Shore-based whalers led adventurous lives
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This week in our series of articles on the history of Marlborough, JOY STEPHENS looks at the whalers of Cook Strait.
For more than 140 years, whales on their annual migration north were spotted by whalers from hilltop lookouts at the entrance to Tory Channel.
Whale chasing boats then raced out to harpoon them and tow the carcasses to a shore-based whaling station, where oil was rendered from the whale blubber.
Te Awaiti, a shore whaling station, was set up on Arapawa Island in the Marlborough Sounds in the 1820s.
In 1911 the Perano family founded a whaling industry at Arapawa Island that lasted until the end of whaling in 1964.
An Australian ex-convict, John (known as Jacky) Guard was one of the first Europeans to settle in the South Island. He was driven into Tory Channel by a southerly storm in Cook Strait and chose Te Awaiti to set up his first whaling station.
There were 100 Europeans at Te Awaiti by 1838.
In September 1839 Jerningham Wakefield wrote about the activity at Te Awaiti: "A large gang were busy at the try-works, boiling out the oil from the blubber of a whale lately caught.The men were unshaven and uncombed and their clothes covered with dirt and oil".
He described the intolerable stench of the bay and also commented on about 25 Maori/European children: "all strikingly comely, active and hardy as the goats".
The shore-based whalers initially hunted and chased their prey using rowing boats and hand-held lances and harpoons.
The Perano whalers were the first to use motor launches in 1911.
Harpoons with exploding heads, introduced in the 1920s, were fired from onboard harpoon guns and achieved a quicker kill.
The Perano whaling enterprise worked out of three different whaling stations over the 53 years from 1911 to 1964. Fishing Bay, the Perano's third Tory Channel whaling station and the most important, was established in 1924.
The whale carcass was winched out of the water, the blubber stripped off and the pieces then thrown into a digester for cooking. The oil was taken off the top, with up to five tonnes of oil considered a good haul from a humpback whale.
Marlborough Sounds whaling peaked in 1960, with 78 whales killed in 16 days during June and a total of 226 humpback whales caught in the whole season.
In 1962, however, humpback numbers were so low that the Peranos began hunting orca whales for oil, but it proved to be an uneconomic enterprise.
The Peranos caught 114 sperm whales and nine humpback whales in 1963. The last whale was harpooned by a New Zealander in New Zealand waters on Monday December 21, 1964.
Falling prices for sperm whale oil and competition from foreign fleets had led to the end of the industry.
Whalers were tough, resilient, steel-nerved men who lived lives of hardship and high adventure during the winter whaling season.
Whaling was in the blood over the years, the crew of a fast, sleek Perano whale-chaser was likely to consist of a selection of Nortons, Jacksons, Toms, Peranos, Keenans, Loves and Heberleys all descendants of the first whalers.
For the first 40 years of the 19th century, whaling was the most significant economic activity for Europeans in New Zealand. They first hunted sperm whales from visiting ships, and then mainly right whales, using shore-based whaling boats.
Their whale boats were 20 to 30 feet long and sharp at both ends, with each boat carrying a collection of sharp lances and harpoons.
Whale oil was prized for lighting and lubrication, but was also used in the manufacture of products such as soaps, paint and rope. Baleen, the fine filtering tissue from the mouth of a right whale, was used in many 19th century products, such as buggy whips, corset stays and umbrella ribs.
This story was written by Joy Stephens for www.theprow.org.nz. Check out the website for further resources relating to whaling in the Marlborough Sounds, including the story of Maori involvement in the industry, or for more historical stories from o te tau ihu, the top of the South.
- The Marlborough Express
