THE NORWEGIANS AND WHALING
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Many people seem to think that the Norwegians are the only people who know how to catch whales. Fifty odd years ago,- when I was making my first whaling voyage with my father—the late Captain David Gray of Peterhead—in the Greenland Sea, the Norwegians were still confining themselves to the capture of seals, and their knowledge of deep-sea whaling was nil. This much may be-gathered from what Dr. Neilsen says in connexion with the Bottlenose. whale in his Hunting -and Adventure in the Arctic, and also. I think from what Mr. Aagaard says in his Pangst og Forskning I Sydishavet ; at any rate, in a letter dated last year, Mr. Aagaard says : " I mention in my book that your father taught the Norwegians how to kill the Bottlenose whales." In 1883 I remember two smart-looking Norwegians serving, on one of the Peterhead ships. Was it for nothing they were taking the trouble to do so ? Although the capture of the Bottlenose was started by the Peterhead ships, after a few years the " fishery " unfortunately fell into the hands of the Norwegians. This was not due to any superior skill on the part of the newcomers but to a fall in the price of . the oil. At the figure to which it fell the Peterhead and Dundee ships could no longer make the pursuit of this whale profitable, and the Norwegians, with their less expensively built , and manned ships, were left in possession of the field, in 1888 their Bottlenosing fleet already numbered thirty ships (mostly schooners), and only two years later it numbered, fifty. In the former season the whales caught numbered. 1,100, and in the latter 2,000. Later still these figures were greatly exceeded. The Bottlenose is only a small whale reaching a length of only 80 feet, but its pursuit in open boats was an excellent way of training men for the whaling .. trade, and the many trained in this way must have stood,.: Norway in good stead in recent 'years.— In- 1.882. mrtatheri.. in his ship ' Eclipse' captured 208 Bottlenose whales in the short space of about Six weeks. 'If the--Norwegian crews of ' the British whaling vessels are to 'be replaced by British crews, the Aberdeenshire town which provided the ' Eclipse ' with a crew in 1882 might be able to-supply a few recruits..
Previous page
