By BERT WHYTE

‘YY one thousand years ago-.

hardy Norwegians, armed only With primitive spears and har- B90ns set out in tiny boats’ on the most dramatic of all sea hunts — pursuit of the whale, biggest animal in the world.

1 the same period, and con- tinuing down to less than a cen- tury ago, the Eskimos along the Arctic Coast and the Nootka In- dians on the Pacific Coast hunted the leviathan in kyaks and canoes, Wielding puny spears.

_Then in 1864 a Norwegian,

end Foyn, invented the har- Poon gun, and whale-hunting be- came a busines — albeit the most @gerous of all sea industries.

fi Bellying canvas gave way in me to blunt-nosed steam whal- fts; race of a whaleboat with the @tpoon man ready in the prow Was replaced by the harpoon gun- he Crouched behind his lethal prepon on the steel prow of a €am-driven whaling ship.

Whale oil was the chief prize ie to light the lamps of the i At And whalebone—used in seeth. of the sperm whale. And

bilious, foul-smelling accretion in own as “ambergris” found float- ra ™ lumps up to 200 pounds, ne at times has been worth hie its weight in gold—and A ch is used, ironically enough,

9 fixture for delicate perfumes.

aren came disaster. First hard

Bete Was ‘dealt by the rise of the

Oleum industry, which sharp-

Y Teduced the demand for whale

Next, women stopped wear-

the Whalebone-reinforced corsets;

ain eset Manufacturers who re-

ag €d in business found steel Satisfactory as whalebone.

we 1871 practically the entire ctic whaling fleet was de- ts by ice, ending big-scale eee on this continent for RY years, Batt the industry made a come- tent About the turn of the if Ury Norway began sending of 1; factory ships, with a covey Vise Sht whaling vessels to ser- pedi on long Antarctic ex- cony, Ons. They learned ‘how to fae tt Whale oil into hardened Possip € harpoon gun made it blue v& to Kill the large fin, ¥y ¢6 Sei and humpbacks, former- dus Sidered too fast and danger- Sto hunt,

De the

Stroyed

Mand for glycerine during ing St World War gave whal- lang nother shot in the arm. Eng- sap,’.J2Pan and other countries

Ot €xpeditions to the Antarctic. °

in parts of the whale were found

~ Of value; the whale became Bang © Rot only of oil but of Meal” Meat, stock and poultry ~~", leather and glue. :

as than 20,000 whales a year

- Killed, and by 1930 many les were in danger of extinc- € League of Nations set

Weta con and 26 nations an ion of Whaling (it was amend-

dustry nD which saved the in-

ae Nootka Indians, who went of \° hunting off the west coast Only @2couver Island, were the e ) be which dared to tackle But A Tgest creature of the deep. tive 71°. awe with which all Na- fan b dians regarded the’ whale the jg7) °c from the fact, that -thangeit Whale, along with the Symbci etd, was one of the chief “Sols in their totem poles.

aa haling as a B.C. industry be- tigne 11905 when two Nova Sco- Captaj aptain Reuben Balcom and thi, @ Sprott Balcom, came to

i E

in Province to enter the sealing dy ry.

2 With a Ww

Instead they teamed ell-known coastal navi-

ies’ corsets. And the fine ivory,

‘at _Kyuquot.

4 Convention for the Regu- ,

_ A thousand

years of whaling

The largest and amon

an entire lumber camp having to be moved fr

gator, Capt. William Grant, and established the Victoria Whaling Company.

First whaling stations were at

Sechart on Barkley Sound and The company pur- chased six 102-ton whalers for $50,000 each and brought them around the Horn. from Norway. They were to ply their trade in West Coast waters for nearly 40 years. |

The company eventually came under control of a Seattle group under the name of the Consoli- date Whaling Corporation. For several seasons prior to the Sec- ond World War the whaling grounds were so depleted that the firm barely made expenses. In the early part of the century 1000 whales a year was a normal catch. From 1910 to 1924 the average catch was 574. The fig- ure continued to drop although new stations were’ established at Rose Harbor and Naden Harbor in the Queen Charlottes.

of the Second World War bes an abnormal demand for oils and fats and revived the Nor- wegian and Atlantic whaling in- dustry. But Consolidated wound up its operations in 1942 and “finis” appeared . to have been written to whaling off the B.C.

coast.

: idated In 1947 five of the Consoli ite vessels went under the auction-

EEN

g the worst-smelling of living mammals, whales were once the cause of om Belize Inlet on the B.C. coast.

eer’s. hammer at Victoria for $1,465 and four went to the junk- yard immediately.

8

Sometimes obituaries are writ- ten before the patient dies. Like Moby Dick, the white whale in Herman Melville’s classic, the B.C. whaling industry eludes death.

Revival of whaling came in

1948, when Western Whaling Company opened a modern shore

station at Coal Harbor, sent out

three ships late in the season,

the Nahmint, Saanich and James Carruthers, and brought in 182 whales. B.C. Packers later took over the operation, and now has three. steam whalers (Globe VII, Bouvert 3 and Polar 5) and two diesel ships, the Nahmint and the Tahsis.

These ships brought in’ 460 whales in 1952 and 539 last year.

Crews of the whaling ships and workers at the Coal Harbor plant are members of the United Fish- ermen and Allied Workers Union, which has negotiated annual con- tracts since the industry was re- vived in 1948.

Alex Gordon of the UFAWU was a guest on the Nahmint a few years ago for a day’s hunting off Cape Scott and after watching a huge sperm whale break the surface and blow its vaporous

spout 20 feet into the air, likened a whale to a locomotive.

“In the first place a whale weighs as much as a good-sized locomotive—from 40 to 60 tons,” said Gordon. “In the second place, the portion of a sperm whale showing above the water looks something like the top pro- file of a railway engine, from the bloWhole which is located in about the same position as the stack on an engine and from which comes periodic blasts of steam, to the dorsal fin which looks like a large locomotive sand dome.”

“Whalepower” is also easier to calculate in terms of the pull of a locomotive than in adding up horsepower.

A whale usually sounds to the ocean depths when harpooned, but on one occasion when the Nahmint gunner’s harpoon miss- ed a vital spot, a big sperm set eff across the broad Pacific with the ship in tow. The engines were put half astern but proved powerless against the mighty drive of the leviathan which tow- ed the vessel for two hours at a speed of six knots. !

Usually, however, when the harpoon sinks in and its warhead explodes, the whale will’ sound. But he has to come up for air (whales usually breathe once every 15 to 20 minutes, but can stay down for as long as an hour) and when he breaks the

- block in Canada.

surface the winchman “plays” him like a fisherman plays a sal-

_ mon, while the gunner seeks a

chance to take another savage stab at his prey.

Once dead, the whale is hauled to the side of the ship, a mem-. ber of the crew thrusts a spear- like point attached to an air hose into the carcass, and compressed air is pumped into the huge mammal to keep him afloat.-Then a red flag is stuck into him, he ls moored to a buoy and the ship continues the hunt.

When the ship brings its catch back to Coal Harbor—a wartime RCAF base—a winch hauls the big-bellied animals up a concrete slipway and onto the “plan” or carving-up floor, which has been described as the biggest butcher-

»

Carving experts, called “flens- ers,” use hoekey-stick size knives to make skilful preliminary cuts, then a winch tears off the whale’s blubber—a 15 or 20-ton “over- coat” which keeps the mammal warm in the cold waters of the Pacific and also enables him to descend to great depths without being crushed by water pressure.

A converted power saw is used to carve up the bone and meat; big “scoop” trucks carry the meat and bone to reduction tanks. Just as Chicago packers boast they “use everything in the pig but the squeal,” so the experts at Coal Harbor boast that no part of the whale is wasted.

Across their gigantic butcher block go 50-ton humpbacks and sperm whales, sei whales and the bigger finbacks, “the greyhounds of the sea.”

&

Most hated Whale is the ocra, or “killer whale.” Flaunting pirate colors of black or black and white, he is, next to man, the worst enemy of all other species of whale.

The killer whale is described as having “the appetite of a hog, the cruelty of a wolf, the cour- age of a bulldog and the most terrible jaws afloat.” .

Only 16 to 25 feet in length, the “killer” can destroy the larg- est whales in the ocean. He has been seen to devour four por- Poises in succession, and as many as 14 seals have been found in his belly.

Besides the dreaded “killer,” other enemies of whales include barnacles, which retard their speed; and lice, which make them miserable.

Despite these enemies, most whales live to a great old age. In fact, they outlive all other mammals.

All whales are afflicted with halitosis, which doesn’t seem to interfere with their love life— whales are polygamous—but can be distressing to humans.

A writer in Shakespeare’s time described the odor from a blow- ing whale as “a fumous smell most stinking.” Whale hunters who have caught a whiff say a herd of goats smell like Chanel No. 5 in comparison.

Tf you think I exaggerate, re- call the case here in B.C. where a whole lumber camp had to move from Belize Inlet, near Kingcome Inlet, opposite the north top of Vancouver Island, because. of whales’ breath.

The steep shores of the inlet prevented building on land, so the company erected its homes and bunkhouses on floats. Un- fortunately, a school of whales fancied that cove as a playing ground; Their odor proved so offensive that after a few weeks the logging company decided to tow the whole settlement to a new anchorage!

PACIFIC TRIBUNE MAGAZINE SECTION — JUNE 25, 1954 — PAGE 3