Modern Whaling & Bear-Hunting / A record of present-day whaling with up-to-date appliances in many parts of the world, and of bear and seal hunting in the Arctic regions

by W. G. Burn Murdoch

We in the Shetlands turn the fat oil into lubricants, etc., and the meat into guano for the fertilisation of crops. I suppose it comes to the same thing in the end, if “all flesh is grass.”

So the talk, as can be imagined, wanders far afield in the Britannia. I heard a skipper asked by a layman what corners of the world he had been in, and he paused to consider and replied: “Well, I’ve not been in the White Sea.” From Arctic to Antarctic he’d sailed a keel in every salt sea in the world bar the White Sea and the Caspian. The telephone interrupts many a yarn; perhaps Jarman Jensen, our ship’s chandler, calls up someone about provisioning a station, say for three years—food, etc., for one hundred men for that time or longer; or perhaps there is a less important order from Frau Pedersen ringing up her husband from their little farm, telling him to call at the grocer on his way home, and he perhaps tells her he thinks he may not get out in time for dinner, and “Oh, buy a house in town, Olaus” is possibly the jesting answer—a great saying here in Tonsberg, where men sometimes are said by their wives to dawdle away the afternoon in the Britannia, when they are really deep in whaling finance, planning whaling stations for islands known, or almost unknown down south on the edge of the Antarctic, or on the coast of Africa or the Antipodes.

Here is the 12th of August, day of Saint Grouse, and we should be treading the heather at home, but we are still on the island of Nottero, with rain every day; and every morning the same slow drive behind Swartzen into Tonsberg, longing all the time for our ship to be ready for sea. We hoped to have had it ready in June!

We have, however, made almost our last payment, and have her insured. What a lot it all costs!

We tried to console ourselves to-day with the interest of our first trial run of our engine as against loss of pleasant company and grouse at home, also we have the pleasure of seeing the last of our whale lines being made and we get our chronometer on board, stop watch, etc., and spend hours in Jarman Jensen’s little back shop with three skippers giving us advice, as we draw up lists of provisions for the St Ebba for a twelvemonth.

In the rope factory run by Count Isaacksen we watched the last of our great whale lines being spun; three five-inch lines we have to port and three to starboard, one hundred and twenty fathoms each—that is, we can let a whale run out three times one hundred and twenty fathoms on our port lines, three hundred and sixty or two thousand one hundred and sixty feet. I have seen that length run straight out in a few seconds at the rate of sixty miles per hour, with engine going eight knots astern and brakes on, and then it snapped; for some big blue whales five of these lines are attached to give greater weight and elasticity, because, you see, there is no rod used in whale-fishing.

The rope factory and Jarman Jensen’s store are two wonders of Tonsberg. The store is a small front shop, generally pretty full of townspeople making domestic purchases, butter, potatoes, coffee. Jensen, with perfect calm and without haste, weighs out a pound of butter, wraps it in paper and hands it with a bow to some customer, gives a direction to one or two heated assistants, and comes back to us in the den behind the shop and continues to tot up the provisioning for our ship for a year, or the stores for some far bigger whaling concern running to thousands of pounds.

So much business done in so small a space and with such complete absence of fuss! Jensen in his leisure hours is antiquarian and poet. He possesses a valuable library in Norse antiquities and will write a Saga while you wait. He must have burned a good deal of midnight oil over the splendid saga he wrote about our St Ebba which was rich with historical reference to the amenities between Scots and the Norwegians in ancient days.

The slowest part of the outfitting for our whaler was, for me, the customary expressions of hospitality. I hope my Norwegian friends will understand and forgive my criticism. It is the result of my being merely British, with only a limited knowledge of Norse and a comparatively feeble appetite. A quiet little dinner given to us as a visitor and representative of our Whaling Company would begin at three P.M. and wind up at ten—eating most of the time—plus aquavit and the drink of my native land, which seems to be almost as popular in Norway as it is in England.