult to obtain during the latter stages of the war even by medical men. Before hostilities it was just a by-product in the manufacture of soap: but after the demand for explosives became so tremendous soap-making became a by-product of the glycerine industry. The British Government during the war made special arrangements with three English firms for utilizing the whole of the whale oil imported.

Modern sub-Antarctic whaling is very different from the old Greenland industry, quite apart from the change from sail to steam. It is different, too, from that fine, romantic period when American whaling ships under sail used to hunt the cetacean in every tropical sea of the world. The latter vessels were of lighter build and greater speed than those which had to be so strong and heavy in order to resist the ice pressure. Those American ships were not intended for ice work, and their working costs were not great. They could build cheaply along the New England coast where there was plenty of timber near to the sea. But about the year 1846 American whaling with its fleet of 735 ships reached its high-water mark, and the ebb set in with such certainty that from 1877-86 an average of only 159 such craft was annually employed. So also by the year 1886 the best type of Norwegian whaler was a vessel of only eighty tons and of thirty horse-power. Fitted with the Svend Foyn harpoon-gun these comparatively cheap vessels had been able to kill for their oil and bone most of a thousand blue whales, humpbacks and other rorquals, and then tow them into the fjords of Finmark.

But in the Antarctic the conditions are all so serious that no one can embark on this undertaking except in a big way. Everything seems multiplied by comparison with the circumstances of the nineteenth century. Thus, before the whaler can reach his cruising ground a far longer distance must be covered, with a greater cost in fuel. The vessels need fewer hands, but they cost more to build and to run. Moreover the value of the individual Antarctic whale is inferior to the Greenland species. Greater activity, at a greater distance, more detailed organization but far more initial capital are the conditions which have in this twentieth century become essential. Not for a century have the Greenland whales been hunted in those Arctic waters between East Greenland, Spitzbergen and Jan Mayen Islands, where the cetacean was once numerous and in convenient proximity to the fleets of the north. And alongside our optimism in regard to the Antarctic we must place the plain observed fact that when a species of whale has by over-fishing been wiped out of any area, he does not go back to that region even long years after the fleets have given up using those waters. Of this we may quote two historical instances. For centuries the whale was hunted in the Bay of Biscay, right up till the sixteenth century, when it was about to be exterminated, had not the Greenland whaling grounds been discovered. To this day the Biscayan whale has never recovered its former numerical preponderance. Similarly, the Finmark rorqual was hunted to extermination so that the industry came to a full stop after a few intensive years. If, then, the whales should be exterminated for a period in the waters of the Falklands Dependencies, it is improbable that even after a respite they would return. Thus the whole commercial value of these distant parts would vanish as soon as the whaling stations ceased to have any financial reason for existence. Indeed, there are those who believe that by the time the twentieth century has run out, there will be no more whales to hunt: they will become as past and banished as the prehistoric animals are to us to-day.

This is the extreme pessimistic view, but it has to be borne in mind so long as our scientific knowledge is incomplete, especially in regard to the whale’s migrations. This of course arouses the question of protective measures to control the hunting: and these, again, are capable of crippling the industry as a dividend-earner. For instance, it might be found theoretically advisable to prohibit occasionally all whaling for several years in order to allow the stock of cetaceans to increase. But what company could afford to let its plant and shipping remain in harbour idle and deteriorating during those years? How would it be possible to keep together those skilled gunners and flensers until such time as their services were again required?

These are some of the problems which have to be faced sooner or later, and we cannot possibly ignore them too long.

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Transcriber’s Notes

New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain. In the .txt version, surrounding characters have been used to indicate _Italics_ and +Mixed-Case Smallcaps+ Inconsistent hyphenation has been retained. Minor typographical, formatting and spelling errors have been corrected.