48 chapters
8 hour read
Selected Chapters
48 chapters
PUBLISHERS’ NOTE
PUBLISHERS’ NOTE
The readers of this book will be interested to learn that the expedition from Dundee which set out for the Antarctic regions in 1892 to the Weddell Sea, south and east of Graham’s Land, and in which the author of the present volume took part, was the first of its kind since the famous expedition commanded by Sir James Ross in 1842. Dr W. S. Bruce, the distinguished polar traveller and oceanographer, was the scientific naturalist, and Mr Burn Murdoch, the author of this volume, was the artist and
1 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER I
It blows, it blows, at Balta Sound, a cold, strong wind, and yet we are in June. I think it always blows at this northern end of Shetland, but we on our little steam-whaler, the Haldane, are sheltered from the sea by the low green shore and the low peaty hills half shrouded in mist. One after another herring steam-drifters come up the loch and collect round the hulk of a retired sailing-ship to sell their catch on board it by auction. The hull of the wooden ship is emerald-green and the small so
5 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER II
In August I went to Tonsberg, the capital of the old Viking days, and over the wooden housetops saw the two bare pole masts of our ship and a little later saw her entire hull! How infinitely satisfactory, to see our dream of a year ago in Balta Sound realised in hard iron and pine on the slip. She is one hundred and ten feet over all, with twenty-two-foot beam—just a few feet longer than the Viking ship of the Norwegian princes that was found a year or two ago buried within a mile and a half of
8 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER III
It does not surprise me that the Vikings of the olden days used to leave the southern coast of Norway for summer visits to our Highlands and western isles, for the climate in this Southern Norway in August is most relaxing; there is absolutely nothing of that feeling of “atmospheric champagne” that you expect to enjoy in Northern Norway in summer. We drive into Tonsberg from Henriksen’s farm every morning, and after spending the day in the shipyard, come out again in the evening with our ears de
18 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER IV
At last! on the 23rd of August, the St Ebba was ready to be taken away from the slip, and the town, and the noise of the builders’ yard, and one morning, with rain blotting out the grey stone hills and threshing the trees, and the country a swamp, Henriksen, Mrs Henriksen and the writer went into town for the last time about St Ebba’s affairs, motoring in our whale-launch nine knots through the spray. It shows how hard some people are to please, for Mrs Henriksen vowed she preferred her recollec
11 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER V
Then it’s hey! and it’s ho! for Scotland, chilly Lerwick and the Shetlands and kindly English-speaking people. My heart warms at the prospect of seeing our western hills and heather and relatives and a language we know. It rains again, tropical rain. We stand and bid farewell in the homestead, round the little dining-room table, each with a liqueur glass in hand. Suddenly I see eyes are wet, and the stranger nearly pipes an eye too, for it is a bit harrowing even to cold hearts to see married pe
13 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VI
We drifted about ninety miles S.W. in the three days’ storm, S.W. of Norway, and now are just the same distance from Lerwick as when we started. Nine watches with the engine going will take us there. It is blue and sunny to-day, wind N.E., so we have set staysail and mainsail and go along in a real sailing-ship style. But the old sea still runs high from N.W. and the wind blows little ripples down the long furrows, and the lumpy waves stop our way down to four or five knots. In smoother water an
6 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VII
Whaling is like salmon-fishing, but the waiting part is on an enormous scale, bigger in proportion than even the game or the tackle, however huge that is. Fancy waiting and fishing for nine months for your first fish. That was my first whaling. Henriksen in Japanese seas on his first whaling command was, I think, a year before he saw a whale. Then he had a lot of shots in succession and missed every time, till he discovered the powder was at fault, and then he killed about ninety in three months
11 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER VIII
I have just come over the island and on board ship after a week-end trip to the north of this main island to my friend R. C. Haldane, of the distinguished family of that name, associated in historians’ minds with Halfdan the Viking leader, and to newspaper readers with a younger brother—late War Minister and present Lord Chancellor. I came over the island in a single-cylinder motor-car, a splendid new departure for these parts, over the windy, wet moorland track, four hours to do forty miles, bu
7 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER IX
Perhaps it will be as well for me to hark back here and make some extracts from my last year’s whaling log and sketch-books, for who knows when this St Ebba will fall in with whales; in this way the reader will the sooner be made acquainted with the procedure in “Modern Whaling.” The extracts that follow have appeared in magazines—in The Nineteenth Century, The Scottish Field, and in Chambers’s Magazine, and Badminton, but possibly the reader may not have seen them; and I am sure that the illust
20 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER X
The solitary finner we hunted disappeared, and we hunted for hours towards heavy purple clouds in the S.W., and the sea seemed deserted as before, till towards six o’clock we saw a blow, and soon after saw the crow’s nest of a whaler above the horizon; she appeared to be working to and fro as if hunting a whale. In half-an-hour we were amongst great large whales! and began the most spectacular whale-hunt we have ever seen. For two and a half days we had hunted blank, lifeless ocean, then, withou
8 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XI
Whaling has its seamy side. We met it outside the loch going up west of Shetland—the wind had almost dropped, but the cross sea it left was as if several Mulls of Cantire had been rolled together, and neither our little whaler nor its crew liked it a bit. Rocky capes and islands were blurred in mist and spouting foam, and sometimes obscured by passing rain and hail showers. About eight or nine, morning, we were off Flugga, the most northerly point of Britain’s possessions, and the weather was si
19 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XII
Having put down these recent experiences of modern whaling, which, though not exciting, may at least be instructive, let us return to follow the fortunes of our patient whalers on the St Ebba. It is September now, and a Wednesday, and early and clear and cold, with no gale, with just a ripple down Lerwick Bay; one or two people are lighting their peat fires and the scent comes off to us on the pure, almost wintry air, and we hoist the Union Jack astern though no one may see it, and let steam int
8 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIII
We began this day with a chantey—a cheerful, fine-weather chantey. There are lugubrious songs too for bad weather or unhappy crews—“Stormalong,” for instance, “Stormie,” who “heard the angels call.” I associate that slow minor air with the dreary sough and rush of wind and seas south of Cape Horn. But to-day it was the cheery It’s ages and ages since I’ve heard it, and to-day it came off by chance with a go! We were below amongst the ropes and harpoons, Henriksen and I and some men, and had rigg
12 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XIV
The British fleet lay at Oban; I don’t think any wars-man on any of the vessels would not have changed places with one of us; for to any seaman there is an air of romance and adventure about a whaler. I’d have felt distinctly proud passing down their line in our little vessel whose object and capabilities any bluejacket could guess at—a motor, plus sails and a small but sea-going hull, a business-like gun at bow, a crow’s nest; and going south—that would appeal to their imagination. But alas! at
7 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XV
No one knows who wrote these words—some mournful Jacobite, perhaps, who felt as the author does; for though the night is perfect, with the golden harvest moon reflected in a sea like glass, we cannot but feel a little sentimental on turning our backs on relatives and on our dear West Highland strand (especially during the shooting season). The tune fits the words, does it not? I think it is a recollection of an old sea-chantey I once heard—coming back to mind to suit the words, and what might se
10 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVI
It is a strong N.E. gale, but “Muckle word pass ower,” as the children were taught by a certain dominie in the north to repeat when they came to a word beyond his knowledge, so “Muckle gale and pass ower,” we say, and try not to think of it. Why dwell on the unpleasing side of the sea. It is beastly all the same, and trying to one’s nerve. We have no canvas on her now, just tumble along before the wind, with bare poles, through the grey seas, the wind passing through to our bones, wet with spray
17 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Ponta del Gada San Miguel Azores
Ponta del Gada San Miguel Azores
I have read about and seen many places generally recognised as being of a singular beauty and interest, but never of this jewel of a sea town. For an artist it is a dream of delight of the most delicate colours reflected in a sunny sea. The houses are such as one may see in Spain or Italy, white, or of all the lighter variations of shades of pinks, white, pale greens and cinnamons, and they are built up to the water’s edge with only a margin of black volcanic rock showing between them and the se
11 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XVIII
So we left our wreck, meditating on the ways of a wicked world, and went on our own business to hunt round the south coast of San Miguel or St Michael (we call the island) to the eastwards. Parts of the coast we pass are very like Madeira, which is said to be like a crumpled piece of paper lying on the sea. You calculate how many hours it would take to ride a mile as the crow flies, round the bays, over the tops and down the sides of the glens or ribieras. What lovely places there are to ride or
9 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XIX
I see I have gushed a little about the blue sea in the last chapter. This begins with storm, and gale, and courage running into water in the grip of the elements. Just now we are rolling in a loppy swell, high and irregular, but there’s no wind to speak of. We are right round to W. and S. of St Michael and we see the island faintly to north to windward, distant some eight miles; it gives us shelter from the remains of a north-east gale that sprang up last night, and is only now dying away this a
12 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XX
Farewell, Ponta Delgada, with your pretty streets perfumed with fir planks and pineapples; farewell, San Miguel. How sweetly the delicate tints of your capital—pale pink and blue—show in this early sunlight. Your great clock on the white campanile marks six A.M. and the sunlight glitters already on the blue tiles above the arches of the inner harbour. That is the place for an artist who would paint in highest toned water-colours—flowers, fruit, wine skins, white walls, and blue sea. I will grant
17 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXI
The St Ebba killed a few more whales in the seas between the Azores and Madeira, but they were of no great value—seihvale and small sperm—and the weather became tempestuous, so she proceeded southwards. The island of Madeira is thirty-five miles long and six thousand feet high. It was very hot on the south side amongst the sugar-cane crops and vineyards. But on the north side, with wind off the sea, high up in the mountains and riding through oak woods, bracken and heath and roaring burns, it wa
17 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXII
After killing our first bull sperm off the Azores we killed a few more whales, north of the Line, rorquals and small sperms of no great value. Then, owing to the warm water of the tropics not cooling our engine sufficiently, we had more engine trouble on the voyage from the Line to Cape Town. One day under sail and engine, the next drifting and tinkering at the engine. At the Cape, however, relief came; a Norwegian expert at Diesel motors was sent out and he diagnosed the trouble at once, increa
3 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIII
Now we come to notes about the Arctic regions, whales and bears, promised in the preface to this collection of spun yarn, as a sailor-man might call it. Long ago the writer, as a very small boy, vowed to go North and bring back bearskins. His instructress failed to excite his interest in short sentences, such as “ The Cat ate the Rat ,” so she gave him a little square green book by Ballantyne, called “Fast in the Ice,” and he at once made rapid progress, and he promised his instructress that he
12 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXIV
CHAPTER XXIV
My first impressions of the Arctic ice compared to Antarctic ice are distinctly disappointing, which reminds me of my friend Dr Bruce’s first impressions of the same. He had been in the Antarctic, then came up here to join the Jackson Harmsworth expedition. For several days they had been going through ice when he remarked: “I would rather like to see one of your polar icebergs.” “What!” they said, “you have passed a dozen of them in the last two days. Why, there is one now,” and they pointed to
14 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXV
CHAPTER XXV
I continue these bear-shooting notes this evening, Friday, 11th July. I know it is evening from a faint blush of pink on the snow that is just perceptible; without this I would have lost all idea of time, for since yesterday it has been all bear-hunting and no sleep. Now we have a bear alongside, all alive-o! He is tied with a rope and is swimming just like a man, hard astern, trying to tow our little whaler from the floe-edge; and he roars every now and then in angry disgust, and then turns up
12 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXVI
CHAPTER XXVI
No whales yet, never a blow, no chance to use our harpoon-guns from the ship’s bows or from the boats, so we keep their covers on. What patience is needed for whaling! Two seasons ago a friend of mine, a captain of a Dundee whaler, was up this north-east coast of Greenland with a big crew for three months, and got only one whale and one bear. Then, with luck, you may get several in one day, I have never yet seen more than three killed in the twenty-four hours; but I have done nine months’ whalin
26 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXVII
CHAPTER XXVII
On the 15th of July we started looking for whale or bear in the mist again, but with never a sign of either. So painting was the order of the day for the writer, such a chance, no letters, no newspapers, nothing to take one’s mind off looking at the effects of this end of the garden. Hours flew, middag mad of bear passed, painting still going, only interrupted by expeditions forward, where our men were packing the bear and seal skins in salt in barrels. Later we went ashore— i.e. on to the blue
19 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXVIII
CHAPTER XXVIII
If I had not been writing these notes I would have harpooned a whale, I believe, for a few minutes after getting on board the narwhals appeared again, and by the time we were afloat and at the place they had appeared at, we were too late. So, to be out of temptation and the cold, I turned in at six A.M. , after a long day of the unexpected. First, open sea! then the narwhals’ appearance, then the bears, and narwhals again. Quite good hunting if it were not for the persistent mist that worries al
13 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXIX
CHAPTER XXIX
Before we left our last misty anchorage we partook of a meal of both bear and narwhal. The narwhal’s flesh is blacker than an old mushroom, and as food it is only passable. Young bear is our best food, but there is a lot of trouble about preparing it, for we remove all the fat, which has not a good taste. This morning one of these little grey seals or floe rats looked at us from astern, and as I plan a motoring coat I felt called upon to deprive it of its pelt, painlessly, after administering a
13 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXX
CHAPTER XXX
Bright sun for once and away we have been steaming since early morning, south and east, hoping to get clear of the great floes that bar our way to the west. I long for mountains, the flat plains of ice-floe and snow grow very wearisome. Now, near land, these land-floes are like endless plaster ceiling that has dropped more or less in fragments. In the Antarctic the floes look as if a Greek temple had come to bits and lay floating on the sea. There is a considerable difference, therefore, in appe
11 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXXI
CHAPTER XXXI
This chapter will show that it is foolish to sit up late, and that it does not do to shoot polar bears in pyjamas. Last night Hamilton and I sat up fairly late playing vingt-et-un for matches. But the Dons and De Gisbert sat up still later, almost all night, brewing a concoction of seal-oil and things on the cabin stove for boots. Just as they succeeded, it upset all over the shoulder of Don José junior’s coat. They were very merry, but they should have been in bed, as it was their morning watch
11 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXXII
CHAPTER XXXII
“Ugh—ugh!” our starboard bear shouts to-day; not a roar now, it is a hopeless complaint. “Ugh! let me out—ugh! look at my coat, all stained and soiled.... Ugh! let me out, I don’t want to go to a zoo”—then almost silence, only a steady chawing of timber and scrape, scrape, for hours on end. The above labour ended in his getting his head and one paw out this morning early, and the skipper and Hamilton only being about—the rest of the crew were afloat in the boats—they had a lively time. The skipp
19 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXXIII
CHAPTER XXXIII
Finding no whales and being unable to get on to Greenland, for some twenty miles of ice now separate us from its shore, we decide to turn back. Right about wheel then, for we are sick of eternal flat ice-floes. If we had a new boiler, new coal supply, new food supply and unlimited time, we would hang on. The ice may open in ten or twelve days, but we arranged to finish our hunting, if possible, at Trömso, Norway, about the middle of August. So we have just time and no more to get there by that t
8 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXXIV
CHAPTER XXXIV
There being still mist this morning our budget of news can only be described as strictly Local, for we can only see over a few yards of floe and rippling sea. Three hooded-seals appeared astern just now, as I went out for a breath after completing the aforesaid masterpiece of the floe-edge scene. They went off with a splash, as if alarmed at finding themselves near us, and then they came up again and took stock of us at about two hundred yards. We could not see them well, so we did not shoot. Wh
10 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXXV
CHAPTER XXXV
After several weeks’ trying to get through the ice we failed to get ashore, owing to there being twenty to sixty miles of fixed land ice, and now have worked our way back eastward through three hundred miles of pack and floe ice. By luck we might have found part of the coast free of ice, or only a few miles of it, but apparently, instead of this drifting south and giving some rain to the British Isles, southerly and easterly winds have held back the South Polar ice-drift. Eight to ten miles off
6 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXXVI
CHAPTER XXXVI
To-day it is almost rough, a fresh north-east breeze, and as our little ship rolls far and often in a swell, or anything like a sea, strong men turn pale and say they feel a little tired and will go and lie down. Killers appeared at middag-mad , and but for the excusable lassitude of our party we might have tried for one, even though it is a little rough for accurate harpooning. Their great black fins, “gaff-topsails,” sailor-men call them, cut through the water with a spirt of foam like a destr
14 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXXVII
CHAPTER XXXVII
We find little difference here in Trömso since we left for the cold North. Then it was sunny but very cold, now all the snow has melted away from the hills and they are green with belts of dark alders that run up the corries from their reflections in the calm fiord. The rough main street of wooden houses presents the same series of little wooden doll houses, some made of upright planks, some of horizontal, in subdued harmonies of weathered pale green, blue, and worn slate, which would be a littl
11 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXXVIII
CHAPTER XXXVIII
In the smoking-room on the way south on board we naturally talk much about fishing, for half our fellow-passengers have been salmon-fishing and there is much comparison of Bags and Rivers. Some have done better than they expected, others growl at their bags, and the season, and at the agent, whoever it was, that put them on to such a bad river. But all are charmed with Norse scenery, and Norse people. We come in for some questioning about bears. There is no invidious comparison between a bag of
4 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Old and New Whaling
Old and New Whaling
The Greenland whaling was practically given up in 1912, and the Southern whaling for sperm and cachalot and the Southern Right whale, which in the first half of the nineteenth century employed five hundred to six hundred vessels, practically stopped forty years ago....
12 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Why the Old Styles of Whaling stopped
Why the Old Styles of Whaling stopped
The growing scarcity and wariness of the Greenland Right whale and the fall in the price of oil and whalebone gave the Balæna Mysticetus or Greenland Right whale an indefinitely prolonged close season, and in the Southern Seas the sperm and the Southern Right whale (Australis) fishing almost entirely ceased, owing to increased working expenses, smaller catches, and the fall in the price of oil....
19 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
“Modern Whaling” in North Atlantic
“Modern Whaling” in North Atlantic
In 1886 Captain Svend Foyn of Tonsberg, Norway, invented the plan of capturing the powerful rorquals, commonly called Finners, that are very numerous, but were too strong and too heavy to be killed in the old style from row-boats, and which till his time had not been hunted. By his process a small cannon on the bow of a small steamer could fire a heavy harpoon, one and a half to two hundredweights, attached to a four-and-a-half hawser. This steamer and line were sufficiently buoyant and strong t
36 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Commercial Aspect and Method of Modern Whaling
Commercial Aspect and Method of Modern Whaling
Some of these companies work with shore factories, others with both shore factories and large floating factories on board steamers of up to seven thousand tons burden, and each company hunts the whales with, on an average, three to four small steamers, which harpoon the whales within a radius of eighty or ninety miles and tow them in to the shore factories, or the floating factory which is at anchor in some sheltered bay. The bodies are rapidly cut up at a fully equipped land station, and both t
31 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Whale Meat Meal and Guano
Whale Meat Meal and Guano
Whale meat meal is made from fresh whale flesh; it is used for feeding cattle. It contains 17½ per cent. proteid, and guano is made from the remaining flesh and about one-third bone. The analysis of this gives 8·50 per cent. ammonia and 21 per cent. triboric phosphates. The whole of the dried bones and meat may be made into one product—a rich guano with 10 to 12 per cent. ammonia and 17 to 24 per cent. phosphates. The best whale meat is better to eat and tastes better than the best beef; it is “
33 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Whalebone or Baleen
Whalebone or Baleen
The baleen or whalebone of these finner whales is only worth about £30 per ton. It hardly pays to cure it and market it. The whalebone of the Australis or Southern Right whale has fallen to £85 per ton; it is occasionally caught. Its bones and that of the finner brought down the price of the Greenland whalebone, which a few years ago was sold at between £2000 and £3000 per ton, one good whale having a ton in its mouth, which paid the expenses of the trip. During the short season, 1st November ti
37 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Returns from Whaling
Returns from Whaling
Taking in the other islands of the Falkland Islands Dependencies in the neighbourhood of Cape Horn, the catch in a recent year amounted to four hundred and thirty thousand barrels of oil—eight thousand three hundred and seventy-five tons guano, the gross value of which may be reckoned at £1,360,000. Practically the whole of this goes to Norway. For forty-eight years this Modern Whaling has been carried on in the North Atlantic, and since 1904 the Modern Whaling which we advocated in Edinburgh in
46 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Ambergris
Ambergris
Ambergris is a biliary concretion generally found in the alimentary canal of a feeble or diseased sperm whale. Sometimes it is found exteriorly near the vent. It is also found floating or drifted ashore. It is of great value, and is principally used as the basis or vehicle for perfumes. Some years ago Norwegians found four hundred and twenty kilos in a sperm on the Australian coast; this was valued at £27,000. This is much the largest piece I have heard of. It is a solid, fatty substance of a ma
40 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
The Whaling Industry
The Whaling Industry
The St Abb’s Whaling Limited, of which the writer was appointed chairman, found whales at the Seychelles in great numbers in 1913, and we got permission from the Government there to start an up-to-date whaling station with licences for two whaling steamers, which we chartered and had sent out to us from Norway. Our capital was about £20,000, and our station and factory was nearly completed, and we were catching numbers of sperm and some “finner” whales, when war broke out. Our supply of coals wa
4 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter