Often we were close to a whale but not in such a position as to be able to swing the gun towards it. For some time a huge fellow surged close alongside within one or two feet of our starboard beam and never touched us. I think they must have a sense by which they can judge their distance from a vessel’s or boat’s side or ice: one can hardly believe they judge the distance by the eye alone.
At about ten o’clock our real chance came—we crashed down from a high sea almost on top of a whale as it rose unexpectedly, but it was too close, we could not depress the gun enough to get the foresight on, but the next rise, the moment after its blast we were high in air and let drive as we came down and were fast and sure.
I do not know how to describe the grand rush of a huge whale or that fractional pause of uncertainty after the boom and smoke and flame and the whirl of great rope. It is heart-stopping, almost solemn. You watch the seething black boil where the whale has gone down, with small flecks of scarlet in it, and the great cable fading down into the depths, and the gun-wads smoking on the water. Then off goes the cable to right or left! Sixty to seventy miles an hour, cutting the water into foam, and we swing into the course of the whale. Before going fairly in tow on this occasion, an unusual thing happened. The whale’s huge head, immediately after it sounded, suddenly shot up twenty yards in front of our bows, twenty feet in the air, and went as quickly down. We were glad it had not touched us, or we would have had quick work to get into our boat, and our little steamer would have made a deep-sea sounding.
About three hundred and sixty fathoms ran out before we saw further sign; running over the two ringing barrels of our strong steam winch, five times round each barrel with the brake such as you see on a railway engine wheel hard down and burning; then foam appeared a quarter of a mile in front, and our whale’s flippers, then the mighty flukes of its enormous tail, slowly threshing the sea into white. To right and left it travelled, towing us ahead whilst our engine reversed at eight knots but not for long. We managed to wind up some line and got the gun loaded again, thinking it might take another harpoon to stop it, for lancing from the small boat in such a heavy sea would have been too dangerous, even if possible.
It was a short fight. At ten-thirty we harpooned it; at eleven-thirty we had it alongside; a weight and line thrown over its tail; took out a heavy chain which was shackled round above the tail and hauled by the steam winch to our port bow beside the anchor davit, then with the huge body with its lovely white corded underside above water surging alongside we steamed ahead. It seemed to be about seventy feet and would probably weigh about seventy tons, and it made us lie well over to port. To float it a little higher out of the water, we drove a pointed tube with holes in its side through the white kid skin, and blew in air and steam. We began our day’s hunting at three A.M. and wound up and started home at eleven-twenty P.M. We have to go, without waiting for another whale, for we fear the station hands may be standing idle and we have ninety miles to cover at not much more than six miles an hour, for the dead whale alongside stops our speed.
No two whale hunts are alike; one trip you come home with a “clean ship” and empty bunkers, the next you get two or even three whales in a couple of days and come home at once and give all hands, Shetlanders and Norsemen on shore, work for night and day.[6] Here we consider three in a day for one steamer a big catch.
Another Government regulation restricts our number of steamers and we are allowed to have only two, so that often it happens, owing to our only having two steamers and both of them being out hunting, our station hands stand idle, but the restrictions put on this new industry by official “experts” at home and in our colonies, who have only recently learned that this whaling exists, make too tearful a subject to insist on here.
During a summer season, our Shetland station, with only two steamers, may catch from seventy to one hundred. There are any number of whales, but they are becoming every year more wary. Needless to say that a whale, if it is frightened, cannot be approached. The whole of the whale’s body is used. The best of the meat is sent to Copenhagen, bought by Danish butchers at the stations for 18s. a barrel, sold at Copenhagen as a delicacy at £9 a barrel. It is very good to eat—between beef and veal, but rather better than either. The Japanese pay 25 cents a pound for it, but we use it for fertilising fields. The oil extracted from the blubber, meat and bone, sells now at about £4 a barrel; six barrels equal, roughly, a ton (2240 lb.). But the value of whale oil is increasing owing to the invention of a “hardening” process by which the oil is turned into white tasteless edible fat excellent for cooking purposes.
The Right Atlantic whale (Biscayensis), of which we get one or two in the year, is worth £300 to £400, owing to its having good whalebone. What we usually catch, “seihvale,” and “finners,” have only a little bone in their jaws, worth about £30 per ton. The Greenland Right whale that used to be fished had sometimes a ton of it, which a few years ago was worth from £2000 to £3000. The prices fluctuate considerably. When this modern whaling began oil went down £10 a ton; now, even though the production is enormously increased, its value is £24 per ton, and will rise in a year or two very much.