Whale hunting with gun and camera / A naturalist's account of the modern shore-whaling industry, of whales and their habits, and of hunting experiences in various parts of the world

by Roy Chapman Andrews

I could see only one or two Indians, clad in dirty shirts and overalls, loafing about placidly staring at the ship, but by the time she had been warped in and the winch had started to swing aboard the great oil casks which lined the wharf, two pleasant-faced men appeared, one of whom I learned was Mr. Quinton, the station manager; to him my letters were presented. With him was Mr. Rolls, the secretary of the station, who showed me to a room at the house. I got out of my “store clothes” and came down to the wharf, now lined with men of six nationalities—for Norwegians, Americans, Newfoundlanders, Indians, Chinese, and Japanese are employed at these west coast stations.

Tied up to the side of the pier was the ship Orion. She was typical of all steam whalers, had been built in Norway and made, under her own steam, the long stormy passage across the Atlantic to Newfoundland. A few years of work there and she started for the Pacific around the Horn, beating her way northward to the scene of her present work at Sechart.

The Orion had not gone to sea that morning, for the fog outside made it useless to hunt; even if the ship could have kept her bearings in the mist it would have been impossible to see the spout of a whale, or to follow the animal if one were found.

The crew were all ashore, and I met Captain Balcom, an alert young Canadian, and one of the few successful gunners who was not a Norwegian. He offered at once to take me “outside” with him when the weather cleared but said we would see only humpbacks, for the blue whales and finbacks had not yet appeared on these hunting grounds. At Kyuquot, a station only one hundred miles farther up the coast, blue whales and finbacks were taken with the humpbacks in March as soon as the station opened, while at Sechart they did not come until July.

When the station was first located at Sechart, humpbacks were frequently taken in Barclay Sound but were soon all killed, and others did not take their places. At the time I was there, the Orion seldom found whales less than thirty miles at sea. She usually arrived about two o’clock in the morning, dropped her catch, and in half or three-quarters of an hour was again on the way out in order to reach the feeding grounds shortly after daylight.

I went aboard with Captain Balcom at ten o’clock and turned in on the Mate’s bunk. The cabin was small, but not uncomfortable, and it was not long before I was asleep. I did not even hear the ropes being cast off in the morning and only waked when the boy came down to call the Captain. We were well down the Sound when I came on deck, and were steaming swiftly along among little wooded islets half shrouded in gray fog. Far ahead the ugly, foam-flecked rocks of Cape Beale stretched out in a dangerous line guarding the entrance to the Straits of Juan de Fuca; beyond was a sheer wall of mist shutting us out from the open sea.

The Captain was sure it was only a land fog hanging along the coastline, and that we would soon run through it into clear air. As the ship rose to the long swells of gray water and burrowed her way straight ahead deeper and deeper into the mist, everyone on deck was drenched and shivering. Fifteen minutes of steaming at full speed and the gray curtain began to thin; soon we ran out of it altogether.

There was not a big sea running, but the little Orion was dancing about like a cork. Balcom said, “It is calm weather so long as she keeps her decks dry,” and with this rather dubious comfort I settled down to get used to the tossing as best I could.

Everything was intensely interesting to me, for it was my first trip on a steam whaler. Already a man had been sent aloft and was unconcernedly swinging about with glasses at his eyes watching the water ahead. I learned later, when seasickness was a thing of the past, what a wonderful view can be had from the crow’s nest. The whole level sea is laid out below like a relief map and every floating object, even the smallest birds, shows with startling distinctness. And if it is comparatively smooth, one can look far down into the water and see a whale or shark long before it is visible at the surface or to those on deck.