Whaling in the United Kingdom
Commercial whaling in Britain began late in the 16th century and continued after the 1801 formation of the United Kingdom and intermittently until the middle of the 20th century.
The trade was broadly divided into two branches. The northern fishery involved hunting the
Early history
A charter granted to Hilary, Bishop of Chichester in 1148 gave him the right to "any whale found on the land of the church of Chichester, except the tongue, which is the King's."[3] The English king had asserted the right to the entire whale by 1315 when Edward II reserved "to himself the right of all whales cast by chance upon the shore."[4] Whales came to be known as "Royal fish", the disposal of which was an exclusive right of the monarch, or his local representative.[5] Indeed, to this day, the Crown Estate asserts that "theoretically The king can claim ownership" of beached whales and other "Royal fish". [6]
The first tentative interest in commercial whaling may have occurred in 1576 when a British vessel sailed "to the country called
The northern whale fishery
A vessel owned by the London-based Muscovy Company discovered in 1610 and began to exploit the Spitsbergen (Svalbard) whaling grounds in 1611.[4] By 1617 at least fifteen British vessels were whaling off Spitsbergen each season. Ongoing participation in the fishery proved elusive. It was due, in part, to costly competition between rival chartered companies as they tried to exclude each other, and their foreign rivals, from the region. In the meantime, the Dutch had entered the fishery and soon became dominant.[11] By the 1660s, there were hundreds of Dutch and German vessels active off Spitsbergen, while in some years not a single British vessel.[12]
Parliament tried to revive British involvement late in the 17th century. It began with legislation in 1672 that allowed British whaling crews to be composed of up to half foreign nationals, such as the skilled Dutch. The Act also exempted British-caught oil from customs duty, and imposed a £9 a tun duty on oil and £18 on "whale fins" (baleen) imported from other national fleets.[12] It was not till Dutch involvement began to falter in the 1690s, due to political turmoil and warfare in Holland, that the British saw an opportunity, which led to the creation of the Greenland Company.[13] The initiative was unsuccessful and the losses incurred were so large they discouraged further British involvement in the trade till the 1720s, when Henry Elking persuaded the South Sea Company to try the Spitsbergen fishery.[14] Two dozen new vessels were built and equipped and sent forth under the direction of Elking as agent and superintendent for the Greenland Fishery on a salary of £100 a year plus 1.5% of gross sales.[15] This initiative too was unsuccessful and spelled the end of chartered company involvement in the trade in Britain.[16]
Parliament wanted to revive whaling to reduce the
The government increased the bounty to forty shillings a ton in 1750 and this proved the tipping point for a take off in the trade.
Scottish ports were well placed to participate in the growth of the fleet. They were closer to the northern whaling grounds and sent forth more whalers to the Arctic than English outports early in this revival of interest in the trade. Scottish ports involved in the trade, in order of importance, were, Leith, Dunbar, Borrowstounness (Bo'ness), Dundee, Aberdeen, Montrose, Glasgow, Anstruther, Greenock, Kirkcaldy and Alloa.[22]
London remained the single most important port dispatching 71% of British whalers in 1753.[23] Other English ports involved include Hull (from 1598),[24] Newcastle (1752),[25] Whitby (1753),[26] Exeter (1754),[27] Ipswich (1786)[28] and Peterhead (1788).[29] Additional English and Welsh ports participating during the "bounty period" (1733–1824) were Berwick, Dartmouth, Grimsby, Liverpool, Lynn, Milford, Scarborough, Stockton, Sunderland, Whitehaven and Yarmouth.[30]
There were setbacks along the way. These included
The
The number of vessels involved in northern whaling slowly picked up as the turn of the century approached, largely unaffected by the French Revolutionary period and Napoleonic Wars.[37] The price of oil and bone was volatile and the latter ranged in price from £400 a ton to just £30 between the 1760s and 1815.[38] Prices began to improve as the new century progressed and the Davis Strait fishery began to develop. The size of the fleet peaked in 1821 after which it began a long slow decline that lasted until the end of the century.
The decline began when the
Poor seasons became more common as whale stocks declined, further hastening the exit from the industry. The vessels still engaged stayed longer on the whaling grounds to achieve better results and in the process were sometimes trapped by the ice. Forced to over-winter, some ships were crushed by the ice and their crewmen had to evacuate the ship. If there was no vessel nearby to take them aboard they would soon freeze to death. Even those taken aboard another vessel faced scurvy or starvation in crowded unsanitary conditions till the ice began to break up and the vessel could begin the journey home.
The southern whale fishery
The British ships initially "fished" in the mid and south Atlantic, spreading into the Pacific and Indian Oceans in the 1780s. The government bounty of forty shillings a ton paid to northern whalers was extended to the southern fishery in 1776.[47] A heavy import duty that applied to oil imported from other countries was not lifted even after hostilities between Britain and America ceased in 1783 and was an additional incentive for shipowners to remain involved in the trade.[48] The first British whaler to enter the Pacific was the Emilia, owned by Samuel Enderby & Sons and commanded by Captain James Shields. This vessel sailed from London in September 1788 and fished the Peru Grounds before returning to London in March 1790 with 139 tons of sperm whale oil.[49]
International conflict became inevitable, spilling over all the continents of the New World. Spain resented the intrusion of British vessels into the Pacific, especially when they engaged in clandestine trading at Spanish colonies in South America. In 1789, rising tension over the issue saw Spanish warships, thousands of miles away on the west coast of what is now Canada, seize British vessels engaged in the maritime fur trade in Nootka Sound on Vancouver Island. The resulting Nootka Crisis was an international incident that brought both nations to the brink of war. War was averted but tensions remained high. Australia was also in their sights. In 1793 a Spanish naval captain with recent knowledge of the area submitted a plan to invade New South Wales, destroy Sydney and carry away the 7,000 colonists to labour in Spain's own South American colonies.[50]
British whaling continued in the Pacific, with occasional setbacks along the way. These include the
Another significant barrier to expansion were Crown monopolies granted to the East India Company and the South Sea Company which restricted British maritime activity in the Pacific and Indian Oceans to ships owned or licensed by the Companies.[54] Pressure exerted by the London whaling lobby saw these restrictions gradually lifted between 1786 and 1813, after which British whalers had unrestricted access to all whaling grounds.[55]
Some whaling shipowners, such as
In the years between 1800 and 1809 the British South Sea whaling fleet averaged 72 vessels with 30 ships returning each year. The annual average catch during this period was 1,634 tuns of sperm and 3,300 tuns of southern right whale oil, with an average annual value of £122,000.[57] British involvement in the South Seas fishery reached its peak, in terms of the number of vessels involved, in the years between 1820 and 1822.[58] The end of subsidy payments in 1824 played a part in the decline, as did the reduction in the duty on imported foreign-caught oil in 1843, and its total abolition in 1849. A decline in whale stocks was also a significant factor and caused a steady increase in the length of voyages.[59] By 1843, only 36 vessels were still involved in the trade, and just 20 by 1850.[60] The last British vessel involved in South Sea whaling in the Age of Sail was the Cowlitz (Captain Bushell) which returned to London in 1859.[61] As well as the Enderby family, other prominent shipowners in the southern whale fishery included Daniel Bennett, Alexander Champion, John St Barbe and Thomas Sturge.
Modern whaling
The development of harpoons went hand in hand with the development of commercial whaling. Harpoon guns were trialed by the South Sea Company in 1737 and hand-held guns that discharged rocket harpoons were in general use by American and other national whalers in the second half of the 19th century.[62] Further experimentation at that period by Svend Foyn at Tonsberg in Norway resulted in a safer and more efficient harpoon cannon that was patented in 1870.[63] These cannon were mounted on the bow of steam-powered metal-hulled catchers and allowed faster whale species to be hunted. The introduction of factory ships that could winch the captured whales up a stern ramp and onto the deck meant further advances in efficiency and safety for those employed in the industry.
Modern whaling in Britain can be dated from 1904, when Norwegian expatriate
The first modern shore-based whaling station in the southern hemisphere was established at Grytviken on South Georgia by an Argentine company in 1904.[68] There were nineteen whaling firms in the region by 1914, most of them owned or staffed by Norwegians.[69] Christian Salvesen established a new whaling company in 1908 which began operations at West Falkland in January 1909 and, later in the year, at South Georgia.[70] The latter operation was based at Leith Harbour and it continued to function till the 1960s. The official language there was Norwegian, indicating the main source of labour.[71] A second British firm, the Southern Whaling and Sealing Company of North Shields, was established in 1911 to operate at Prince Olav Harbour on South Georgia.[70]
Old
A major event in the post-war years was the purchase of the Southern Whaling Company by Lever Brothers for £360,000 in September 1919.[74] The Southern Whaling and Sealing Company and Christian Salvesen were the two main producers of whale oil from shore-based whaling stations and floating factory ships in the Antarctic in the early 1920s. Other significant developments were the introduction of larger catchers, that could range further, and a switch in target species from fin whales to blue whales.[75]
The depletion of South Georgia waters by the 1920s saw British companies invest in new factory ships that could be sent to whaling grounds further afield during the brief three month long Antarctic whaling season. The waters around the South Shetland Islands and South Orkney Islands were tried but the major development in the 1920s was the discovery by the Norwegian, Captain Carl Anton Larsen in the 1923–24 season, of a passage through the pack ice to the ice-free waters of the Ross Sea.[76] The difficult conditions in the Ross Sea called for larger factory ships and more powerful catchers. Christian Salvesen took delivery of six new catchers in 1924, the first of forty catchers commissioned and built at Middlesbrough for them during the inter-war years.[77] The profits in the industry saw the creation of a third British firm in 1928, the Hector Whaling Company, with a nominal capital of £250,000.[78]
An increase in the number of factory ships from 17 to 41, most of them deployed to the Ross Sea, saw total world whale oil production explode from 145,394 tons in 1926–27 to 601,392 tons in the 1930–31 season, while the British component went from 61,781 tons to 120,533 tons during the same period.[79] This massive oversupply led to a rise in inventories and a dramatic fall in price which resulted in the decision by the Norwegians to keep their vessels in port for the 1931–32 season. British producers responded by closing two unprofitable shore-based stations in Scotland and another in South Africa.[80]
Continued overfishing and the resulting depletion of whale stocks in Antarctic waters turned thoughts to greater regulation and how the industry might be made sustainable. Efforts were made to further limit the length of the whaling season and quotas were introduced on the number of whales that could be taken.[81] More effective in limiting the catch was the ongoing surplus of oil in storage and the resulting low price that continued to restrict the number of factory ships at sea. This continued until 1935, when a rise in the price of oil saw an increase in the number of ships to sail. Some of these "fished" the whaling grounds off Western Australia, Peru and Madagascar. The old cycle was soon repeated with overproduction and the inevitable crash in the oil price.
The oil surplus of the 1935–36 season was the result of good weather in the Antarctic and the activity of new whaling factories and catchers, including some from Japan, Germany and Denmark, new entrants into modern whaling. It also reflected the creation of a number of new small whaling companies in Britain during the 1930s. These included Anglo-Norse Ltd, Polar Whaling Company and Star Whaling.[82] There were still nine British shore-based whaling stations operating in the 1930s.[83] To maintain production levels, the target species broadened, with fin, humpback and sperm whales taken in increasing numbers. Even so, on the eve of world war in 1939 the industry was facing difficult times with declining whale stocks, rising costs and falling demand as manufacturers switched to whale oil substitutes, such as palm oil.
The
An urgent need for
The International Whaling Commission reduced the length of the whaling season in the late 1940s, and also introduced catch limits. The quotas were set too high and, in any case, were ignored by some operators. Attempts were made to expand the market for whale meat in Britain by marketing it for human consumption, but were unsuccessful. After the oil was extracted most of the residue continued to be processed into low-value meat meal to feed livestock.
The value of whale oil peaked in 1950–1952, in anticipation of strong demand during the Korean War, and then began to decline. The British share of the catch fell after 1954 and companies based in the United Kingdom started to think about how to exit the industry. Hector Whaling did so in 1960 and Salvesen in 1963, bringing to an end three and a half centuries of British involvement.[87] Whaling product imports were banned in Britain in 1973.[88] A massive decline in whale numbers had made the industry uneconomic and the International Whaling Commission introduced a moratorium on commercial whaling in 1982. Britain was one of 25 members of the Commission to successfully approve the moratorium, which went into effect in 1986.[89][90]
Whaling vessels
- Alexander (1801)
- Amelia Wilson (1809)
- Britannia (1783)
- Butterworth (1785)
- Cadmus (1813)
- Canada (1786)
- Catherine (1811)
- Cumberland (1800)
- Diana (1840)
- Eliza (1789)
- Eliza (1802)
- Harpooner (1791)
- Mary Ann (1772)
- Rockingham (1767)
- SS Runic (1900)
- Seringapatam (1799)
- Sir Andrew Hammond (1800)
- Speedy (1779)
- Tiger (1773)
- Truelove (1764)
- William (1770)
In literature
Novels about British whaling in polar regions include,
Novels about British whaling in other regions include, R.M. Ballantyne, Fighting the Whales (1863); The South Sea Whaler (1875) by W.H.G. Kingston; Friedrich Gerstacker, Die Nacht auf dem Gerstacker (1875); G The Far Side of the World (1984) by Patrick O'Brian, tells of a British warship is sent into the Pacific to protect British South Sea whaling ships from an American privateer.
See also
- Greenland Dock, London
- Grytviken, a whaling station in the South Atlantic
- Leith Harbour, another southern whaling station
- Sperm whaling
- Whaling in Scotland
- Dundee Whaling Expedition
- Category:British people in whaling, a list of captains, shipowners and other businesspeople in the industry
References
- Barrow, Tony (2001). The whaling trade of North-West England. Sunderland: University of Sunderland Press. ISBN 1873757832
- British Southern Whale Fishery (BSWF) web site, http://www.britishwhaling.org/
- Clayton, Jane (2014). Ships employed in the South Sea Fishery from Britain: 1775–1815. Chania, Greece: Jane M. Clayton. ]
- Clayton, Jane & Charles A. Clayton (2016) Shipowners investing in the South Sea whale fishery from Britain: 1775 to 1815 (2016) Jane M. Clayton & Charles A. Clayton, Hassobury, UK. ]
- Hawes, Charles Boardman (1924). Whaling. London: William Heinemann.
- Gillies Ross, W. (1985). Arctic whalers icy seas; narratives of the Davis Strait whale fishery. Toronto, Canada: Irwin Publishing.
- Jackson, Gordon (1978). The British whaling trade. London: Adam & Charles Black. ISBN 071361840X
- Jones, A.G.E. (1986). Ships employed in the South Seas Trade, 1775–1861. Canberra: Roebuck. ISBN 0909434301
- Jones, A.G.E. (1992). Volume 2, Ships employed in the South Seas Trade 1775–1859. Canberra: Roebuck.
- Jones, A.G.E. & Dale Chatwin (2014) Ships employed in the South Seas Trade, 1775–1859, Volume 3, Navarine, Hobart. ISBN 978-0-9923660-1-8
- McLaughlin, W.R.D. (1962). Call to the South: A story of British whaling in the Antarctic. London: George G. Harrap & Co.
- Sanger, Chesley (2016). Scottish Arctic whaling. Edinburgh, Scotland: John Donald.
- Scoresby, William (1823). Journal of a voyage to the northern whale fishery. Edinburge: Archibald Constable & Co.
Citations
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- ^ Chesley W. Sanger, “The origins of British whaling; pre-1750 English and Scottish involvement in the northern whale fishery,” The Northern Mariner, 5 (3) July 1995, p.15. [2]
- ^ a b Sanger, p.15.
- ^ Jackson, p.3.
- ^ "FAQs". The Crown Estate. Retrieved 4 May 2018.
- ^ Hawes, p.21.
- ^ Francis, Daniel (1991). The great chase; a history of world whaling. Toronto: Penguin., p.9: James A. Tuck & Robert Grenier, Red Bay, Labrador: World whaling capital AD 1550–1600, Atlantic Archaeology, St. John's, Newfoundland, 1989, pp.43–51.
- ^ Jackson, p.5.
- ^ Loewen, Brad, “Historical data on the impact of 16th-century Basque whaling on Right and Bowhead whales in the Western North Atlantic,” Canadian Zooarchaeology/Zooarchaeologie Canadienne, No.26, 2009, p.9
- ^ Sanger, p.16.
- ^ a b Sanger, p.22.
- ^ Sanger, p.23.
- ^ Jackson, p.40-45.
- ^ Jackson, p.44-45.
- ^ Sanger, p.24.
- ^ Sanger, p.26-27.
- ^ Sanger, p.27.
- ^ a b c Jackson, p.55.
- ^ a b Jackson, p.56.
- ^ Jackson, p.57.
- ^ Stonehouse, Bernard. "British Arctic whaling House of Lords records (dataset) 2014". University of Hull. Retrieved 14 September 2018.
- ^ Jackson, p.58-9.
- ^ T. Sheppard, "The Hull whaling trade," The Mariner's Mirror, 5 (6) December 1919, p.162.
- ^ Tony Barrow, "The Newcastle whaling trade 1752–1849," The Mariner's Mirror, 75 (3) August 1989, p.234.
- ^ A.M. Barrigan, Bernard Stonehouse & Robb Robinson, "A newly discovered Arctic whaling journal," The Mariner's Mirror, 94 (3) April 2008, p.331.
- ^ Conrad Dixon, "The Exeter Whaling Company," The Mariner's Mirror, 62 (3) August 1976, p.225.
- ^ A.G.E. Jones,"The whaling trade of Ipswich 1786–1793," The Mariner's Mirror, 40 (4) November 1954, p.297.
- ^ James Gray, "The Peterhead whaling ship Eclipse," The Mariner's Mirror, 23 (4) November 1937, p.446.
- ^ Stonehouse, Bernard. "British Arctic whaling House of Lords records (dataset) 2013". Retrieved 14 September 2018.
- ^ a b c Jackson, p.63.
- ^ Jackson, p.64.
- ^ a b Jackson, p.70
- ^ a b Jackson, p.73.
- ^ Jackson, p.74.
- ^ Jackson, p.86-7.
- ^ Jackson, p.81.
- ^ Jackson, p.84.
- ^ Jackson, p.119.
- ^ Jackson, p.119
- ^ Jackson, p.121.
- ^ Rhys Richards, Into the South Seas; the southern whale fishery comes of age on the Brazil Banks 1765–1812, Wellington, New Zealand, The Paremata Press, 1994, p.14.
- ^ Richards (1994) p.14.
- ^ a b "Facts in the British Southern Whale Fishery – drawn from data in the BSWF Databases and Website" (PDF). Retrieved 2023-10-20.
- ^ Clayton (2014) p.7.
- ^ Clayton (2016) p.80.
- ^ Clayton (2014), p.11.
- ^ Clayton (2014) p.11.
- ^ Clayton (2014) p.114.
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- ^ Christopher G. Maxworthy, “British whalers, merchants and smugglers and contraband trade on the Pacific coast of South America 1783–1810, Derroteros de la Mar del Stir, no.15 (2007) p.78 [4]
- ^ Stackpole, p.344 & 350.
- ^ Chris Maxworthy, “Privateering and voyaging from Sydney during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1793–1815),” History (Magazine of the Royal Australian Historical Society) No. 117, December 2013, pp.16–17.
- ^ J.S. Cumpston, Shipping arrivals & departures, Sydney, 1788–1825, Roebuck, Canberra, 1977, p.16.
- ^ Cumpston, p.16.
- ^ Maxworthy (2007) 77–86.
- ^ Edouard A. Stackpole, Whales and Destiny: the rivalry between America, France, and Britain for control of the Southern Whale Fishery, 1785–1825, University of Massachusetts Press, 1972, p.282.
- ^ A.G.E. Jones, Ships employed in the South Seas trade 1775–1861, Roebuck, Canberra, 1986, p.258.
- ^ Dale Chatwin, "Findings from an analysis of data in the British Southern Whale Fishery (1775–1859) datasets," The Great Circle 40 (2) November 2018, p.41.
- ^ Jane Clayton, “The development of a Southern Whale Fishery from Britain between 1775 and 1815,” PhD thesis, University of Wales, Swansea, 2002. P.99.
- ^ Jones, p.180.
- ^ J.N. Tonnessen & A.O. Johnsen, The history of modern whaling, C. Hurst & Company and Australian National University Press, London & Canberra, 1982, p.17-20.
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- ^ Jackson, p.164.
- ^ Jackson, p.165.
- ^ Jackson, p.167
- ^ Jackson, p.171; Tonnessen & Johnsen, p.150-1.
- ^ Tonnessen & Johnsen, p.172.
- ^ Jackson, p.172.
- ^ a b Jackson, p.173.
- ^ Jackson, p.173
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- ^ Jackson, p.184.
- ^ Jackson, p.193.
- ^ Jackson, p.194.
- ^ Tonnessen & Johnsen, p.346.
- ^ Jackson, p.195.
- ^ Jackson, p.201
- ^ Jackson, p.204.
- ^ Jackson, p.209-211
- ^ Jackson, p.218.
- ^ Jackson, p.227
- ^ Jackson, p.228.
- ISBN 978-1-4711-5107-1
- ^ Jackson, p.236
- ^ Jackson, p.237.
- ^ Jackson, p.246-7.
- ^ "Whale imports banned," Nature (London) 242 (5395) 23 March 1973, p.220.
- ^ Shabecoff, Philip (24 July 1982). "Commission Votes to Ban Hunting of Whales". The New York Times.
- ^ "Whaling moratorium under review". 19 July 2004.