"THE PRINCE OF THE WHALERS."
THE death of Mr. David Gray, of Peterhead, removes an interesting figure from the ranks of practical naturalists and Arctic pioneers. Mr. Gray came of a family which for more than one generation has been conspicuous in the annals of wh.ding and sealing expeditions, and leaves sons who are only second to their father as authorities upon this ancient industry. But Mr. Gray was distinguished not only as a successful and intrepid leader of the Peterhead ships, but as being better acquainted than any living man with the haunts, habits, and history of the whale. His skill as a whale and seal hunter had earned for him the honourable title of " Prince of the Whalers," and he was by no means indifferent to the reputation which accrued to him from the record-bag of whales which he had made during his lifetime. But his enthusiasm for the whole art and practice of whaling produced an effect upon his mind not unlike that which the enthusiasm for over-sea trade and colonisation produced on Hakluyt. He not only observed every detail of the life of the whales of the North Pole, but read and reported on all the first-hand authorities available for the possible development of an Antarctic whaling industry. His zeal both for the fishery and for its natural history led to an acquaintance with Frank Buckland, and later his terse and clearly written -accounts of whale-life in the scientific periodicals made him known to the leading naturalists of the country. One of his ambitions was to procure for the Museum of Natural History at South Kensington a complete skeleton of a Green- land whale. The difficulty was great, for the whales are as a rule killed at sea, and the carcase, after being towed along- side the boat, is " flensed," the blubber being stripped from the whale's body as if it were a bobbin of tape, when the carcase is turned adrift in the sea. By extraordinary luck Mr. Gray sighted and killed as his first fish" the very largest Green- land whale which he had ever captured. The lower jaw, with the whalebone attached, was cut out and hauled on deck, the blubber was stripped, and the remainder of the whale was just about to be hoisted on board, when by ill-luck a whole school of whales were sighted in the distance. The crew, who shared pro rate in the profits of the voyage, naturally objected to sacrifice their chance of another fish in the in- terests of science, and Mr. Gray, with deep regret, saw the -remains of the whale sink in the ocean.
The further voyage was entirely unlucky. No more fish were taken, and the only profit made was from the first monster whale, whose oil and whalebone sold for £2,000. Thus the Museum still lacks a skeleton of the Greenland "right whale." Mr. Gray's notes, published in the Seventh Annual Report of the Fishery Board of Scotland, contain an epitome of his personal observations of the habits of the Greenland whale. Its size has been commonly exaggerated. The dimensions of the rorqual, or finner whale, which some- times reaches a length of 85 ft., have been confounded with those of the right whale. The male Greenland whale reaches an average length of from 52 ft. to 53 ft., and the female of from 55 ft. to 57 ft. The duration of their life is still matter of conjecture, though they grow so old that their tails turn white. Mr. Gray found a harpoon in an old female whale, which had been embedded in the fish for thirty-two years, according to the date upon the harpoon-handle. Another harpoon-head was found in a dead whale inclosed up to the socket in six inches of bone, which grew round it. It was his "decided opinion" that whales
live up to, and even over, a hundred years. When their calves are born the female whales disappear, and not even Mr. Gray could guess where they go to. "After forty years' experience in the Greenland seas I have not seen more than a dozen old whales accompanied by calves altogether," he writes, though young whales are often seen in numbers. Occa- sionally the full-grown whales disappear from their feeding_ grounds off the east coast of Greenland, and if the ice does not extend for a considerable distance from the shore they retire altogether in search of better cover. Persecution has made them shy, and instead of roaming at large, the whales only feed along the ice fringe, where they can "bolt to cover" beneath the ice if attacked. "Nowadays," says Mr. Gray, "whales are like rats or rabbits, never to be found far away from their holes, particularly since the introduction of steam; they will never lie on banks where there is not sufficient ice to shelter them. The old females, with the younger whales of both sexes, bury themselves in the Polar ice north of 800 after the end of June, where no ship can follow them, re- treating in the autumn southwards as the ice makes in the north."
The food of whales has long been known to consist of minute sea-crustacea. Mr. Gray was familiar not only with the whale's food, but observed its manner of feeding, and the way in which it took its nap " after meals." "No doubt," he wrote, "whales are very particular in the quality of their food, for they are never to be found feeding where the water is dirty, but almost invariably in clean, clear dark-blue or light olive-green water. The usual way in which a whale feeds is to choose a spot where the food is plentiful, and swim backwards and forwards for two or three hundred yards, with the nose just under water. They invariably swim from one side of the beat back again to where they started from, with their mouths open. They then close their jaws and swallow the food caught. They will go on in this way feeding for an hour or more ; after that they will disappear under the nearest ice, and sleep there until they come out for exercise or for another meal. Unlike other warm-blooded animals, they do not require to breathe through their nostrils while asleep, and they do not do so. Whales can sleep as well under water as they do upon the surface, as I have often seen them disappear under solid ice and remain there for many hours at a time. Sometimes they also fall asleep with their heads down and only their tails standing out of the water."
Mr. Gray does not seem to have discovered at what intervals of time the female whale produces a young one. But creatures of such vast bulk probably renew their species very slowly. Thus he attributed the present scarcity of Greenland whales to the reckless killing of the immature young by the "earlier fishers," and quotes in proof the numbers killed in voyages as far back as the year of the battle of Waterloo. when the destined fathers of whale families were harpooned in their youth.
The attraction which the whale fishery had for adventurous seamen lay in its sport, adventure, and uncertainty. The chances of making high prices, besides capturing many fish, added to the excitement. Recently, though the value of whale-oil fell, the price of whalebone rose to £2,650 per ton, and though the value is now less, no adequate substitute for its use in dressmaking has yet been invented. It was natural that men like Mr. Gray, who saw the Greenland whales yearly growing less in numbers, should turn to other seas, and especially to the Antarctic Ocean, in search of new fishing grounds. The Greenland seas are not the only home of the right whales. Sir William Flower has shown that the earliest known regular whale-fishery of Europe was carried on by the Basques in the Bay of Biscay as early as the tenth century, and that it was not until after the voyages in search of a north-east passage to China at the end of the sixteenth century that the Greenland whale was discovered. All the "bones" of Queen Elizabeth's Court dresses came from the Basque fishery, and the whale which produced it, nbw almost extinct, was the North Atlantic right whale. An almost identical species haunts the southern temperate ocean, and until recently used in the summer months to visit the shores of the Cape, Australia, and New Zealand, where great numbers were killed annually, including the new-born young. Mr. Gray, after perusing all the published narratives of Antarctic voyages, compiled a report on "New Whaling Grounds in Southern Seas," in which he stated his confident belief that round the margin of the South Polar ice the right whales would be found in numbers sufficient for the establish- ment of a new and profitable fishery. Three years ago two ships sailed from Dundee to make proof of this fishery, but lound that the whales which Sir James Ross and others saw in such numbers had disappeared. Sir William Flower suggests the probable explanation. Sir James Ross had dis- covered the summer haunt of the same whales which were then undergoing the process of ruthless extermination in their winter breeding-places on the Australian and New Zealand coasts. The Antarctic whales have been killed off thousands of miles from their Polar home, and the hope of an Antarctic whale-fishery can no longer be entertained.
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