“I tell you, they’re oil mad”.1 The Twilight of Britain’s Antarctic Whaling Industry
Lyndsie Bourgon Matriculation #150018736
Supervisor: Dr. John Clark Date of Submission: 18 August 2017
This dissertation is submitted in partial fulfilment of the degree of MLitt Environmental History in the School of History, University of St Andrews.
1 Harry R. Lillie, The Path Through Penguin City, p. 167.
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Candidate's declaration:
I, Lyndsie Bourgon, hereby certify that this MLitt dissertation, which is 14,746 words in length, has been written by me, and that it is the record of work carried out by me, and that it has not been submitted in any previous application for a higher degree.
Date: 18 August 2017
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Abstract: The final days of Britain’s Antarctic whaling industry took place in the years following the Second World War. In considering the factors that led to the decline of the industry, this dissertation argues that societal and technological changes that occurred in tandem with the Second World War influenced – and in some cases, hastened – the final years of the whaling industry. Leaps in technology made it easier to fish for, and process, whales in the waters surrounding Antarctica, and shifts in whale product usage at home altered the way that whaling companies conducted business. At the same time, post-war changes in public conceptions of violence and cruelty influenced the way governments and whalers saw the act of whaling overall. As Britain entered the latter-half of the twentieth century having experienced violence at home and in Europe, the overfishing of whales became another example of cruelty that would soon become intolerable.
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Introduction:
“A small speck near the bottom of an unfamiliar map may be all that South Georgia means to most”. -- Robert Cushman Murphy2
The death rattle of twentieth-century British whaling took place at the edge of the world.
By 1963, whaling in Antarctic waters (indeed, British whaling worldwide) had run its course – the “catch logs”3 of whaling companies showed an ecological and economic loss that had played out over decades. 4 “We all realided that we were near the end of our great whaling venture”, wrote whaling station manager Gerald Elliot, of the early-1960s.5 Britain’s industry would peter out through slow ecological and social demise: whale stocks had been depleted, and thousands of whalers found themselves without work.
This dissertation aims to determine what factors contributed to the end of British-
Antarctic whaling, and how that end was experienced by those who worked in the industry. It argues that three main contributors, nestled together like a matryoshka doll, led to the demise of
Britain’s Antarctic whaling: overfishing, a change in demand for whale products, and a shift in public conceptions of cruelty and morality. A closer look at these factors, in turn, demonstrates the overarching influence of technological and societal changes that arose from the Second World
2 Robert Cushman Murphy, “A Sub-Antarctic Island”, Harper’s Magazine, January 1914,
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War. These changes and their influence on the industry were a precursor to broader anti-whaling sentiment and activism that would take place 20 years later.
A brief overview of Antarctic ecology and a history of the region provides initial and important context for understanding whaling as an economic and social force. What we know as
Antarctic “pelagic” whaling – that is, whaling that took place in the Southern Ocean, as opposed to harvesting from a base at shore – was, in actuality, sub-Antarctic whaling which revolved around the isolated island of South Georgia.6 A crescent-shaped sliver of land sixty-two miles long and eighteen miles wide, South Georgia is located in the waters between Antarctica and the
Falkland Islands.7 It boasts a chain of large, spiky mountains that run through its centre, which slope via glacial valleys towards the shoreline, and the island’s many harbours.8 The core of
South Georgia makes it a unique and particularly useful outpost—unlike neighbouring islands, which were formed by volcanic action, its rocks are sedimentary.9 The coasts were carved via
“drowned topography”, meaning its bays rest on a foundation of old mountain valleys that have been flooded by the ocean. These submerged summits guide undersea currents travelling from the southwest to create a rich feeding ground of crustacea for animals including seals, penguins, seabirds, and whales.10
Britain’s early-modern whaling occurred in the North Atlantic and around Greenland and spanned three hundred years, laying the groundwork for eventual expansion into Antarctic
6 W.F. Budd, “The Scientific Imperative for Antarctic Research” in J. Jabour-Green and M. Haward (eds.), The Antarctic: Past, Present and Future. Antarctic CRC Research Report #28 (Hobart, 2002), p. 43. 7 Harrison L. Matthews, South Georgia: The British Empire’s Subantarctic Outpost, Bristol (1931), p. 1 8 Ibid., p. 1.; R.B. Robertson, Of Whales and Men (London, 1956), p. 57. 9 Matthews, South Georgia., p. 2. 10 Ibid., pp. 4-6, 37.
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waters. A century before northern waters became unproductive, South Georgia had been spotted by merchant explorers, and in 1775 the island was circumnavigated by Captain James Cook.11
Later, the doomed 1916 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (famously led by Ernest
Shackleton) would associate the romanticism and danger of exploration’s Heroic Age with the island’s name.12 The promise of whale oil brought men to South Georgia’s shores permanently in the early-twentieth century—while the potential for whaling in the Southern Ocean had always looked promising, the early-1900s provided the technology needed (such as steam-powered whale catchers and the explosive harpoon) to make it a reality.13 The whales in southern waters consisted of rorqual whales, like the blue and humpback, and sperm whales (sperm oil was so valuable that it was kept pure and separated from the rest).14 Antarctic whaling would go on to become a global industry, though one dominated by two countries: Britain and Norway.15 The
British Colonial Office had turned its gaze toward the region as a site of national interest, because whaling activities could encourage scientific advancement, and economic progress.16 After
Argentina built a station in South Georgia in 1904, the British government established the South
Georgia Company, which leased two harbours along Stromness Bay – Leith Harbour and
Stromness Harbour – separated from one another by low headlands and a dirt track.17 The nerve
11 Gordon Jackson, The British Whaling Trade (London, 1978), p. 97; Robert Clarke, “Whales and Whaling”, Advancement of Science 11(43), 1954, p. 305; Robert Headland, The Island of South Georgia (Cambridge, 1984) p. 17. 12 Budd, “The Scientific Imperative”, p. 46. 13 The explosive harpoon was pioneered by the Norwegian Svend Foyn, whose inventions bridged the divide between what we now know as “modern whaling” and the preceding, handheld harpoon early-modern methods. J.N. Tønnessen and A.O. Johnsen, The History of Modern Whaling (London, 1982), pp. 6-7; John Newton, A Savage History: Whaling in the Pacific and Southern Oceans (New South Wales, 2013), p. 210; Jackson, British Whaling Trade, pp. 97-98, 158-160, 170. 14 Clarke, “Whales and Whaling”, p. 307, 309. 15 Tønnessen and Johnsen, Modern Whaling, pp. 182-187. 16 Matthews, South Georgia, p. 2; Budd, “The Scientific Imperative”, p. 43. 17 Jackson, British Whaling Trade, p. 172; Tønnessen and Johnsen, Modern Whaling, p. 157; John Bannister, Great Whales (Collingwood, 2008), p. 22; Matthews, South Georgia, p. 9; UECSC, Tranche 1, A/140, “Notes on the South Georgia Company”.
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centre of British activity in the region was Leith Harbour, opened in 1909 and leased to the
Edinburgh-based company Salvesen of Leith.18 While two British companies operated in South
Georgia – the other being Hector Whaling – this dissertation focuses on Salvesen, as it was the larger of the two. Leith Harbour was equipped with tin buildings that housed not only living quarters for thousands of whalers and captains, but also full processing plants that did everything from grind whale bones into meal, to melt blubber and produce oil that would be shipped home in barrels.19
The history of commercial fishery trends is an underdeveloped subject in the field of environmental history, in part due to a scientific focus on contemporary trends over analyses of marine population changes over broad swathes of time.20 However, the development of marine history provides scientists with a background in environmental management, and historians the context necessary for understanding larger ecological trends.21 As marine scholars have argued, a fundamental aspect of environmental history is identifying the equilibrium between ecosystems and human societies.22 Marine history, however, is most often built upon statistical records compiled from company catch logs and national records.23 Likewise, the history of modern
Antarctic whaling is often an inherently economic undertaking, analysed through barrel counts, bags of meat meal, and quotas of whales caught. In analysing the decline of Western whaling, the major works, such as J.N. Tønnessen and A.O. Johnsen’s tome The History of Modern Whaling
18 This dissertation refers to the company simply as “Salvesen” for clarity. 19 Vamplew, Salvesen, p. 213. 20 Poul Holm, David J. Starkey and Tim D. Smith, The Exploited Seas: New Directions for Marine Environmental History (St. John’s, 2001), p. xiii. 21 Holm, Starkey and Smith, The Exploited Seas, p. xiii. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid., p. xiv.
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and Gordon Jackson’s The British Whaling Trade, agree that through technological advancement and changing markets, whaling could not remain profitable.24 Alongside this, political historians have deconstructed the diplomatic history of the International Whaling Commission (IWC), arguing that there was a failure not only in corporate restraint, but in the establishment and monitoring of government-assigned quotas.25 Despite the fact that more than half of all whales officially killed in Antarctica were hunted in the years following the Second World War, the links between these changes and the war have not been expressly unravelled—a closer consideration of the implications of war promises insight into larger cultural forces applied to the whaling industry.26 Similarly, considerations of Salvesen’s whaling enterprises have been chronicled through memoir from company executives and inspectors, but oral histories collected from former whalers have thus far been underrepresented in whaling historiography.27 The scholar
Bjorn Basberg has applied a social historian’s gaze to the happenings on whaling ships and deconstructed the ship-like social organisation of shore stations, for example, but most employee- level perspectives primarily come from published primary sources. 28 As Basberg notes, industrial decline has been extensively researched within business and economic history: the following aims to consider that decline from a tightrope strung between the social and economic realms. 29
24 Tønnessen and Johnsen, History of Modern Whaling, pp. 608-609; Jackson, British Whaling Trade, p. 258; Vamplew, Salvesen, p. 253. 25 See Elliot, Whaling Enterprise; Jackson, British Whaling Trade; Tønnessen and Johnsen, Modern Whaling; and Kurkpatrick Dorsey’s Whales and Nations: Environmental Diplomacy on the High Seas (Seattle, 2013). 26 Jackson, British Whaling Trade, p. 239. 27 Including Graeme Somner’s From 70 North to 70 South: A History of the Christian Salvesen Fleet (Edinburgh, 1984), Wray Vamplew’s Salvesen of Leith (Edinburgh, 1974), and W.R.D. McLaughlin’s Call to the South: A Story of British Whaling in Antarctica (London, 1976). 28 Bjorn Basberg, “A Ship Ashore? Organisation and Living Conditions at South Georgia Whaling Stations, 1904- 1960”, International Journal of Maritime History XIV(1), June 2002. 29 Bjorn Basberg, “A Crisis that Never Came: The decline of the Antarctic Whaling Industry in the 1950s and 1960s”, The Mariner’s Mirror 99(20), May 2013, p. 197.
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While the Second World War presaged much of the whaling industry’s final days, the efficiency of Leith Harbour was also tied to the upheavals of the First World War. In the lead-up to that war, the whaling industry’s processes were modernised and honed for efficiency—for instance, the process of hydrogenation facilitated en masse production of margarine.30 After war broke out, whale oil also became of crucial importance beyond foodstuffs. It acted as a vital ingredient in glycerol, a residue from soap making that was used in the production of explosives.31 As stocks of oil were depleted during wartime shortages, the government eased regulations on operations in the Antarctic, and British companies were free to whale throughout the conflict.32 This would lead, however, to irreparable damage to the humpback whale stocks in the waters around South Georgia. Humpbacks have a reputation for being lazy and sociable whales, meaning they required relatively little effort to hunt and kill and were thus easier for whaling companies like Salvesen to harvest. 33 Eventually, overfishing would deplete their numbers, forcing a shift towards hunting rorqual.34 By 1926, it was clear that a scarcity of blue whales should also be expected, and catchers were forced to turn to smaller whales, like the fin, to make their quotas. Still, whaling companies believed there were, “more and better whales over the horizon…”35 In the interwar years, serious measures were put in place to encourage whaling outside of the immediate vicinity of South Georgia.36 Salvesen invested heavily in new vessels that would allow them to expand out from whaling near the bay.37 These massive, 10,000-ton
30 Jackson, British Whaling Trade, p. 179. 31 Ibid., p. 176; Matthews, South Georgia, p. 143. 32 Jackson, British Whaling Trade, pp. 176-77. 33 Ibid., p. 163, p. 173; Matthews, South Georgia, p. 38. 34 Matthews, South Georgia, p. 147. 35 Jackson, British Whaling Trade, p. 197. 36 Ibid., p. 195. 37 Ibid., p. 193.
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“floating factory” ships were manned by hundreds of whalers that would butcher and process whales at sea. This left catchers free to travel further into the open ocean to find more whales – they simply caught a whale, placed a flag in it to be identified by factory ships, and sailed off to chase more.38 Hauls were then delivered to factory ships, overcoming the logistical hurdle of carcasses rotting beyond usefulness before reaching Leith Harbour.39
This era of immense harvest with exalted technology did not last. Declining oil prices in the late 1920s suddenly made whaling inefficient. At the same time, it was easier than ever to take more whales, and the hunting grounds had extended.40 By the 1930/31 season, consumers had shifted away from paying for whale oil.41 The next season, all countries other than Britain had stopped whaling.42 It proved a temporary slump, caused by investment in technology that produced a glut of whale oil and allowed an ease in overfishing. Natural resource industries are cyclical – this dissertation argues that the British-Antarctic whaling industry in the mid-twentieth century fell to similar forces that almost crushed the industry right after the First World War. 43
The outbreak of the Second World War prolonged whaling’s life and fundamentally altered the world in which the industry would then be asked to operate within. However, the lead up to 1963 was influenced greatly by the changing atmosphere of post-war Britain. This era marked a change not only in the processes of whaling, but the public perception of cruelty as well. Using a thematic structure to understand the overlapping forces at play in the demise of an industry, this
38 Tønnessen and Johnsen, History of Modern Whaling, p. 335. 39 Ibid., p. 201. 40 Ibid, pp. 204-205; Vamplew, Salvesen, p. 188. 41 Tønnessen and Johnsen, History of Modern Whaling, p. 386-387. 42 Ibid., p. 391. 43 Jeffrey Frankel, “The Natural Resource Curse: A Survey”, NBER Working Paper #15836, 13 May 2011,
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dissertation demonstrates the cyclical nature of the whaling industry and the societal changes that affected it. Beginning with a consideration of overfishing, the first chapter argues that advancements in technology (especially brand new factory ships) that arose from the Second
World War influenced the number of whales that could easily be taken from the seas surrounding
South Georgia. In a bid to control the number of whales being harvested, new international organisations and agreements emerged. However, a post-war turn towards international cooperation – witnessed within the microcosm of whaling, as well as in a broader political context – was not enough to undo the ecological damage that had already been placed on whale stocks. 44 Paired with this ease in overfishing, the second chapter argues that public demand for whale products had shifted towards new markets that could not economically support the industry. While post-war governmental initiatives aimed to expand demand for whale products, it quickly became apparent to both government and business that whale by-products were no longer considered “useful” enough to continue the practice. The final chapter considers post-war
Britain’s conceptions of “usefulness” itself, which had emerged as an issue of morality in the public sphere. Linked to perceptions of cruelty, the harvesting of whales came to be considered cruel and pointless in the twentieth century.
This dissertation utilises archival, primary, and secondary sources, as well as oral history testimonials gathered from sixteen former Salvesen whalers living across Scotland.45 A disproportionate number of Scottish whalers came from Shetland, and many of these interviews
44 Thomas Bernauer, “Effect of International Environmental Institutions: How We Might Learn More”, International Organization 49(2), Spring 1995, p. 353. 45 These employees were all men, though an attempt was made to seek out women for perspective on British whaling from home and to fill a gap in women’s history. The surviving whalers, however, were in their late-teens and early- 20s while whaling, and unmarried at the time. Their mothers and sisters had, in many cases, passed away.
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address in detail the aspects of whaling life that drew Shetlanders to employment with Salvesen in such numbers.46 The content from these interviews is presented throughout the dissertation in the “analysis of life stories” format.47 This method interweaves quotations with historical analysis, in this case provided by printed and recorded primary and secondary sources. 48 Various catcher and factory ships inspectors kept detailed log books of their catches, as well as scientific notes. Salvesen and its employees provide us with a background from which to understand technological advancement in whaling and how those changes were linked to morality and humanity in the latter-half of the twentieth century.
The drawbacks to oral history – selective editing by the author, for example, and the risk of misplacing quotes in context and time – are outweighed in this case by the creation of a multi- dimensional picture drawn from various sources.49 The purpose of conducting oral history on this subject was to collect memories from former whalers in an attempt to understand the end of the industry from the ship’s deck-level.50 Still, the process of collecting, interpreting, and utilizing oral sources and personal memory is flawed. This analysis of the end of the twentieth- century whaling industry came up against a number of challenges. In arranging to collect oral testimonies, whalers were sourced and contacted through internet research and word of mouth; many are members of the Salvesen Ex-Whalers Club branches in Edinburgh and Lerwick. This has provided a skewed data-set of men who are club members, who are open to publicly talking about whaling and who, in many cases, have already done so. The Ex-Whalers Club offers an
46 Vamplew, Salvesen of Leith, p. 220. 47 Humphries, Handbook of Oral History, p. 52. 48 Ibid., p. 52. I have drawn inspiration for this structure from Paul Thompson’s The Edwardians: The Remaking of British Society (London 1992). 49 Humphries, Handbook of Oral History, p. 52. 50 Ibid., p. 4.
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interesting lens through which to consider oral history – the club meets a few times a year for social occasions, where memories of their time in Antarctica are shared. However, there is a risk that collective experience has influenced the memories of club members, and that some members felt unable to speak up during group interviews. As well, whalers with unique perspectives have surely been overlooked and remain un-interviewed due to factors such as social isolation.
These challenges are applicable across oral history as a discipline. As interviews have been conducted more than 40 years after the end of whaling in the Antarctic, it should be expected that memories have faded or been altered by collective experience. Particularly unique to this subject, as well, is a reckoning with hindsight bias – that is, that conceptions of past events are rendered clearer in their understanding now than they were at the time.51 In this regard, historians have addressed challenges in perceptions of the idea of “decline” in and of itself.52 An analysis of the interviews show that whalers consistently agree that the end of the whaling industry had become obvious by the mid-1950s, but it can be argued that the years in between have made that realisation clearer. Likewise, in some cases there was an expression of guilt or wrongdoing in relation to animal welfare that may not have been considered unethical at the time.
In collecting the interviews, challenges in inter-subjectivity were also present. The oral history interview is, in some cases, a three-way conversation, between the interviewer, the interviewee, and culture as a whole.53 As the interviewer is also, in this case, the narrator, it’s important to frame the interviews within as filtered through the lens of a non-Scot woman. In one case in particular, a whaler was quick to point out that some stories would be held back for this reason.54
51 Donald A. Ritchie, Doing Oral History (Oxford, 2002), p. 10. 52 T.M. Devine and R.J. Finlay, Scotland in the Twentieth Century (Edinburgh, 1996), p. 3. 53 Lynn Abrams, Oral History Theory (London, 2010), p. 54. 54 Gilbert A. Fraser, 12 July 2017, Appendix A, p. 45.
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Related to this, in analysing the interviews the historian was challenged in the process of transcription due to issues related to both inter-subjectivity and content. Interviews have been transcribed authentically and with phonetic spelling, to preserve the content, rhythm, and intonation of the subject’s speech.55 In some cases, the word “indecipherable” has been placed in square brackets where a sentiment could not be properly heard and translated. In evaluating and presenting the content, interviews have been mined for internal consistency and cross-checked with other sources.
55 Humphries, Handbook of Oral History, p. 44.
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Chapter One: Overfishing
“All we were thinkin’ was whales all de time.” -- David Clark56
The murmurings in South Georgia were consistent, throughout 1950s: there wouldn’t be many years left for whaling.57 During his first season on a catcher, 1954/55, a former mess boy recalled, “... the gunner said, ‘Son, get out of this’”.58 But on 12 January 1959, when Salvesen manager Gerald Elliot stood in front of the cinema at Leith Harbour, addressing his employees, the message was softer. Elliot was at the helm of whaling operations during the last gasps of
Antarctic whaling, but in front of the crowd he concluded his speech, “... with the hope that whaling can be continued in the south for fifty years in the future as it has for fifty years in the past”.59 By then, it had become apparent that Britain’s Antarctic whaling industry was on the wane. The season of his movie theatre speech, Salvesen’s whale oil production had been low: fewer than 100,000 barrels of whale oil were produced.60 British whaling in Antarctica was facing a crisis – having rebounded following the Second World War, it was now undergoing a slow decline. In only a few years, Salvesen would sell its factory ships to their Japanese competitors, and shutter Leith Harbour.
56 David Clark, 12 July 2017, Appendix A, p. 15. 57 Alf Hughes, 15 June 2017, Appendix A, p. 50; Jimmy Smith, 10 July 2017, Appendix A, p. 83; Dan Thompson, 11 July 2017, Appendix A, p. 104; Alister Thomason, 11 July 2017, Appendix A, p. 113; Tammie Thomson, 11 July 2017, Appendix A, p. 94; John Winchester, 12 July 2017, Appendix A, p. 118. 58 Norman Jamieson, 8 July 2017, Appendix A, p. 59. 59 StAUL, MS38600/1/6/SG/23, Gerald Elliot, “Whaling at South Georgia 1904-1959: Transcript of a Talk Given by Mr. G.H. Elliot in Leith Harbour Cinema, 12.1.59”, p. 8. 60 StAUL, MS38600/1/6/SG/24, “Whaling Report Season, 1959/60”, 11 April 1960.
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In examining the decline of Britain’s Antarctic whaling, this chapter considers the role of overfishing in the final days of the industry, arguing that an aggressive post-war “take” of whales hastened the lifecycle of commercial whaling. 61 While the post-war years were not consistently profitable for Salvesen, the industry as a whole produced large amounts of whale oil into and throughout the 1950s.62 This harvest was assisted by the adoption of improved wartime technologies (like new factory and catcher ships, and the introduction of ASDIC), which made it easier to chase, kill, and process whales. Easier catches led to overfishing and, thus, a rapid – and noticeable – decrease in whale stocks. The response to this decrease provides an interesting example of post-war diplomacy and a turn towards internationalisation (through establishment of the IWC and its quotas) that is largely considered to have failed. In the following chapter, oral histories provide observations of decline over multiple seasons. Whalers witnessed the introduction of post-war technologies, and through these technologies experienced the ease in harvesting first hand. In this regard, many of the whalers interviewed remembered the whaling industry as on “borrowed time” by the mid-1950s, but that there was no concerted effort to slow the stopwatch. 63
To consider war-time technology’s effects on whale stocks, we must first define
“overfishing” in relation to whaling. For traditional fisheries, the threshold for overfishing is defined individually for each species, but the concept is generally understood as the depletion of
61 The terms “kill” and “take” have been used interchangeably by organisations like the IWC when referring to the harvest of whales. For consistency in tone, “take” is used throughout. Arne Kalland, Unveiling the Whale: Discourses on Whales and Whaling (New York, 2009), p. 110. 62 Elliot, Whaling Enterprise, p. 119; Vamplew, Salvesen, p. 297; Tønnessen and Johnsen, History of Modern Whaling, p. 749. 63 John Alexander, 13 June 2017, Appendix A, p. 11; Winchester, p. 120; Thomson, p. 94.
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target-species in marine environments.64 Under this definition, the whale is “fished” (despite being a mammal, which is more often discussed in terms of hunting) on account of its habitat, and whale stocks are managed in the context of ocean ecosystems as opposed to hunting grounds.
Overfishing, in this dissertation, is understood as the taking of whales to an extent that the marine ecological system is impacted. It is common in most fisheries that the initial years of an industry often chart low catch numbers in relation to stock, but that numbers increase intensely until a threat to stock levels is felt.65 The history of whaling is no different, and is largely predicated on the exploitation of one species of whale after another.66 In twentieth-century whaling, the threshold for sustainable whaling was variable and determined each year by governments and agencies, which were only latterly preventative in terms of species conservation. In this sense, whaling existed within a historically cyclical pattern. “The fisherman’s problem”, as Arthur
McEvoy dubbed it, posited that there was no reward for restraint. 67 This theory was present in whaling – a fish left in the ocean would surely be fished by a company’s competition, but its catch would hasten the end of the fisherman’s own work. The consequences of ignoring the
“fisherman’s problem”, however – the risk of a depleted industry – were not always remembered, as witnessed in Scotland: as Britain’s leading whaling port at the end of the nineteenth century,
Dundee saw an erosion of the whaling industry with the introduction of new equipment. 68 Later,
British companies would partake in the near decimation of whaling in the 1930s.69 Salvesen, its
64 Marta Coll, Simone Libralato, Sergi Tudela, Isabel Palomera and Fabio Pranovi, “Ecosystem Overfishing in the Ocean”, PLoS ONE 3(12),
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longevity accompanied by an institutional memory of the “problem”, took overfishing into account selectively. For instance, while almost all Salvesen gunners were Norwegian, Harold
Salvesen insisted it was not cost effective to train British men to become gunners: “If we could only rely on another 20 years,” he said, in the 1930s, “it would be worthwhile.”70
Of course the industry would go on to last another twenty years, indebted to the Second
World War. By the 1940/41 season, all catcher and factory ships had been requisitioned for use within the war effort.71 The mind-set behind this was utilitarian – British fleets would benefit from the large ships used in whaling, which could also haul large equipment like tankers. A break in commercial whaling during the Second World War also helped whale stocks replenish themselves in the five years between expeditions. However, war would also devastate the whaling industry’s equipment. The German military had diminished the mercantile marine and
Royal Navy through U-boats, Luftwaffe, surface raiders, and acoustic mines. By the end of the war, Salvesen’s twenty-eight vessels, tankers, and floating factories had been lost or seriously damaged.72 The catchers that remained were in bad shape, and there was a shortage of men to operate them.73 Still, as A.J.P. Taylor concluded, the Second World War:
...stimulated or created new industries which could hold their own in peacetime. During the second World war, and not before, Great Britain took the decisive step into the twentieth century…”74
Evolution of an Industry (Sandefjord, 1993) p. 157; Elliot, Whaling Enterprise, p. 51; Vamplew, Salvesen, pp. 156- 157. 70 Elliot, Whaling Enterprise, p. 31. 71 Ibid., p. 46; Vamplew, Salvesen, p. 232 72 Elliot, Whaling Enterprise, p. 48; Vamplew, Salvesen, p. 117; Tønnessen and Johnsen, History of Modern Whaling, p. 743. 73 Elliot, Whaling Enterprise, p. 50-51. 74 A.J.P. Taylor, English History: 1914-1945 (Oxford, 1965), p. 600.
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This would prove beneficial for Salvesen, which had lobbied the importance of whale oil in easing food and synthetic shortages at home, and found success in convincing the government to invest rationed steel in new floating factories (the Southern Venturer and Southern Harvester) to allow the opening of South Georgia’s shore stations for the 1945/46 season.75 These brand new factory ships were in better condition than their cobbled-together predecessors, and were well-equipped to withstand a longer period at sea.76 Larger in size, they could hold more product, and operate more catchers.77 Two were fitted with large refrigerators (or “reefers”), a technology that had expanded throughout Europe during the war.78 This allowed catchers to travel further into the waters away from South Georgia, as whales could be processed and their by-products stored for longer periods on the factory ship. New catchers, refurbished from
Britain’s wartime Liberty-style ships, could now be away from shore for four months at a time, and were fast enough to expand the radius they could travel from factory ships in a given day. 79
All this enabled high-quality processing at sea, and a larger take of whales as ships strayed further from Leith Harbour.80 One whaler describes the benefits of a faster catcher:
De gunner always tried to pick out de biggest and best… and when de whales were runnin’ as dey said... well we did about 18 knots and it still might take you an hour or two to overtake them when dey were runnin’.81
Whaling also benefit from improvements in its own technology. Corvettes, a small coastline boat
75 Basberg, “Survival”, p. 162; Taylor, English History, p. 35, 600. 76 Basberg, “Survival”, p. 164. 77 Clarke, “Whales and Whaling”, p. 309. 78 "Whale-Meat on the Menu: New Dish at London Luncheon." Times, 30 November 1946, p. 2; Alain Drouard, The Food Industries of Europe in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Oxon, 2013), p. 8; David Edgerton, Britain’s War Machine: Weapons, Resources, and Experts in the Second World War (Oxford, 2011), p. 167. 79 Clark, p. 13,; Edgerton, Britain’s War Machine, p. 161. 80 Basberg, Survival, 162. 81 Fraser, p. 42.
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that Winston Churchill had dubbed “cheap and nasties”, had been developed as whaling equipment before the Royal Navy adopted their blueprints.82 After the war, Salvesen replenished their stock with Navy-built corvettes that had more horsepower, and which could be used for towing whales.83
On board, it became apparent how advanced war-time technologies could change the process of whaling. For one, the invention of nylon as a synthetic for parachute material improved the strength and weather resistance of foregoer ropes, which unravelled behind the harpoon and were used to rein in the dead whales.84 Along with improved ships, the war brought new technologies for tracking whales. While visiting a Salvesen factory ship, Elliot remembers realising “…that the job was unworthy of human labour and could be mechanised; and mechanise it we did.”85 Developed in the mid-1930s but perfected and extensively adopted by the Allied forces in 1943, the Royal Navy’s ASDIC radar (named after the Anti-Submarine Detection
Inspection Committee) technology revolutionised the way the Royal Navy monitored for ships and U-boats, by honing in on underwater noises and echoes.86 At the end of the war, Navy
ASDIC was rebranded as the “Echo Whale-Finder” by Kelvin Hughes, the company that re-sold them to whaling firms.87 The technology used ultrasonic sound pulses and the reception of echo to help captains position their boats strategically after a whale had sounded, and eventually
82 Nathan Miller, War at Sea: A Naval History of World War II (Oxford, 1995), pp. 104. 83 Ibid., pp. 104-105; Smith, p. 83. 84 Nylon companies would later market the product as necessary for the consumer’s beauty – and whaling – needs. (See Appendix C). “New Twist in Synthetic Fibres”, Economist, 7 April 1956, p. 69; Peter Johnsen (ed.), The Structure of British Industry (London, 1988), p. 119; Tønnessen and Johnsen, Modern Whaling, p. 693. 85 Elliot, Whaling Enterprise, p. 76. 86 Derek Howse, Radar at Sea: The Royal Navy in World War 2 (Hampshire, 1993), p. 3; Angela D’Amico and Richard Pittenger, “A Brief History of Active Sonar”, Aquatic Mammals 35(4) 2009, pp. 426-427. 87 Robert L. Brownell, Jr., Douglas P. Nowacek, and Katherine Ralls, “Hunting cetaceans with sound: A worldwide review”, (2008) Publications, Agencies and Staff of the U.S. Department of Commerce. 94.
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provided an alternative for human-eyes in the detection and chasing of whales.88 ASDIC improved efficiency, giving the gift of time. Catchers, then, could more efficiently follow the movement of whales in relation to their sounding.89 “Thus”, reported The Times, “the element of surprise, at least from the gunner’s point of view, has been eliminated.”90 The technology was not an uncontroversial addition to whaling, however. Many gunners argued that ASDIC released a sound under water that scattered concentrations of whales. In the words of David Clark, who was trained in ASDIC on the Salvesen catcher Southern Opal:
Well, put it this way. If you come up among a lot of whales and they’re blowin’, if you was to put the ASDIC on, whoosh! They were off. So the beam, I’m not sayin’ like electric shock, but it certainly set them off.91
ASDIC was also incredibly sensitive to jolting motions – only in good weather, it was argued, did it provide an advantage.92
Almost immediately after the war, as well, whaling took to the sky, applying Air Force equipment in the tracking of whales. Though the helicopter had only been in experimental phases in 1939, Britain had entered the Second World War at the forefront of aviation design, and by the end of the war the technology had been refined.93 Conveniently, the widespread financial devastation of conflict left Britain one of the only countries in the world capable of building and
88 Ibid.; Clarke, “Whales and Whaling”, p. 310. 89 “Sounding” is the action of a whale’s dive underwater, and can be spotted not only through sound but by searching for a slick mark left on the surface of the water. One gunner claimed, however, that he could “smell the bastards”. Robertson, Men and Whales, p. 96. 90 "Echo-Whale Finders on Trial." Times, 27 November 1952, p. 2. 91 Clark, p. 18. 92 StAUL, MS38600/1/6/SG/24, Commander H.M. Hughes, “Whaling report, 1957/58 season”. 93 Matthew R.H. Uttley, Westland and the British Helicopter Industry, 1945-1960: Licensed Production versus Indigenous Innovation (London, 2001), pp. 15-19.
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maintaining aircraft and their components, which were then applied to industry.94 In 1947, Wing
Commander John Grierson wrote an account of his involvement in whale-spotting from a helicopter above the catchers: “Our first job on the whaling grounds was to try spotting sperm whales”,95 he wrote:
On the first whale-spotting flight a smoke-marker was dropped on the spot where a sperm had been seen to sound, and a whaleboat was led to the spot, where three whales were taken in quick succession…96
Cdr. Grierson’s account of spotting whales detailed how a whale’s course of movement could be monitored from the air and communicated to the catcher via the factory ship’s radio room. The crew had been trained in identification by the British Museum’s natural history department in
London: “We found little difficulty in identifying these monsters”, he wrote. 97 Notably, the use of helicopters in whaling was accompanied by the language of military might: “The use of the helicopter has shown that the whale does not fear anything above the surface of the sea”, wrote one newspaper report. “Attempts will be made to fire rockets from the aircraft”.98
On the back of conflict, concepts of internationalism were advancing across industries and realms, and commercial whaling was no different. Technological advances, paired with the respite in catching that allowed whale numbers to replenish, meant a strong showing in the
1945/46 season.99 Subsequently, the 1946 Washington Convention established strict fishing
94 Uttley, British Helicopter Industry, p. 201. 95 John Grierson, “Antarctic Whaling.” Times, 7 May 1947, p. 5. 96 Ibid. 97 Ibid. 98 "Use Of Helicopters In Whaling." Times, 6 Oct. 1952, p. 6. 99 Tønnessen and Johnsen, Modern Whaling, p. 749.
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quotas, and formed the 1949 International Whaling Commission (IWC) to monitor them.100 The quota system demonstrates how, in many ways, whaling was caught in the crosshairs of a new world order. Political internationalism through the United Nations after 1945 had bled into economics, creating a global market on which whaling was reliant. International conventions, conferences and exhibitions, such as the IWC, had also became common. While whaling countries had already recommitted to minimum-length restrictions on whales (which were put in place through the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling in 1937), the IWC also introduced a provision on overall catch. 101 This provision was not distinguished by country, but was a worldwide quota reached amongst all whaling fleets, to be monitored by impartial inspectors on each factory ship.102 The quotas were measured by “blue whale units”, or “BWUs”
– one BWU was equivalent to two fin whales, six sei whales, or two and a half humpbacks, and reported at the end of each day.103 At the beginning of each season, then, whalers were given the quota and a rush into the seas occurred, leading one scholar to observations of the “whale
Olympics.”104 The 1951/52 season would be the highest season on record, with just over 35,000
BWUs caught and 2,479,180 barrels of oil produced.105
Challenges accompanied international whaling regulations, which have been counterintuitively blamed for the overfishing of whale stocks and near-total ecological
100 William Cronon, “Introduction” in Dorsey, Whales and Nations, p. x; Elliot, Whaling Enterprise, pp. 51-52; P.J. Clapham and C.S. Baker, “Modern Whaling”, in W.F. Perrin, B. Wursig and J.G.M. Thewissen (eds.), Encyclopedia of Marine Mammals, p. 1331; Tønnessen and Johnsen, p. 9. 101 Cronon, “Introduction”, in Dorsey, Whales and Nations, p. x. 102 Elliot, Whaling Enterprise, pp. 51-52; Gambell, “How Whales Survive”, p. 201. 103 Clapham and Baker, “Modern Whaling” p. 1331. 104 Hughes, p. 50; Hope M. Babcock, “Putting a Price on Whales to Save Them: What Do Morals Have to do With It?” Environmental Law 43(1), p. 5; Gambell, “How Whales Survive”, p. 196. 105 Vamplew, Salvesen, p. 297.
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collapse.106 The establishment of international organisations, for instance, required a level of compromise that left scientists, industry, and government displeased.107 In a bid to entice countries to join, quotas were made voluntary, and whaling nations were free to leave the IWC and continue apart from its regulations if they desired.108 By March 1955, reports from the
Antarctic stated that competition between each expedition had become fierce, and that whales had been scarce.109 That season was a turning point – after the IWC dropped the blue whale quota from 15,000 to 10,000 in the lead-up, a compromise was struck between science and industry to open the protected Bellinghausen Sea region for fishing.110 The repercussions of this was a veritable flood of whales suddenly available for catching, leading to a sharp spike in the take, and the loss of a protected marine habitat that whales relied upon.
Whalers experienced quotas as detached from the process of whaling. One recalled the annual quota as “governin’ itself”.111 Another said that regulations were formed aside from industry: “...de regulations was made so remotely from where fishin’ is takin’ place dat people makin’ the regulations doesn’t seem to understand it”.112 Of the relationship between regulations and fishing itself, said Tammie Thomson, a former winch operator:
It was just what was happenin’ and you had virtually no vote on it, it was just a case dat if you had a job and it was paid reasonably well, as dey say – better de devil you know dan de one you don’t.113
106 Brian Harrison, Seeking a Role: The United Kingdom 1951-1970 (Oxford, 2011), p. 71-73. 107 Elliot, Whaling Enterprise. p. 91. 108 Tønnessen and Johnsen, Modern Whaling, p. 401. 109 “Antarctic Whaling”, Times, 23 March 1955, p. 11. 110 Elliot, Whaling Enterprise, pp. 91-114. 111 Jamieson, p. 63. 112 Thompson, p. 105. 113 Thomson, p. 95.
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For whalers, the repercussions of ambitious fishing also led to compromise in personal economics. Gunners, for instance, gave up individual bonuses by the 1957/58 season, and instead chose to proceed with a “pool” system. Not only did this ensure a general bonus for everyone, but it made it likelier for catchers to tow each others’ whales to factory ships in order to guarantee product.114 The shift suggests an understanding from whalers, unions, and management that a changing ecological system would mean an altered industry.
Between 1959 and 1963, frustration with the IWC led countries like Norway and Holland to resign. Harold Salvesen, facing down his industry’s demise, bemoaned the presence of government sanctions on business. In a grandiose statement, he asserted that the last people to trust with the conservation of natural resources were government officials.115 In his view, the blame for excessive whaling lay within the failure of international compromise. But his insistence that business knew better could certainly be questioned: Salvesen also believed that whaling would be best served through the removal of quotas and the fast slaughter of whales. In economic terms, he argued, it would suffice to take as many whales as possible up until the point that they became endangered.116 Then, they would be left alone. At that point, the world’s supply of wealth would rely on back stores of oil, amassed by whaling companies.
However, post-war Britain saw not only a change in technology but in consumer demands as well. Whale oil, which experienced its own cyclical demands, was soon to be edged out of the market by other products, reordering the financial basis of commercial whaling. As we will see
114 Basberg, “Survival”, p. 163. 115 Elliot, Whaling Enterprise, p. 33. 116 Ibid., p. 129.
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in the next chapter, these changes shifted demand for whale products, and left the Antarctic whaling industry in flux.
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Chapter Two: Demand
“Can he who has discovered only some of the values of whalebone and whale oil be said to have discovered the true use of the whale?” -- Henry David Thoreau, The Maine Woods117
The modern whaling industry would not have existed at a commercial level had there been no market for the products born of a whale’s body. However, making effective use of close to 100 tonnes of whale meat, blubber, bone, and teeth is in many ways a unique industrial challenge – for early whalers, it was a challenge eschewed. 118 Whales were harvested primarily for the fat and oils produced from blubber, their bodies “flensed” and meat cast aside, carcasses left to float ashore, and bones and teeth collected for crafts like scrimshaw.119 But alongside twentieth-century industrialisation and modernisation, the use of whale products diversified.
Eventually, whale oil would be used in everything from machine lubricants to anti-freeze, soap to candlewax, varnishes to gelatine.120 By-products, like guano and meat meal, were produced as well, though the design and layout of factory ships and plants had been undertaken with the maximum output of oil in mind.121 While the Second World War ensured that whale oil would be used in glycerine and lubricants (solidifying a robust market), the following decade heralded a forced diversification in the industry due to the plunging price of oil. 122 From this came a market
117 Henry David Thoreau, The Maine Woods (Boston, 1864), p. 124. 118 In the case of the largest blue whales. 119 “Flensing” is the process of removing the layer of blubber between the whale’s flesh and muscle. Many memoirs describe this process as similar to peeling a piece of fruit, using a long handheld blade. Scrimshaw is a series of images carved into the surface of whale teeth. Newton, Savage History, p. 107. 120 StAUL MS38600/1/4/SB/2/2. “Services Rendered”, Sunday Times magazine, 9 April 1989. 121 Both a form of fertiliser, often made from the excrement of marine animals. StAUL MS38600/1/4/SB/4/3. N.A. Mackintosh, “Note on the Development of New Products from Whales”, 6 May 1943. 122 Karl Brandt, “The World Economic Situation of Fats and Oils”, The Journal of the American Oil Chemists’ Society 27(11), November 1950, p. 401.
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for meat meal, meat extract, frozen whale meat, and bone meal.123 The financial returns of these items could not compete aggressively with the price of oil at its peak, and paired with depleting stock numbers, whaling companies would eventually wind down their operations. This chapter argues that changing demand in whale products was linked, just as technology was, to the Second
World War. Benefitting from a sustained wartime market, and coasting on the requirements of rationing afterwards, whale oil’s relevance was secured into the early-1950s. Thereafter, an ease in demand for these items left whaling companies scrambling to monetise the rest of the whale – to interesting, and bizarre ends. Notably, memories and observances of this shift in demand were less concrete for the whalers, likely because these were changes happening at home and in the business world.
During the Second World War, the market for whale oil in Britain was sustained by the need for machine lubricants and hydrogenated oils. A key component necessary in the manufacturing of explosives and stockpiling of food, whale oil was a product at the heart of war, and was subject to strategic control.124 This had a positive impact on the demand for and price of whale oil, which rose in tandem with the pause in whaling between 1940 and 1945.125
Additionally, food policy in wartime Britain was defined by rationing and the social concept of
“fair share” – essentially, the equal dispersal of food for all, in contrast to the free market.126
With that, butter was rationed and margarine – which used whale oil as a hard oil hydrogenator –
123 "Whale Oil By-Products." Times, 13 April 1949, p. 3; Harald H. Roth and Gunter Merz (eds.), Wildlife Resources: A Global Account of Economic Use (Berlin, 1997), p. 231; Robertson, Men and Whales, p. 193. 124 Peter J. Beck, “British Antarctic Policy in the Early 20th Century”, Polar Record 21(134), 1983, p. 478.; Brandt, “Economic Situation”, p. 401. 125 Charlotte Epstein, The Power of Words in International Relations: Birth of an Anti-Whaling Discourse (Cambridge, 2008) pp. 44-45. 126 Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Austerity in Britain: Rationing, Controls and Consumption, 1939-1955 (Oxford, 2000), pp. 4-13; Harold L. Smith (ed.), Britain in the Second World War: A social history (Manchester, 1996), p. 9.
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was relied upon as an alternative.127 Whale oil, then, was in demand on both the home front and the battle front.
At the conclusion of war, demand for whale oil did not immediately halt – the economic utility of whale fat reinforced its importance in food production.128 The winter of 1946 brought with it a number of global food scarcity challenges that would serve to boost demand for whale oil a few more years. David Polson, a tanker captain with a family in Leith at the time, said:
“You must remember, the world was starving after the war. This was an edible oil”.129 Europe, it was reported, was short of bread, meat, and milk; drought had taken over Europe and the United
States, so grain for animal feed was in short supply. 130 Aside from challenges in the weather, post-war farm equipment and fertilisers were lacking.131 Poor rice crops in India meant that the country was forced to rely on groundnuts, which had normally been exported to Britain.132
Through this, and a shortage in machine lubricants that had been heavily used throughout the war, the demand for fats and oil remained constant and in direct relation to the war itself.133
Margarine’s role in the British home (to the chagrin of the British housewife) would continue beyond the official end of conflict, as Britain was on rations into the 1950s.134 “I suppose dat de only contact you really had was margarine, it could have been whale oil in it and you don’t know, dey just sell it at de shop”, said John Winchester, who worked every post-war whaling season.135
127 Tønnessen and Johnsen, Modern Whaling, p. 236; Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Austerity, p. 86. 128 Brandt, “Economic Situation”, p. 401. 129 David Polson, 8 July 2017, Appendix A, p. 73. 130 “The World's Food”, Times, 7 February 1946, p. 5. 131 Ibid. 132 Brandt, “Economic Situation”, p. 405. Exports of groundnuts declined from 1.1 million tons in 1938 to 0.52 million tons in 1948. 133 Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Austerity, p. 145. 134 In fact, after derationing consumption of rationed items increased, except for margarine. Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Austerity, pp. 30-32, 86. 135 Winchester, p. 117.
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Demand, then, spurred whaling’s quick return to South Georgia, where the industry benefit from an increase in both demand and market value.136 The 1946/47 season would be a remarkable one for Antarctic whaling, boasting good weather and an abundance of whales – 25,593 whales were caught, leading to 1.9 million barrels of oil.137 “The result is that we are taking back to Europe a rich harvest of edible whale oil, meat meal (for cattle fodder), and meat extract”, wrote Cmdr
Grierson in The Times, “at one of the most critical moments of need in the history of the world…”138 The market was tied up by a single buyer: Unilever, a company which produced soap and other items from hydrogenated fats, had amassed stores of oil and set the tone for annual selling.139
Like fishing, however, an oil-based economy is inherently cyclical, operating at the whims of supply and market demand. With post-war technological progress, many fats became substitutable, suffering from sensitive prices on the market.140 Having become an integral part of
Britain’s foreign earnings, whaling suddenly found itself at the whims of other resources on the market.141 The price of whale oil would be bolstered by post-war demand, but also depressed by new markets for alternative oils in Britain and abroad after the Second World War. Around
1952, other sorts of oils became more abundant, and the price of whale oil fell from £100 a ton to
£72 a ton.142 As Gilbert A. Fraser, a former mess boy, said: “De world was movin’ on very rapidly and dere were many substitutes. De original whale products were no longer needed”.143
136 Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Austerity, p. 145; Tønnessen and Johnsen, Modern Whaling, pp. 527-528; Basberg, Survival, p. 162. 137 Vamplew, Salvesen, p. 297. 138 Grierson, “Antarctic Whaling”, p. 5. 139 Tønnessen and Johnsen, Modern Whaling, pp. 424-425. 140 Brandt, “Economic Situation”, p. 402. 141 Tønnessen and Johnsen, Modern Whaling, p. 545. 142 Vamplew, Salvesen, p. 245; Jackson, British Whaling Trade, p. 243. 143 Fraser, p. 40.
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The decline of the British whaling industry happened as whale oil was slowly replaced by cheaper vegetable and synthetic oils and petroleum products, made from cotton, flax, and sunflower, for instance, which could be easily mass-produced.144 Eventually, the raw materials used in margarine would change – production continued, but vegetable oils (like palm and coconut) would be used in place of whale oil. The same would happen in the soap industry, where whale oil’s share in the market decreased from thirteen per cent to one per cent at the introduction of synthetic detergents that were developed from the coking of coal or petroleum.145
This left Salvesen struggling to find a use for the oil that they produced, and necessitated a shift away from economic reliance on whale oil to opportunities for whaling’s by-products. 146 Jimmy
Smith, a radio operator, said he heard this in conversations on board:
They were all sayin’ whales gettin’ scarce and the whale oil isn’t fetching the price that it used to fetch. And some of de older hands sayin’ it’s de by-products dat’s keepin’ dis thing goin’ because whale oil prices was down…147
Though shore stations produced guano in the late-1920s, Salvesen’s brand new post-war floating factories came equipped with technology that could mass produce and store by-products more efficiently.148 The manufacturing of meat extract and grinding of meat meal became an integral financial aspect of the whaling business, to be used as protein supplements for products like pet food, fertiliser, and livestock feed.149 By the 1958/59 season, South Georgia’s Magistrate declared that, “...for the first time since Southern whaling began there is little difference between
144 Brandt, “Economic Situation”, p. 402. 145 Ibid., p. 408; Tønnessen and Johnsen, Modern Whaling, p. 529. 146 Ibid., p. 527. 147 Smith, p. 80. 148 Tønnessen and Johnsen, Modern Whaling, p. 91. 149 Vamplew, Salvesen, p. 250.
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the estimated value of the oil production and the total value of other products.’150 At the shore station in Leith Harbour, said Dan Thompson:
… the meat wasn’t being used as meat, because all processing was made into meat meal and all the bones was made into bone meal and the meat extraction plants… that was very essential at dat time.151
Barrels of oil were once the yardstick by which the industry’s fortune was judged.
However, in 1960 the South Georgia Company had sold their annual take of whale by-products for £517,344, compared to oil’s £371,228.152 The wheel of fortune spun on: the following year,
Salvesen produced a massive 10,470 tons of meat meal, while an influx of South American fish oils provided whale oil substitutes that led to a plunge in the price of oil to £40 per barrel.153 By
1962, that price had rebounded in the shadow of the Cuban Missile Crisis.154
While we could see these years as preoccupied by the economic ramifications of the price of whale oil, “usefulness” also played a role in the value of whale by-products. In a bid to prolong the profitability of whale products, industry and government became concerned with the overall efficiency of the whale. A relationship between scientists and whalers, for instance, was established through the government-sponsored Discovery Expedition, which set out to study the biology of whales and their environment in the early days of the twentieth century and throughout the post-war years.155 Concepts of demand took on a new meaning. In formal
150 “Report from the Magistrate, May 10, 1959, South Georgia Archives”, referenced in Basberg, “Survival”, p. 163, footnote 46; StAUL, MS38600/1/6/SG/24, Hughes, “Whaling report”. 151 Thompson, p. 107. 152 StAUL, MS38600/1/6/SG/24, “Whaling Report Season 1959/60”. 153 Vamplew, Salvesen, p. 292; Elliot, Whaling Enterprise, p. 156. 154 UECSC, Tranche 1, A/140, “Whaling Operations”. 155 Gambell, “How Whales Survive”, p. 197.
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requests to Expedition scientists on-board whaling ships, for instance, the marine biologist S.F.
Harmer requested specific whale parts from the factory ship deck: oil from the head cavity of sperm whales, for vitamin A and D, and the ear plugs (which provide insight into the whale’s age).156 Likewise, the Discovery Expedition’s committee was involved in problem solving some of Britain’s most pressing post-war challenges. In the final days of war, government initiatives were formed in expectation of mass-scale food shortages. Alongside sponsoring new ships and catchers, the Ministry of Food used the Discovery Expeditions to research the possibilities of marketing whale as a primary protein to the British public – the meat market was far more lucrative than meat meal.157 This meant research into whale as a possible new food product.
Whale protein provided an opportunity to create demand, rather than simply respond to it.
Alongside grain shortages, the Second World War devastated livestock levels in Europe, which agricultural experts expected could last up to five years. “The production of whale meat might go far to make good the deficit”, wrote N.A. Mackintosh, the Discovery committee’s director of research, in a note on opportunities for new products.158 Whales could provide up to 20 tons of edible meat, apart from the blubber and other items culled from their harvest.159 The Discovery committee had already researched whale meat at their Low Temperature Research Station in
Cambridge, reporting “a strong fishy odour”, though they also argued that “...there is no reason to suppose that it is not wholesome and edible by man… We feel that the possibilities of producing
156 Eric Stokstad, “Peering Into Ancient Ears”, Science 302(5646), 31 October 2003, p. 770; NHM DF/ADM/ 1004/747/3, “Ear Plugs As Clue to Age of Whales”, Times, 23 May 1957. 157 Jackson, British Whaling Trade, 246. 158 StAUL MS38600/1/4/SB/4/3, Mackintosh, “Note on the Development of New Products from Whales”, 6 May 1943. 159 Ibid.
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whale meat as a source of protein food for post-war relief are well worth careful investigation”.160
In earlier correspondence, Mackintosh wrote that whale meat was indistinguishable from beef and could be supplied in immense quantities.161 This meat, carved from the whale’s muscle, was relatively low in oil compared to the rest of the whale’s saturated body, and could be processed and distributed in dried, frozen, and canned forms, as well as high-grade animal feed.162
Tellingly, the scientists argued that some of the sins of earlier overfishing could be avoided by using a more “rational” and wholescale model for whale use: “It is obviously desirable that the best use should be made of those whales which can be spared from the stock”.163 For whalers, whose jobs had shifted into by-product production, this sentiment was echoed: “Dere’s no condonin’ the slaughter of whales”, said Smith, a former radio operator, “but all dat was used, dere was very little latterly dat was dumped”.164
Attempts to spur a demand for whale meat in Britain were unsuccessful. Salvesen and
Hector Whaling were hesitant to invest in a market for whale protein that did not already exist – they tiptoed in, introducing new refrigerator ships in which meat could be frozen and stored without being processed.165 However, the majority of this meat was eventually shipped to Japan, where whale was already an accepted protein.166 Whale meat didn’t gain in popularity in Britain despite attempts to popularise it, for reasons explored more in the next chapter. However, the production of extract from a whale’s meat and blood ended up flavouring soups and stews – in
160 StAUL MS38600/1/4/SB/4/3, Mackintosh to Ministry of Food, 28 August 1943. 161 StAUL MS38600/1/4/SB/4/3, Mackintosh, “Note on the Development of New Products from Whales”, 6 May 1943. 162 Ibid. 163 Ibid. 164 Clark, p. 20. 165 Basberg, “Survival”, p. 163. 166 James A. Estes, Whales, Whaling and Ocean Ecosystems (Berkeley, 2006), p. 91.
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the 1960/61 season, 865 tons of extract was produced.167 This contributed to whaling’s profitability, and meant that the British public was ingesting whale – whether they knew it or not.168
While by-products closed out the industry, not oil, their earnings were not enough to justify continuing.169 The last season of Salvesen whaling earned £800,000 in extract profit – it was “quite a good one”, admitted Elliot – as Southern Harvester produced 9,835 tons of meal.170
But changing demand for whale products coincided with an active and improved catching process, resulting in an overfished Southern Ocean and very few places to sell the whale oil that had once been lucrative. The shift in demand for whale products was inherently linked to war – an inflated industry was first kept afloat in the shadow of war rationing and post-war shortages, but could not manage a market saturated with a large number of whales caught with the help of post-war technologies. Still, the failure of the British-Antarctic whaling industry was also bound up with perceptions of whaling in the post-war years. In his correspondence to a Dr. Kemp,
Mackintosh laid out the work that scientists on board factory ships had done to foster demand and concluded:
All of this work was regarded as more or less secret, the view being, I think, that if whale meat were put on the market its origin might at first have to be concealed owing to public prejudice against whale meat. Also, I suppose, any whaling projects are kept quiet in these days.171
167 Vamplew, Salvesen, p. 292. 168 Elliot, Whaling Enterprise, p. 134. 169 Jackson, British Whaling Trade, p. 246-247. 170 Elliot, Whaling Enterprise, p. 164; Vamplew, Salvesen, p. 292. 171 StAUL MS38600/1/4/SB/4/3, Mackintosh to Kemp, 2 October 1948.
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Public perceptions of morality had come to colour the edges of the whaling industry, present in decisions surrounding the hunting and processing of whales. In the next chapter, the emergence of a post-war morality that made the idea of killing whales distasteful and wrong is explored.
Here, it is apparent through oral histories how public conception of whaling and extinction would have led to an underlying shift away from the whaling industry.
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Chapter Three: Morality
“It would have been a hell of thing to say that you brought a species to extinction. We wouldn’t have liked to have done that”. – Gilbert A. Fraser172
The men of modern whaling had spent their lives in the shadow of war: “Dere was hardly a household dat wasn’t decimated”, said Clark.173 Daniel Morrison’s father died during it; John
Alexander and his siblings were evacuated from their home for the duration.174 Norman
Jamieson, growing up on a croft in Shetland, watched the garden cabbage tremble under the path of a warplane.175 After conflict finished, they made their employment plans accordingly: while there was no exemption from National Service based on privilege, there was exemption for
“usefulness”. Industrial occupations – like whaling, mining, and agricultural work, for instance –
were exempt from being “called up” due to the necessity of their work for the national good. 176
Hence, a pattern in the interviews with former whalers – young men, tramping to National
Service centres with letters of employment from Salvesen:177
A lot of my friends had been put up for conscription and they told me about things and I said, ‘Well that won’t agree with me at all’… I didn’t know anything about whaling, it was just a shot in the dark. It was only to stay away from conscription, that was all.178
172 Fraser, p. 43. 173 Clark, p. 18. 174 Daniel Morrison, 27 June 2017, Appendix A, p. 31; Alexander, p. 1. 175 Jamieson, p. 65. 176 L.V. Scott, “The 1947 National Service Act” in Conscription and the Atlee Governments: The Politics and Policy of National Service 1945-1951 (Oxford, 2011) [e-book: http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198204213.001.0001/acprof-9780198204213- chapter-5?print=pdf], pp. 3-4. 177 Alexander, p. 2; Hughes, pp. 47-48; Thompson, p. 106; George Cummings, 27 June 2017, Appendix A, p. 23; Clark, p. 16; James Yorkston, 27 June 2017, Appendix A, p. 25. 178 Hughes, p. 48.
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This chapter argues that changing perceptions of violence and morality spread across various realms of British life after the Second World War, and that whaling was not unaffected by these changes. While anti-whaling environmentalism was not an immediate consequence of war, the shift towards anti-whaling principles took place across decades, sparked by post-war social change. First, the chapter discusses Britain’s moral landscape following the Second World
War, including public perception of whales and whaling. Debate surrounding the eating of whale and use of the electric harpoon then provide important insight into whaling and morality. The chapter then considers how the hunt for whales was experienced from a moral standpoint by whalers. It closes by arguing that the Second World War and its aftermath were some of the first inklings of anti-whaling activism. Notably, the oral histories in this chapter provide insight into the phenomenon of “hindsight bias” – as broader public consensus has been reached surrounding the cruelty of whaling over time, the majority of whalers interviewed now agree that whaling was
“wrong”, though they may not have considered it as such at the time.
In his deconstruction of the Second World War, A.J.P. Taylor argues that, amongst
Britain’s rubble, “morality accounted for a great deal”.179 The justification for widespread damage and loss of life in war was located in the triumph of “good” over “bad”.180 Likewise, violence had tinged the experiences of a generation of children and young adults who formed opinions and made decisions after having experienced widespread fear and violence.181 The expansion of a new youth culture in the late-1950s and early-1960s grew as “a crusade against
179 A.J.P. Taylor, Origins of the Second World War (London, 1961), p. 189. 180 Harrison, Seeking a Role, p. 532, 539-540. 181 Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson (eds.), Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain (Birmingham, 1976), pp. 19-20.
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the moral bankruptcy of an older generation”.182 As we have read above, young men had eschewed the regimented responsibility of the military, only to strongly identify with the camaraderie and hierarchical micro-societies in Leith Harbour and aboard ships.183 As a changed social structure provided strong social welfare networks, it transformed work into a moral entity that often balanced need and degradation.184 British whalers operated within the “generation gap” between this new youth culture (which included whalers and their peers at home), and the older status quo, which employed them.185 For instance, Don Lennie remembers: “Someone asked, ‘Isn’t that cruel, Don?’ I said, ‘Of course it is!’ I says, ‘But you just gotta shut your ears off and your eyes off for a bit’”.186 A new environmental prism over Britain reflected this moral gap: while motorways were built on green spaces, the end of the 1950s also saw the expansion of wildlife reserves and protected areas for wetlands and coastlands.187 The justification for whaling was made via “usefulness” through its role in restocking Britain’s larders and the ability of
Discovery Expedition scientists to conduct research on board that informed the IWC on stock numbers and migrations.188 In 1960, when the United Nations hired an authority on whales, they chose Dr. Robert Clarke, a Brit aligned with the Ministries of Food and Agriculture, in essence aligning the whaling industry with an opportunity to feed people and animals. 189
182 Ibid. 183 Cummings, p. 23; Morrison, p. 22, 38; Willie Tait, 10 July 2017, Appendix A, p. 91; Winchester, p. 121. 184 Arthur McIvor, “The Realities and Narratives of Paid Work: The Scottish Workplace”, in Lynn Abrams and Callum Brown (eds.), A History of Everyday Life in Twentieth-Century Scotland (Edinburgh, 2010), pp. 124-125. 185 Hall and Jefferson, Resistance Through Rituals, p. 20. 186 Don Lennie, 17 June 2017, Appendix A, p. 37. 187 Harrison, Seeking a Role, p. 79, 123, 130. 188 Robert Clarke, “Concerning Whales: Marking Antarctic Whales”, London Calling, 18 November 1954, p. 11. 189 "Thar She Blows in the Skillet," Chicago Daily Tribune, Part 1, p. 14., F., 16 April 1960.
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But, as one whaler noted: “The British housewife wouldn’t have it”.190 During and after war, few people could be enticed to eat the unrationed canned whale on shelves.191 That did not dissuade efforts to bring whale to the table: in his wartime letters, the British Museum’s Stanley
Kemp wrote to the Discovery committee of opportunities to investigate whale as food: “It is sinful to kill animals like whales and get nothing better from them than oil”.192 Around the same time, industry, looking for new markets, hosted elaborate luncheons with whale on the menu.193
In a 1953 speech to the Scottish Society of Arts, Harold Salvesen had proclaimed that “waste” was an economic, not moral, concept, and there was no use discarding materials that could earn money.194 At one conference, a government researcher noted that whale could be served as juicy steaks on the tables of middle-class Brits, arguing that the only way to make a new food item catch on was to relate it to an old one.195 Lumps of whale meat also briefly sat in the windows of fishmongers – in fact, many whalers (who regularly ate whale on ships)196 blamed the failure of whale protein on ill-informed marketing: whale is similar to beef rather than fish, and in 1950s
Britain fish was considered a food for hard times.197 Whale meat would not be normalised.
While dehydrated juices were packaged into flavourings for soups and stews, as mentioned earlier this was not public knowledge.198 In unpacking the “value” of whales, the scholar Hope
Babcock suggests that as “magnificent, remarkable animals that have a strong magnetic hold on people”,199 whales would not be accepted as meat in the West, unlike in Japan (“...which has no
190 Alexander, p. 9. 191 Dorsey, Whales and Nations, p. 212. 192 StAUL, MS38600/1/4/SB/4/3, Kemp to Mackintosh, 30th September 1942. 193 "Whale-Meat on the Menu: New Dish at London Luncheon." Times, 30 November 1946, p. 2 194 Elliot, Whaling Enterprise, p. 76. 195 "A Whale Of A Steak." Times, Oct. 1949, p. 2.; Jackson, British Whaling Trade, p. 242. 196 Thomason, p. 105; Lennie, p. 30; Yorkston, p. 29. 197 Stuart Hylton, From Rationing to Rock: The 1950s Revisited (Gloucestershire, 1998), p. 1. 198 Jackson, British Whaling Trade, p. 241; Thomason, p. 108. 199 Babcock, “Putting a Price on Whales”, p. 3.
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particular affinity for whales and certainly no belief in their entitlement to life”).200 On deck, though, harvesting whales for food was no different than any other meat: “I mean, we kill cows, we kill lovely wee lambs. I could never have been a farmer. But I was a whaler”, said Jamieson.
201
Through these experiences, we gain insight into the personal dichotomies between industry and cruelty. Most whalers entered the industry for financial reasons – though whaling did not pay particularly well outright, living expenses were covered for six months.202 The large returns came through bonus pay, which was calculated based on ship catch numbers, whale-type, and the barrels or tonnage produced in oil or by-products.203 A good year, like the 1954/55 season, for instance, could contribute more than a whaler’s base level wages.204 John Alexander, an electrician, said: “I mean, we were glad to see dead whales because we were paid a bonus on the production”.205 These bonuses created conditions for the aforementioned “whale Olympics”, as Smith described:
It was a gale and big swell, but we creeped up on dem and we actually, it was a gang of six and we got five of dem. It was quite amazin’. Dere was a Norwegian factory ship close by and dey’d spotted dem but his catchers were almost 60 to 100 miles away and some of dem were hurryin’ back and den we appeared and we got five.206
That’s not to say the process was without heart. According to one whaler:
200 Ibid., pp. 28-29. 201 Jamieson, p. 64. 202 Clark, p. 14; Cummings, p. 32; Yorkston, p. 32; Hughes, p. 49; Thomason, p. 95; Tait, p. 87. 203 This is witnessed clearly in pay slips from Norman Jamieson, whose rank as a whaler earned him £405 for the 1956/57 season. See Appendix B, p.126; Jamieson, p. 58. 204 Jamieson, Appendix B, p. 125. 205 Alexander, p. 11. 206 Smith, p. 48. Morrison remembered seeing multiple masts on the horizon (p. 34) and Lennie recounted communicating with factory ships in code (p. 34).
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You’re very much aware it is a living animal, as you would say, a living thing, and I was sorry to see them killing the whale, but at the same time, you had to earn a living and this was the thing.207
The whaling industry had proven itself capable of fishing to the brink of extinction in the past, and quotas had emerged in part from the conviction that man’s uncontrolled whaling could this time rid the oceans of whales entirely.208 While whaling would undoubtedly “deny future generations a great natural resource in the sea”, extinction would also have had a negative effect on the public psyche. 209 For instance, by the early twentieth century, whales had captured the
British public’s fascination, as witnessed through exhibits like the Whale Room at the British
Museum of Natural History.210 Still, early Discovery committee letters show a willingness to find compromise between conservation, science, and industry. Their preference was not full protection, then, and it would be unfair to suggest that industry was the only pro-whaling voice:
The most serious objection to the plan outlined is that by consenting to it, the Trustees might be held hereafter to have assisted in the extermination of whales. But on the other hand… even this might have to be risked if it were the only means of acquiring the information wanted.211
This was not an uncommon point of view towards extinction in the early twentieth century, a consequence of vast improvement that contributed to “the saga of progress”.212 For whalers, any cruelty within whaling was due to the inefficiency of the explosive harpoon gun. The explosive
207 StAUL, MS38600/1/SB/3/5/2-4, Jimmy Mann, in “Da Merry Boys”, Odyssey: Voices from Scotland’s Near and Past, BBC Scotland (1994). 208 Gambell, “How Whales Survive”, p. 193. 209 Clarke, “Whales and Whaling”, p. 306. 210 NHM DF1004/CP/747/3, Harmer to Trustees, 12 January 1923. 211 NHM DF1004/CP/749/1, Zoological Department Letter, 20 January 1913. 212 Melanie Challenger, On Extinction (London, 2011), p. 114, 125.
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harpoon harmed but very rarely killed a whale outright, often shocking the whale into diving deeper into the sea, all the while bleeding until it became exhausted and eventually died of fatigue. Fraser explained the view from the deck:
When de gun went off and dat harpoon blew, you couldn’t help wincing as it went in because you dat was a livin’ animal. And den about three seconds after dere was a detonator in it and it would explode inside it you could see de body go like [pulses hands] dat”.213
The process of harpooning a whale, in Fraser’s words, was: “...a brutal game, it was not always clinical.”214 One whaler recounted seeing blood spurt from blowholes, and many remembered whales shot with multiple harpoons before they died.215 A preference for a clinical kill, then, was desired by some. One surgeon aboard a Salvesen whaling ship, Dr. Harry R. Lillie, became so involved in the debate surrounding the ethics of whaling that he spoke at the House of Lords in favour of increased investment to be made into electric harpoons.216 He described his research as the “battle for a humane harpoon”217 -- one that would minimise pain for the whale while improving the efficiency of whaling as a whole. Arguments surrounding the fastest way of putting the whale out of its misery took hold, championed by Lillie and the chairman of the
Universities Federation for Animal Welfare, C.W. Hume. In his memoir, Lillie makes note of a post-war world in which the killing of animals: “encompassed more and more the hell to which the ambitions of men can lead”. In this regard, he believed, a nation was:
213 Fraser, p. 41. 214 Ibid. 215 Hughes, p. 50; SM BBCRS/1/15/17, Angus Ridland and Mitchell Arthur, ‘Tape Recording of Radio Shetland Museum Showcase programme’, 1 March 1995. 216 Elliot, Whaling Enterprise, p. 143. 217 Harry R. Lillie, The Path Through Penguin City (London, 1955), p. 133.
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… just as much an aggressor if with wanton cruelty it attacks the other creatures that share this earth with us. As a breed we have the most vile sins… We hunt creatures to death, after first making sure they are weak enough not to be able to hurt us in return. And we fire mutilating explosives into whales in the name of big business.218
The solution, in his mind, was the electric harpoon.219 The electric harpoon had first been developed in the early-1920s, but was nearly forgotten in the push for factory ships and breakout of war. The harpoon conducted electricity through the foregoer line, effectively “generating a formidable power that no living being can resist”,220 and was marketed to whaling firms by companies including General Electric and the German firm Dethloff-Elektronik.221 Depending on where the whale was hit, the gunner would adjust the jolt accordingly – the heart and lungs took 78-90 amps of 200 volts; the dorsal muscle 36-60 amps.222 Death, it was estimated, took ten seconds, and hence was deemed a “merciful method of killing”.223 Though Lillie was clearly against whaling on moral grounds, he hinged that morality on usefulness. A humane harpoon could, he insisted, decrease the time it took to kill a whale before processing, and would preserve more meat while ensuring a higher grade of oil.224 One newspaper article echoed: “On the other hand, a whale struck by an electric harpoon is instantly immobilised and dies at once, or within a few minutes, with the meat intact… Such considerations are important in the conservation of whales”.225 Harpoons that deployed carbonic acid (dubbed “chemical harpoons”)226 via capsules
218 Ibid., p. iii, 134. 219 “The Electrocution of Whales [Summarised from information provided by Dr Harry R. Lillie, surgeon to the Antarctic whaling fleet of Messrs Christian Salvesen and Co. in 1946–47, and from an unpublished compilation by Major C. W. Hume, Chairman of the Universities Federation for Animal Welfare.], 1949”, Polar Record, 5(37-38), 362-363. 220 Robert Clarke, “Electric Whaling”, Nature 4308, 24 May 1952, p.859. 221 UECSC, Tranche 2, D1, Dethloff-Elektronik to Christian Salvesen, 15 March 1955. 222 Clarke, “Electric Whaling”, p.859 223 Ibid., p. 860. 224 Lillie, Penguin City, p. 132, 128; Jackson, British Whaling Trade, p. 243.; “The Electrocution of Whales”, Polar Record, p. 362. 225 "Whaling with Electricity: Swifter Death From New Harpoon," Times, 3 January 1952, p. 2. 226 UECSC, Tranche 2, D1. G.H. Elliot to Colonel Blacker, 1 June 1956.
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into the whale were also tested as an alternative by Salvesen catchers, who found the gas escaped into the whale too slowly or not at all.227 By 1950/51, there were five electric harpoons being used in the Antarctic – but gunners and whalers were wary of the danger in electrocuting themselves on a deck often sprayed with water. Salvesen, seemingly aware that the end of the industry was nigh and advancements in technology now futile, did not invest.228
Emphasis on minimizing pain during harvest was a spark of anti-whaling protest.
Notably, Elliot received letters from inventors looking to put the whale out of its misery quickly.
He rejected them outright, citing, “… the very limited future prospects of the industry”.229 Public response to the electric harpoon, at least in the letter pages, was favourable to the animal’s cause.
The Duke of Bedford, writing into The Times, proclaimed:
A whale is not an insensitive fish but a warm-blooded mammal which probably feels pain quite as keenly as a bullock and which, unlike the rat and rabbit, is not such a menace to food production that necessity compels its destruction by almost any means, humane and otherwise… How true it is that what the eye does not see the heart does not grieve for.230
Here was an early inkling of an animal rights and anti-whaling movement, hinged still to arguments of usefulness, but which also called into question the violence of whaling itself.
Interestingly, the letter places whales in a hierarchy above pests or “insensitive fish”, suggesting a moral precedence of mammals over marine species. In another letter, the chief secretary for the
Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals argued that the length of time it took for a
227 UECSC, Tranche 2, D1. Captain Onesimus Anderson to Salvesen (translation), “Wetlesen’s new gas harpoon”, 12 October 1959; “Excerpt from Manager’s letter on ‘Experimental Equipment – Season 1959/59’”, 21 April 1959. 228 Elliot, Whaling Enterprise, p. 142-143. 229 UECSC, Tranche 2, D1. G.H. Elliot to Colonel Blacker, 30 September 1956. 230 “Points From Letters”, Times, 22 May 1947, p. 4.
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whale to die, along with the proof that it is a “highly intelligent and sensitive animal”, was grounds in itself to encourage a more humane method whaling.231
Though Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation, a manifesto for the animal rights movement, would not be published until 1975, whaling provides us with an early example of ecological activism. 232 The idea that it was wrong for animals to experience pain and suffering had begun to emerge from the end of the Second World War, and by 1953 half of Britons polled felt that large- scale hen factory farms, were cruel, for instance.233 On board factory ships, the language of whaling had even adopted a tinge of moral judgement: the slipway on which whales were pulled through from the water for flensing was dubbed “Hell’s Gates”, and the flensing deck compared to Dante’s Inferno: “It’s the steam and all the rest of it, you think of stuff like that”, said
Alexander.234 Singer went on to argue that animal rights should be placed on par with civil and women’s rights,235 and suggested that the ethical slaughtering of animals (through the electric harpoon, for instance) was “speciesist” and proof that the majority of people, “...not a few exceptionally cruel or heartless humans, but the overwhelming majority of humans”236 were comfortable with the mass suffering of animals in order to promote human interests.
The anti-whaling activism of the 1970s would echo these accusations of violence, and were spurred by a distrust of the military-industrial complex.237 This influence is present in
231 NHM DF1004/CP/747/3, “Whaling 1949-1958”, John Hall, “Whaling Methods”, Letter to the editor. 232 Peter Singer, Animal Liberation: Towards an End to Man’s Inhumanity to Animals (Wellingborough, 1975). 233 Harrison, Seeking a Role, p. 134. 234 Alexander, p. 11. 235 Singer, Animal Liberation, pp. 9-12. 236 Ibid, p. 10. 237 Frank Zelko, Make it a Green Peace! The Rise of Countercultural Environmentalism (Oxford, 2013), p. 35.
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personal memoir from Pete Wilkinson, the co-founder of Greenpeace UK, who frames his life in war’s shadow. His generation, he insists, “...have lived and do live, with war… This was the political and environmental backdrop which characterised my life and the lives of my contemporaries”.238 In fact, Greenpeace’s public emergence focused on two issues: whaling and nuclear disarmament, the latter of which had been adopted as a cause within Britain’s aforementioned youth culture.239 Tellingly, Greenpeace argued for the end of whaling based on the whale’s intelligence, insisting that it symbolised an ecological harmony between man and animal.240 At the heart of whaling activism was an appeal for a “World Park”, which would publicly assert that Antarctica “belonged to everyone and no one,” and which would provide the continent and its seas with sanctuary. 241 In essence, this would define Antarctica as a moral space apart from the damaging violence of man. In the early 1980s, this was echoed in IWC debate surrounding granting whales “rights”, framed within conceptions of the whale as an intelligent being.242
In 1974, a Methodist leader told the House of Lords that morality had shifted in his lifetime, from a personal relationship to a more complex and holistic “social morality”.243 In whaling, this new social morality is evident in attempts to diversify the uses of whale and the turn
238 Pete Wilkinson, From Deptford to Antarctica: The Long Way Home (Edinburgh, 2014), p. vi., iv. 239 Harrison, Seeking a Role, p. 71, 448; Mark Donnelly, Sixties Britain: Culture, Society and Politics (Edinburgh, 2005), pp. 39-40. 240 Zelko, Green Peace!, p. 183-189. 241 Wilkinson, From Deptford, p. 201. 242 StAUL, MS38600/1/4/SB/3/5/5/2, “2.9 Some Moral Questions”, Whales Alive IWC135/19, Report of Global Conference on the Non-Consumptive Utilisation of Cetacean Resources, New England Aquarium, Boston MA, 7-11 June 1983; Kieran Mulvaney, The Whaling Season: An Inside Account of the Struggle to Stop Commercial Whaling (Washington, 2003), p. 17; NHM DF1004/CP/747/3, John Hall, “Whaling Methods”, Times, [undated]. 243 Harrison, Seeking a Role, p. 344.
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towards humane harvesting. 244 Though the marketing of whale-for-dinner and the acceptance of the electric harpoon both failed, their underlying motivations pointed towards new post-war societal attitudes that eschewed pointless violence. By the 1970s, public attitude toward whales would undergo a “reenchantment”.245 For this reason, it is difficult to take stock of the experiences of whalers in the aftermath of whaling. A keyword analysis of interview transcripts noted more than fifteen times when whalers used terms like “cruel” and “barbaric” when discussing whaling as a whole. 246 Notably, one whaler said that, “…it was something’ that was done and it should stay in history as well… it should be protectin’ the whale now, so that’s our feelin’ bein’ ex-whalers”.247 This hindsight bias, thrown like a blanket over an entire industry, reshapes current perceptions of the act of whaling in the 1940s and 1950s. In the changed opinions of whalers, then, we see a microcosm of larger changes visible in society as a whole.
244 Lynn Abrams and Callum Brown (eds.), A History of Everyday Life in Twentieth-Century Scotland (Edinburgh, 2010), p. 2. 245 Zelko, Green Peace!, pp. 181-182. 246 Jamieson, p. 55, 57, 64, 66.; Smith, p. 83; Lennie, p. 37; Tait, p. 89; Clark, p. 14; Hughes, p. 47; Thomson, p. 98. 247 Yorkston, p. 37.
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Conclusion:
In his account of the end of the Antarctic whaling industry, Basberg argues that the industry’s demise followed a trajectory of slow decline, labelling it a “crisis that never came”.
Whaling companies, he argued, were able to meet the challenge of a dying industry through diversification, and avoided massive financial ruin.248 This bears out, also, in the experience of whalers, many of whom spent a decade or more watching their work – and workplace – disappear. During this decline, some took note of dwindling material stocks at Leith Harbour, which had until then remained a bastion of self-sufficiency.249 Others said that catcher ships were not repainted in the final season, to save in the cost of black paint.250 Still, while the close of the commercial whale fishery may have been a whispered prophesy, it was never proclaimed officially. The end was not broadcast: “We left dere and you thought you’d be back again next year if you wanted”, said Thomason. 251 The shore station at Leith Harbour shut down after the
1961 season, followed quickly by the sale of the Southern Venturer to Japanese interests that same year.252 The 1962/63 season would be pelagic-only for Salvesen, a single floating factory ship working at sea. Salvesen’s remaining whalers then received a letter from Elliot over the summer break, saying the end of the industry had dawned in Antarctica.253 No whaler admitted to being surprised.
248 Basberg, “Crisis that Never Came”, p. 209. 249 Thomason, p. 113-114 250 Winchester, p. 119. 251 Thomason, p. 113. 252 Vamplew, Salvesen, p. 249, 257. 253 Morrison, p. 26; Fraser, p. 43.
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The British-Antarctic whaling industry experienced its demise at a cultural and technological crossroads that emerged from the Second World War. Emerging from conflict, new technologies and improved infrastructure – such as improved ships and ASDIC radar – meant that whaling companies could quickly and efficiently increase their takes from the
Southern Oceans. In tandem, the immediate post-war years benefitted from a steady demand for whale oil products. Eventually, however, the market for whale oil would move on. The introduction of cheaper vegetable and synthetic oils, in particular, rendered whale oil obsolete, and the industry began to rely on less-lucrative by-products for income. These two massive changes took place under the umbrella of post-war social and cultural change. The shadow of war was cast over young adults, who had lived through violence and began questioning the outcome and cost of war to the rest of the world. This led to shifts in public perceptions of pain, animal rights, and morality. While the final days of whaling included intriguing proposals to improve and prolong the industry, like the adoption of whale as protein and the electric harpoon, none were broadly adopted.
There is a gap in the history of twentieth-century whaling, which generally relies on published journals and memoirs to provide insights into the lives and perspectives of whalers in
South Georgia and on factory ships. There remains much room for extended oral histories to be conducted with ex-whalers, many of whom were very young when they started in the industry and who worked their way through the ranks from mess boy to deck hand to flenser or electrician. While there have been oral history projects conducted through Scottish museums and broadcasters, a large-scale academic project could provide important insight not only into the everyday life of whalers in South Georgia, including issues not touched upon within this
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dissertation, such as workplace safety and hazards (a common theme across interviews), transnational experiences of Scottish and Norwegian whalers, and Shetland’s cultural connections to whaling throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Importantly, extended research could also facilitate an understanding of whaling from the experiences of those at home, such as wives and children, who experienced whaling from another perspective and who may have observations about a changing culture in ways that whalers do not. This would also serve to fill a gap in women’s history and make connections between class, location, and political perspective.254
In arguing that the twentieth-century whaling industry was directly affected by the Second
World War, oral histories provide relevant memories not only of technological change, but observations of moral shifts as well. While the form of anti-whaling activism that came to dominate public discussion in the 1980s was not present at the industry’s twilight, inklings of an animal rights movement are apparent through the language and memories of the ex-whalers still alive today.
This is an anthropocentric perspective of the end of a natural resource industry, however.
While Antarctic whaling did not render whales in the Southern Ocean extinct, it left stocks dangerously depleted. Near the end of the 1962/63 season, catches almost entirely consisted of smaller species like sei whales – the IWC quota was 10,000 BWUs overall, and the Southern
Harvester took only 500.255 At the conclusion of that year, Salvesen sold the Harvester to the
254 Sherna Berger Gluck and Daphne Patai, Women’s Words: The Feminist Practice of Oral History (New York, 1991), pp. 1-3. 255 Ibid., p. 257.
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Japanese and sent its men home, eventually expanding their merchant navy and fish factory fleets.256 Contemporary images of Leith Harbour show a ghost town, orange with rust, crumbling, and infested with asbestos. In his social history about post-war Britain, Harrison argues that Britain in the early 1960s was scattered with debris, the remnants of industrial expansion that brought the country out of war, creating a new kind of rubble.257 Seven thousand miles away, Leith Harbour was left in the same debris, forgotten at the edge of the world, the rusted hull of an industry once invisible but everywhere.
256 UECSC, Tranche 1, A/140, Norman Salvesen to Harold Salvesen. 257 Harrison, Seeking a Role, p. 131.
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58
Lennie, Don, Personal interview, 27 June 2017, Appendix A, pp. 22-38.
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1
Appendix A:
John Alexander 13 June 2017 Broughty Ferry, Dundee, Scotland
JA01
JA]] I was born in Orkney, which my wife has never been to. I only went back when I was 60, so that was 24 years ago now. I went with my older brother and we were actually standing outside the house where I was born. Because in those days it was a home birth and my mother had six boys, and poor thing she had one stillborn girl. When we were young we didn’t realize, but it must have been a real heartbreak for her after five sons. So the Canadian brother was Bob, he was the last. None of us… we all got married and it’s been death do us part all the time. Three of my brothers are gone now. I attribute to Walter and James, my two older brothers, deciding that I was going to have my first cigarette when I was six, and they made me smoke it. It’s the only cigarette I’ve ever had, and one of them died from lung cancer. LB]] I wondered if your… you said you were born in Orkney, how long did you live there? JA]] Only two years. My dad came from there to Fraserburgh, and that was just the start of the war. So we were evacuated down my aunt and uncle’s in the southwest of Scotland and then my dad came to Dundee because he thought he had all these boys and he needed a place with good schools and stuff. So he came down here, but I think three of us had all gone down, four of us had gone down to my aunts and uncles because they were all farmers. And I was the only one that never came home. And father had to come down in 1941 and when I got back to Dundee and they tested me, I don’t know what I’d been doing but they put me back two classes. LB]] Where was this again? JA]] In Wigdonshire. The farm was called Broom Park. I had a wonderful time, I loved my uncle and aunt and they were just so good to me, they made me part of the family. So when I came back here and there was another lady who was a teacher in my dad’s commendation and she said, ‘I’ll take Johnny after school’ and she got me up one. And then when I… I got on not too bad and in Primary 7 I managed to get to the… [indecipherable] But no, I was not academic at all, afraid. But anyway at 16 I said to my dad, no 15, I did okay in first year but I couldn’t handle the… you know, I didn’t do the studying, that’s really all there was to it. So at the end of third year I said to my dad, I would have been 15 then, but it was July so I was going to be 16 and to repeat the third year would have been, I think, would have been a mistake. So I said, ‘Look, I want to get a job,’ and he said, ‘What do you want to do?’ and I said, I don’t know why I said it, I said, ‘I think I’d like to be an electrician.’ So I had been palling around with a lad whose father was the chief engineer on the Southern Venturer and he had asked me what I was doing and he says, ‘I actually specialize in…’ have you heard of armature winders? Do you know what an armature winder is? The inside of an electric motor, there’s the rotating part if it’s an alternating machine it’s a rotor. If it’s a direct current machine it’s an armature. So I was an armature winder, it meant I did… the rotors in alternating current machines… they never go wrong, it’s the winding round about. So although I was called an armature winder we wound rotors, anything to do with electrical motors that’s what I specialized in. And this fella said to me, ‘That would be a good job for us to have at the whaling.’ Because they didn’t have anyone to do that. So he said, ‘When your time’s out, get in touch with me.’ But then the next thing I knew, the family had moved away to Edinburgh and I never saw… well I did maybe see him once, but he became the marine engineering superindendant for Salvesen’s, so I wrote to them when my apprenticeship was out and I got a call to go through to Edinburgh to have an interview and that’s how I started. 2
LB]] You had known about Salvesen before? JA]] Through this man. LB]] Did you have any reservations about going into whaling? JA]] No I don’t think so, it was just… well I had, not the lady that I’m married to, but I did have a girlfriend and I was very keen on this girlfriend and I thought, how am I going to… I knew that my brothers went to university and stuff and I thought to myself, ‘Well I’ve got to do something different…’ I never gave it a thought about any dangers I was going into, I just thought that I had been told that the guys who went into the whaling earned good money. LB]] What did you know about whaling before… JA]] Nothing. Nothing at all! LB]] Did you know that Christian Salvesen was this huge presence in the whaling industry? JA]] No, I didn’t know that. I learned that of course. But I would say that the man I had a great admiration for and he’s still alive, you won’t get to see him I don’t think, is Gerald Elliot. Sir Gerald has become a friend of mine in my old age. But you see I remember coming to the whaling, and I’ve got a photograph I could maybe show you of him, as a young man, and I can show you a photograph of him as an old man as well… but the thing was, over the years, well I just took photographs to show my family when I came home. I mean of course I still thought, you know these Dear John letters that you get? When you’re being told you’re being put on the scrap heap. I didn’t get one until it was nearly time to come home. I should have twigged because my father quite often spoke about this girl called Hazel and he even let her preach on his pulpit. So he thought a lot of her, so we was quite disappointed. But he never let on, he thought it was her job to say. I had been away for 20 months. It was 21 months before I came home. LB]] Was that the length of your contract? JA]] No. It was very open-ended. It was a season. I signed up for the 1954-55 season, but when you get down there they say, ‘Look we need you to over-winter.’ Because anyone that had the kind of skills that I had, electricians, plumbers, boilermakers, all the technical and the trade skills that were required, they wanted you to stay over winter. And if you didn’t, after you’d been there for three seasons, they would put a clause in the contract and you had to over-winter, if you didn’t overwinter, that was you finished. That’s what they did. LB]] Do you remember if it was good pay at the time? JA]] Yeah, I suppose it was. All the guys that went to the whaling… see the other alternative for me at that time was doing my national service but these people had... I had written to them and they’d offered me this job so I thought right, I’ll go. The other thing was that you couldn’t spend the money so it was… they said to me, ‘Do you want to send an allotment home to your family?’ Here’s me at 21, I didn’t have a wife. So I sent an allotment to my mother. LB]] Can you tell me a bit about how that works? JA]] It would just be, they had all my details and they asked me for my parents’ details and I must have given them. What I do remember, it was something like 12 pounds/month I was paid, and we’re talking about 1954. But my father kept a log. See, because he had six sons, every penny had to count. I know that he had cousins who were wealthy green merchants in Edinburgh and I know that there were certain times. They were very proud of their cousin who was a minister, they must have known the difficulties he had. I remember them coming to visit and they’d twist your ear and half a Crown would come out. I think they did help him a bit with university stuff. But anyway, he had a log of everything. Now if I asked him to get me anything, he set up a wee bank account, but they never took any money out of it. It was only for things that I asked for. So I did my winter season and then I did the 1956, it was 21 months. Now you got a day and ¾ per month for your holiday accrual. You take it 21 times, call it two. That was only 42 days, not even. LB]] What would you do with that? 3
JA]] This was all part of your pay when you got paid off. So you had that money, you knew you’d be paid for those 35/36 days, after that you were on your own. And I was home, I had three months. I didn’t have a girlfriend and I learned to drive, drove around and I suppose I saw some girls but I didn’t have any… I think it was towards the end of the time that I was home that summer, so that would 56, Pat was coming down the road. Her dad was a local headmaster in Dunfield, we were in the north end of Dundee and she smiled at me you see, and I sort of smiled back and walked past and went away to the whaling but I thought, ‘Well that was a nice girl, you should have been doing something about her.’ So I went away and did another 21 months, so that was 1956/57… LB]] So you overwintered twice in a row? JA]] I did. LB]] That must have been quite… JA]] There was some guys that did season-winter-season-winter-season-winter, some of them stayed… There was one, Gerry O’Hara, he had so much money that he went into a hotel, the North British… one of the big hotels, and bought a tea or two and of course he had loads of friends who all disappeared when his money was finished. Big drinking parties, he must have had a good time but he never came back to the whaling. So when I came home in 1958 I thought, now this lady might be married anyway so how do I find out? So I thought, ‘Well, I’m just going to phone her mum.’ So I phoned her mother, she must have known who the Alexanders were… Pat’s dad was a headmaster and my dad was the local minister although the Richies went to a different church than Church of Scotland, which my dad was. I always remember the minister, H.D. Donaldson, and he was called High Tensioned HD. When we got married my father assisted but H.D. insisted it was the bride’s… LB]] How did that feel? JA]] It was okay. My dad denied it but I noticed he winked at me when I’m standing in front waiting. So that is how my romance started, I just went, Pat came and spoke to me and I said, ‘Would you consider coming out with me?’ and she said, ‘Yes, I would. When?’ and I said, ‘Now?’ and she said, ‘Actually, I’ve got to go and get’… because she was a schoolteacher she had to go and get an x-ray to do with her job. So I said, ‘I’ll come round and take you down’ so I got her x-rayed before I took her out. LB]] Did she know that you were a whaler? JA]] Yes, she must have done. She must have known the family, they would know that I was the third son and yeah, they must have known. But it was a great romance, it was great, and here we go. We’ve had our golden wedding and in two years time we’ll have our diamond if we’re spared that length. My father’s sisters, he had two sisters, neither of them were married and I think they might have been but because of the First World War all the young men that they knew were killed. But my Auntie Margaret, the thing that she said that’s always stuck in my… the Alexanders don’t have hearts, and it’s true, none of us have ever had heart trouble. Which is a wonderful thing to think you’ve got a good heart… [[Talks about photography club friend.]]
[[18:13]]
JA]] Over the years, you know it was the… and I did become a photographer, I’m self-taught. I’m a member of the Royal Photographic Society, and I have a distinction from that. Which was really nice to get. And I often wish my dad had been alive, but by that time he was gone. LB]] You must have taken quite a few photos in South Georgia. Were you a photographer at the time you were down there? JA]] I had got a camera for my 21st birthday, it was a nice wee camera, my parents probably paid for it, it was from them and my brothers. I had some film, Kodachrome, so I went down there and 4 discovered that the Falkland Island Company had all these shiny cameras that they would sell. And of course the slop chest. Have you heard of the slop chest? LB]] Yeah, so I wanted to ask you about that. JA]] It’s where you could go and buy stuff and then they just took it off your… there would be a bill for slop chest. LB]] And what could you buy? A camera… JA]] Cameras. Watches. All kinds of stuff. And I didn’t know what I had when I bought this. I bought a Vogtlander Prominent and it had a 1.5 nocton lens. That’s a huge piece of glass and I could have been taking pictures virtually in the dark with this camera. Anyway, the quality… I didn’t know this before I had taken one picture with the Select and one with this Prominent and lens and there were things on that lens that were there that weren’t on the camera, it didn’t have the resolving power. The Vogtlander was fantastic. So all these slides I came home with them and my dad used to be… I made them into a slideshow and my dad used to be invited out to give a talk about his experiences of whaling because the word had got around that the minister’s son had been out and… people got mixed up! He went up to a place up the Glens and… ‘Dear Mr. Alexander, please come and give us a talk about your experiences at the whaling and bring a soloist.’ But anyway, the good news is that the slides were kept and looked after. They were kept always in a warm cupboard so they never got damp. So after all these years in the North Sea. I met a professional photographer and he said, ‘Johnny, get yourself...’ and the first thing I had to do was get all these slides digitized. So I didn’t know anything about computers. We asked for… I went up to Aberdeen, got a computer and scanner, A3 printer, everything. He must have been fed up with me because I’d be on the phone every night. Eventually I got it all sorted. The scanner I got was a Cool Scan 4, Nikon Cool Scan 4, you can’t buy them now. You can still buy them online, but no one does scanners now because it’s all digital. That Cool Scan 4 had two post-scanning techniques. One was called Rock and the other one was called Gem. Rock restores old colour and Gem was grain enhancement management. When I saw the pictures, they looked as though they were taken last week! [[Talks about photo exhibition at café.]] JA]] But anyway. That was me, two seasons, four seasons and two winters, up until 1958. By this time I got pally with the electricians on the factory ships and of course armature winding, once they asked me to do it and once I succeeded, but they didn’t really carry a lot of stuff. To get a motor wound you’d have to take it up to South America. So this particular thing, I’m sure it did my career no end of good because I was able to wind this. The winding, we didn’t have the right size of wire, but I worked out that if I used two in parallel I could… I must have had some brains, not many, but enough to work out this, and the motor did work and that was what counted. LB]] What did you do when you were there? JA]] Maintenance work. Anything to do with electric motors, and we had overhead cables and stuff. They had shore mains for the catchers for the winter, in the winter all the catchers came in, they got shored up, and we had to put shore mains onto them. And so I would be doing maintenance on these cables in the summer time and my boss someday said, ‘Alexander come on, you’ve been on that for over a week now’ and I said ‘I know, it’s terrible’ – high up and looking down you could see the penguins and the speed of them under water. And then you’d notice that they’d all [makes swooshing sound]… sea leopard. I had met the electricians and they said, ‘Johnny, you’ll always be a dryland whaler unless you come down the ice with us.’ So I said, ‘Well, what do I do?’ LB]] Is that something you wanted? JA]] By this time yeah, I wanted to see everything about the whaling. I was interested in the industry. LB]] What was it that interested you about it? JA]] Well, it was to see the rest of how everything was done. They had helicopters and I just suppose it was a change. There I was, this time I was married, but I promised Pat, we were married in 1959 5 and I said if we bought a wee house in Broughty Ferry and we were skint and I promised her after two years I’d give it up after that. And I kept my promise. LB]] Why? JA]] I didn’t think it was fair, and she accepted that, so that’s what was done. So in 1959 I joined the Southern Harvester, did a season on Harvester, was home for the summer, and then 1959/60 I was on the Southern Venturer, so I was on all the expeditions. And then because I had learned new skills on these factory ships they suddenly allowed them to use asdic at Leith Harbour and they needed an asdic electrician, so that was me. When I went back I was in a far better wicket, I was an electrical officer, you know, with promoted post, I had my own cabin and my own room. LB]] And do you remember, with those things, they came with raises? Were you getting paid more throughout the years? JA]] Yeah, depending on your rating. There would be a rate for that year and that job. I was certainly on good money at that point, because I was a junior second electrical engineer or something like that. So that’s what I did. But I had promised Pat that I would give it up, and I did. You can imagine if you haven’t seen your wife for nine months and you come home, nine months later she’s going to have a baby and that’s what happened. My first daughter had been born in 1962. LB]] And by that point you had… JA]] Come back to Dundee, and what could do I do but be a maintenance electrician? So I tried various jobs. I was in a jute mill for seven years, and although I never felt it was an industry that was a well-paid industry but then they had to give the rates for electricians so… LB]] Were you part of a union that would arrange those? JA]] No, I was never very much keen on unions I don’t think. There was just the electrician… I was on one side, and there was a factory at both sides of the road on Morgan St. and there was a tunnel underneath and the electrical power and the steam, so I had the power station, you know the transformer and all the stuff then and there was the boiler house. So it was quite a lot of… but there was a lot of overtime involved which meant there was a lot of earning good money. But I stuck it for seven years and then I tried something else. So back and forward from 61-75 I was at home, but this time I was in Michelin. They’ve got a big plant in Dundee and I was up there but it was Continental shifts – 6-2, 2-10, 10-6. But the pay was good and then I saw the jobs for BP in the North Sea and I thought to myself… I remember going in for a medical for that and the doctor said that the night shift and day shift, 12 hour shifts, were better for you. So I did that for 16 years. LB]] Would you be based here or would you go out onto the… JA]] No, no, I was offshore in the Forties. I even got a medal out of it. It absolutely stunned me, I got a letter from the Prime Minister… LB]] Which prime minister? JA]] Maggie. [laughs] Oh dear. You’re not allowed to say anything you see, and I was offshore when the thing was announced. But there was a lot of fuss offshore about it. BP had been given five medals from the Department of Energy and understandably four of them went to the bosses and they must have thought, ‘We have to give one to the troops,’ and I always said that I was well known at this time for my photography offshore as well, and in fact two years after the whaling exhibition in Discovery Point I had one called Sixteen Years in Forties. Now we have to go back to the whaling of course. LB]] Part of what drew me to this topic is that because I live in Alberta I’m interested in how humans earn their money from natural resource extraction and the balance between oil and gas or whaling and working away and doing this intense work while a lot of decisions about that intense work are made back at home. I think there’s a chasm in understanding there. That’s what I’m always trying to explore. Where does your identity as a whaler or someone in oil and gas fit? JA]] The way I felt myself, because of my lack of education if you can put it that way, I had to be a soldier of fortune. I mean, I wouldn’t get away with it now I don’t think. People have to have some 6 kind of qualification of some sort, but in my day if you had the balls to do it then it was there for you to go for. I remember many of my bosses offshore… I did electrical work. I would have been 42 when I went up, I was on Forties Alpha until I was 50 and I had to do… they asked me if I’d like to go into the control room on Forties Delta. So I did eight years on one platform and eight years on the other. But during all that period, if they needed a photographer they would get me to do it. The blighters. But I didn’t mind. LB]] Was there something that drew you toward taking photos of these places? JA]] It was an interest in photography I’d say. Before I retired, I must have been about 58 then, we’d had a wee policy on Pat and it came to be about 10,000 pounds. I asked her to lend me the money, she was very reluctant about becoming a caravaner. I must have been a persuasive blighter because I persuaded her to do it. We had that for two years and in 1991 there was rumours of redundancy, I was on night shift and it was the personnel that must have nominated me for this BE medal, they came in and said, ‘Look, we’ll be asking for people to come up to the manager’s office. If you’re not asked during your shift, it means you’re not going to be made to go.’ So I never got the phone call… LB]] That must have been very stressful. JA]] I didn’t think of that, honestly. I just thought, I knew I was doing a good job in the control room, starting the generators, all the fire and gas alarms, I had to monitor the platform channel, channel 73, the aircraft. After my shift I went and they said come up at 7 p.m. so I went up to see him, he said there’s a chance for you to go, I was 58, they laid out the terms of the offer and they said, ‘Do you want to phone your wife?’ and I said, ‘No, I’m quite happy with that offer.’ So that was it, that was me out. So then I got a huge payoff, paid off the mortgage on the house, paid my wife back, and bought a new caravan that we had for 22 years. So now we go on cruises. [[Talks about cruises and vacations.]] LB]] I wondered if you could maybe tell me a little bit more about what your life was like in Antarctica, what the people you worked with were like. JA]] You can just imagine, men working together. I’ve always been a friendly type of guy, but even I almost got… there would be odd exceptions, people that took… for example when I went onto the factory ships from the four seasons on Leith Harbour. There was a man there named Jack Wright and he was the chief electrical engineer. And when I arrived on board he said, ‘John Alexander you’re one of Duncan’s boys, I’ll soon fix you!’ Anyway, there was another guy that joined for his first trip, I never forgot his name – Sonny Higgs. And he came from Newcastle. This guy Sonny was a new boy, but I knew my way around a bit better than Sonny did. I knew the system although the boat was all new to me, it’s just a giant factory on a boat. Sonny, I don’t know what he did wrong but Jack Wright decided he forgot about me and he was giving Sonny a hard time. I can remember Sonny coming to me and I said, ‘Now look Sonny, don’t do anything.’ Because he said, ‘I’m going to fill ‘em in,’ that’s what he felt about him. But I persuaded him not to do anything. We always left from South Shields but we always came back to Liverpool. We came in there and I went home, Sonny went home but the factories spent three months in Norway parked, one of them would be parked for nothing I suppose in a fjord and the other factory was ‘round. The Harvester must have been in South Shields and Sonny came from South Shields. So anyway, I go home and enjoy my summer home with my family and then… LB]] What year would this have been? Were you married yet? JA]] This would be… yes, we were saving up to go to Norway to stand by the ship. Because that’s what was going to happen. LB]] What does that mean? JA]] Standing by the ship would mean they needed, maybe they needed one generator and there would be work to do, so I had been put to work. But in the evenings I would be with my wife, it never happened to me so I don’t know. I never stood by because I was there and then they… I got a 7 telegram, I didn’t actually get to Norway. I got a telegram saying that’s cancelled you’re going back to Leith Harbour as the electrician. LB]] Do you remember how much time… notice you were given? JA]] Maybe a couple of weeks notice, it wasn’t… that wasn’t good. But anyway Pat accepted it, but when I got back to South Georgia, and I heard when the Venturer came in, or the Harvester, did you hear what happened to Jack Wright? I said no. ‘Well,’ they says. ‘He was filled in.’ And it must have been Sonny. But it was all done in the dark. I’ve never found out any more about it. Mostly that was one case in point. But I got on alright with everyone I would say. When I went down as the asdic electrician, most of the asdic operators were ex-Royal Navy, so they’d say ‘This guy, what does he know about asdic?’ so I discovered that they were putting faults on. But you see I had a rig in my workshop so I would go down, take my spare transmitter and put it in, and they’d say that’s okay. So when I came back I’d discovered what they’d done. LB]] Why would they do that? JA]] Just to test my ability. You see? One of them did it with a transmitter and another one did with a receiver. But once they accepted that was alright, I just did my job. I remember once a catcher came in. Now they had a thing, the original asdics… it took about 60 seconds for the thing to go down, but they introduced a high-speed lift. The thing could come up in about 60 seconds. Whereas it would maybe take 3-4 minutes for it to come up… but the whale, the dying gasps of the whale and the tail came around, it could take the dome off. I had to go around to a place called Stromness and it had a dry dock, the ship went into the dry dock, it was brought up, and a mechanic gave me a hand, and the two of us undid the exterior of the dome. Inside the dome was a transjuicer and it would rotate. Well it was wiped out as well. That cost a few thousand, and I think that one did have a high-speed lift. Even with that it was quite interesting. LB]] Did you know at the time that there were debates around using the asdic? JA]] Well, the government had not allowed asdic to be used at Leith Harbour but in 61 they must have had a change of heart and allowed it. We all knew the whales were starting to be scarcer but the season I started on the Venturer was very good. And I remember, I was up in the chart room once and I asked the mate where we were. And he said, we’re right below Tasmania. And I always regretted that I never got a copy of a chart, but we had gone right round the world because we were so far away from where we’d started that it went right ‘round. We had kept a whale for three weeks while we were sailing back to South Georgia and it turned green. They used the whale as a fender when the catcher came alongside and it was absolutely brilliant to be used. But anyway, I must have gone to my bed and the next morning there was… within five days the catcher knew it could get in without needing to refuel. So I think the guys thought they would just ditch the whale. But the foreman said to bring it up on the deck. They took the blubber off it and it was green underneath. They were allowed to put it back over the side, but they processed the blubber.
[[50:30]]
JA]] Anyway listen, come on and we’ll go look at some pictures. [[Tells me about his photos on stamps]] LB]] So you were there 54-61? JA]] Yes. JA]] So we were to Aruba first, you see. And then from there we went… display… This was the funny thing you see, because I’m ashore taking pictures you see and the rest of the guys all disappeared into the town. And of course I didn’t realize they were all seeing the ladies of the night… during the day. The ladies of the night can do whatever time of day, and it wasn’t until I was on the boat when I saw this queue outside the doctors and I said, ‘What’s wrong with these guys?’ The second time we were in Carapito, Venezuela. And Venezuela is a tributary of the Oranoco. So 8 that was the mission station, I always remember the wee crabs with a huge claw. Yeah it’s a bit different, aye. We’re talking about 1950s but this was the firefighting equipment. So I’ve often contrasted that with the firefighting equipment we had in the North Sea. [[Photo descriptions.]] It took about six weeks from the time we went out to Aruba. The Southern Noble did about 10 knots. First sighting of South Georgia. LB]] What was that like, the first time you saw it? JA]] Well it was amazing to see the place, yeah. But I didn’t… There’s the catchers along coming to the end of the winter, the next one in the summer, there’s still catchers there you see. LB]] These are much smaller than I thought they were. JA]] They’re about 500 tons. Maybe between 5 and 700 tons. And I actually got to sail out on that. That was amazing. That’s an ex-corvette. Salvesen bought some of these you see and nobody wanted… that’s not one of ours, you can see by the colours. One of the gunners said he would take it, of course he realized how much better off he was because he was higher up so he became the top gunner that year, and everyone wanted a corvette. JA]] This is a detail of a harpoon gun and these nylon foregoers are 500 pounds each… Very strong and it… because it was four-inch manila spliced onto the end of that, so it wouldn’t drag on the harpoon too much. JA]] The government would be paying them to provide that [[hospital]] because it’s the health service, you see. HMS Protector she must have been a cable laying ship of some sort. It was great when someone like that came in because there was always mail. LB]] What would you get? JA]] Just letters from home. That island behind had been called mutton island because there was sheep on it, but it’s actually called Green Island. [[Hell Below Zero, they used Salvesen ships.]] It looked like he was doing a good job, but there was a lady involved and we didn’t have any ladies down there. This was all to do with the Transantarctic Expedition as you would realize. LB]] Do you mean the Discovery Committee? JA]] There’s a Transantarctic Expedition with Fuchs and Hillary. They met in the middle. JA]] This here is where I would see the penguins. You went up the shore mains on all of these, see, that was the dam that we had for water and that was the death centre of South Georgia because people died down there as well. LB]] Are these factory ships? JA]] No, they’re just tankers. You’ll see the difference when you see the… JA]] So anyway, this is me. I used to climb up, we didn’t often get days off but I would always go and look at something. You can see the whole of the station. JA]] Now this one always reminds me of the place… scrap heap. LB]] It’s very poignant. JA]] Yes, I’ve always liked that picture. JA]] And then this is a tank farm you see. We had to store crude to supply boats but also if we… that was the tank gang’s job to clean the tanks. And they use a thing called the Butterworth. Think of a garden sprinkler that’s hot salt water and it blasts high pressure down inside the tanks and the tank gang have to go in and clean it right down. The person they hated the most was the chemist, because the chemist had to pass that it was clean enough and if it wasn’t, do it again. JA]] That’s the pumphouse here. For whale oil, the blue the fin and the sei whale oil could be mixed, but the sperm whale oil could be separate. So the different coloured pipelines, so I think these would be sperm oil tanks. JA]] There’s Green Island. It’s beautiful light. It’s a beautiful place but I never appreciated how beautiful it was until I went back in 2009 because basically I went to three places – I was in Leith Harbour all the time, I’d go around to Stromness which belonged to Salvesen, I never was in Husvik, 9 but I was a few times at Compagna Argentina de Pesca which was Grytviken. And that’s why they thought it was theirs, they had been allowed to lease Grytviken. LB]] It’s interesting that you said you didn’t notice it while you were there. When you’re in the throes of work in these very beautiful places, it’s the work. But I think there’s a certain amount of romanticism around Antarctica. JA]] Well, I suppose you may be right there. LB]] I mean why else… why do you think people are interested in going to your talks? JA]] In the place, yeah I suppose. JA]] There was no road between Leith and Stromness, you had to go by boat. JA]] This is the heavy engineering workshop. I do remember, I didn’t go there very often but when I was there once, I went into the mess room to get my meal and the guys were all talking about so-and- so, and this one guy looked up and he says, ‘But you see him! I’ll crucify him!’ so it must have been someone he didn’t like. JA]] This is interesting… LB]] Russian? JA]] Yeah, it came in. It was so heavy but they got it up. The Russians were here [shouting at my camera]… I’m using a Vogtlander Prominent not Azorki! They had lost their propeller. That was mandatory on Salvesen catchers – when the engineer heard the crack of the gun, stop the engine. It was bad enough maybe losing a transducer but at least the ship could travel with the thing broken. But the catcher had to be towed up. And they wouldn’t start it until the Russians paid 10,000 pounds into the Bank of England so it sat there for maybe 12 hours. Once Salvesen knew the money was there they sorted it. [[Shackleton’s grave]] LB]] Had you read about Shackleton and all that? JA]] No, I don’t suppose I had. I don’t think so. JA]] This is my trip on the Southern Joker. This is where I had to run down, you see, from the bridge. LB]] What would you do? JA]] I was just there because I wanted to come. They allowed me to do it so I just had to keep out of his way. LB]] Who’s this? JA]] That’s the gunner. LB]] Was he Norwegian? JA]] He was Norwegian. They were all Norwegian. JA]] I was sick, yeah. JA]] There’s the whale. Here you see where the harpoon has gone in one side and then gone out. That whale is mortally wounded, it’s feeling the pain alright, but this is actually, that brown is the killer harpoon. You just hear a bang and I had to wait a year before I discovered that… it just goes in, they fire it directly to the head to kill them. They have this… they put a flag and a transmitter there sending out a signal there and they put a tail strop on waiting to pick it up because it would be away to catch the next whale. That’s looking aft and these are the bamboos and a radar reflector. This is how they chained them using these chains that was wrapped with bits of rope to stop chafing. This is the winch that does all the playing of the whale. You know about the pulleys on the mast and the huge springs underneath? Amazing! JA]] On a Sunday… there were very, very few days during the season that we would get off, which we didn’t get paid for obviously. JA]] This is a fin and that’s them flensing. And this is a blue, and it’s the only blue I ever saw. When I was in the factories I never saw them. LB]] But the stocks during that time… JA]] Oh, decimated. Decimated. 10
LB]] When you were working with Salvesen would people talk about that? JA]] I think so, yes. But this must have been a good season. Look at the number of jaw bones and all that stuff. The meat was cooked, oil was extracted, then it was dried, and the bone… this was all down to Sir Gerald, he was the business man. He was married to a Salvesen, you see. JA]] I’ve met Robin Salvesen, he’s around. He comes to our club and Sir Gerald does occasionally, but he must be about 90 now. He’s a lovely man. He’s been good to me. JA]] This is a sperm whale. And of course this is innards. If it was fresh, it was just a cooking smell. Not like the smell of the green one. All of these things would be processed quite quickly. It would be in the summer time, and I mean he had his plan boots and these guys had sharp flensing knives. So there’s the wee hole, the blubber went in there and up into the processing. [[Photo of a baby whale]] I’ve seen that harpoon bent at right angles. The power of the whale, you know? This is the steam saw that they use for cutting the bones, they went down inside these covers and into the press down below. Look at the size of them, massive. Water. Blood in the water. JA]] And this is the chemist place. LB]] And what were they doing? JA]] Quality control, all the time. You had to check the quality, grade 1 or 2 or whatever so that everything would be okay. LB]] I was recently reading about how in the early 1950s the chemists had been asked to look into this idea of eating whale. JA]] Well of course they did try selling it but nobody… the British housewife wouldn’t have it. I’m a living example of someone who has eaten whale and it never did me any harm. What the rule was, the whale would be shot, it had to be flensed within 5 hours, if it wasn’t done and it was explained to me by my friend who was in here, George Bennett, the fatty acid content for the meat made it unfit for human consumption. LB]] Oh these are the cooked bones. JA]] Yeah, there were so many of them that they had to be… this would be guano shed where these would go through and be ground up. That’s the chemists. So he was right in the heart of things. There was so much stuff that it was six weeks after the whaling stopped…
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LB]] Do you mind if I ask you some questions [Pat]. Is that okay? PA]] Yes. LB]] I just want to know what it was like to be at home when John would be away. PA]] Yes well, it was strange but I was lucky that I had my family and I was working, I was teaching. I was very busy. JA]] I actually thought, you see, that she was teaching up in the north end of Dundee, we were living in Broughty Ferry… PA]] We didn’t have cars or anything at that time… JA]] And I thought she would probably just go back and stay at her mum’s, but she did not. PA]] No no, I stayed in our own house. It was lovely that house. I did own a… I had no dowry… all I had was a poodle and he wouldn’t come with me, he stayed with my mom. JA]] She took a chance on me. PA]] Sometimes my… I knew you were meant for me darling, it was in the stars wasn’t it… I once had a fortune told and it said that this man would carry my picture far away out to sea. And I said no! Anyway. LB]] At the time would you… would it be that his money went into your account? PA]] Yes. JA]] We’ve never had separate accounts. 11
PA]] He’s in charge of the money, he just gives me all the money I need. JA]] Pat’s family, her mum looked after the money. PA]] But my dad wasn’t interested in money. He was artistic and liked… he did painting. I must be like my father. As long as I’ve got enough, I’m not worried. JA]] Well, you just tell me what you need and I go down. PA]] And I loved teaching, most of the time. I spent a lot of time in early and home late. It was lovely. And then once we had the children, you were home by that time. I think what I took with more was him going away the second time, I thought I’d got him home. But then he went away to the oil. At least that was just 2 weeks on, 2 weeks off. JA]] And that’s one of the reasons they were keen to take me, because BP had no experience of people working offshore. LB]] What was so obvious that they would want that? JA]] It was… could they cope with offshore? PA]] And some of them couldn’t… LB]] I wondered if I could ask you guys if you remember how would you, what would you hear the discussion about whaling being at home? PA]] No. JA]] Don’t think so. PA]] No, it was later on. Before the Greenpeace and all that, conservation came in. LB]] It’s interesting that Salvesen had completed their whaling before whaling became this huge environmental activist thing. PA]] If they’d kept to the bargain but then other folk came down and didn’t keep to the bargain with quotas. It’s just like fish, you never thought there’d be bother with fish. You thought people could fish as much as they wanted in the North Sea and that in the cold waters, you know… So it would be the same with the whaling. If they’d only killed a few, maybe we’d have been all right. And they said it was terrible, all these different boats chasing a poor whale. Just dreadful. JA]] There were 14 expeditions down there that last year. PA]] Dreadful. JA]] It was madness. What I have learned over… the whales are definitely coming back, which is the good news because they’re not being harassed. LB]] Was there any discussion about not hiring as many people? JA]] What I do remember was telling them I was finished in 1961 and they tried hard to get me to come back. But there wasn’t any talk… they knew they were on borrowed time. If I had gone back 1961/62 that was the finish. It was only a year that I missed. They sold the licenses to the Japanese for the factories, the Japanese didn’t want the factories but they wanted the license. It’s like the North Sea, you know that you’re out there working to make money to keep going, but at the end of the day you know… it’s like the day that they told me I could go at 58. LB]] There wasn’t much of a fishing or… JA]] Absolutely nothing of our family, my grandfather was a minister as well.
JA03
Whaling in the Antarctic with Salvesen slideshow Photos from 1959/60
JA]] Hell’s Gates, this part was for. With the bamboo stacked above. JA]] I mean, I suppose it was just a job. I mean, we were glad to see dead whales because we were paid a bonus on the production. Everybody got a bonus based upon what their rank was. 12
JA]] You can imagine the bang o’ that. But then that’s how they managed to get them up. You see the size of them! You’d hide a couple of double deckers behind some of these. I mean, the biggest ones they ever got were over 100 tons. Huge. Working on that, if I was down below, it was so hot that I would have a pair of jeans, vest and t-shirt. If you came up top you had to get… The afterplan, Dante’s inferno. It’s the steam and all the rest of it, you think of stuff like that. The afterplan is where all the flensing was done. The foreplan is where the meat and bones were… JA]] The humpbacks would come up and just rub their sides. They’re very easy to kill, poor things. JA]] There was whalers there all winter, during the war.
JA04
LB]] What would do with it. The glue water… JA]] They’d just put it in the sea. There’s nowhere else for it to go. Even in that time they were quite strict about, you know you weren’t to leave bones lying about. That would be separators. LB]] Were you ever afraid? JA]] I think I got a bit of a fright when… I haven’t spoken to you about when we hit the iceberg? What happened was I was working in the factory somewhere, I can’t remember where, and I felt it keeling over and it seemed quite a lot, and then coming back. There was no alarms, never heard anything. I needed something out of the workshop so I had to thread my way through the… to the stern. When I got in, they said, ‘Where have you been?’ They said, ‘Well we just struck an iceberg!’ They were trying to catch up with the catchers, the weather conditions were bad and they were using the radar. The radar was going over the top of it, so he did see it, he put the helm hard over and he reversed one of the engines and they came ‘round and ‘round and ‘round, he thought he was going to miss it but he hit it and just at the water line a huge gash about 20 feet long. These guys are, people on the deck, the officers and the skipper, they listed the ship, water into the tanks to bring the ship up. They had to trim the ship to get her out of the water and they had cement fondue on board, they had big tarpaulins and big timbers. They filled it with cement fondue and at the same time, another gang got a tarpaulin over the side and down and around. Then they righted the ship and carried on to the end of the season. It didn’t really feel frightening because it was all sorted. When they got back to South Georgia the platers went on board they put steel plates on the outside, welded them on, and she sailed back to the UK as if nothing had happened. It could have been disaster.
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David Clark 12 July 2017 Brae
LB]] I’ve seen quite a few, both here and in Yell, which has been really good. DC]] The other man, I don’t know if you’ll see him, who stays here is John Winchester. LB]] Yes, I’m seeing him right after this. DC]] All I’ll say to you before you see John, I don’t know what you’re interested in because he was a whaling factory man, see I was on the whale catchers, and John, when the Venturer come on the stocks, believe it or not just before the war finished, they realized there was a market for oil and margarine and all the rest of it, so the Venturer was launched in 1946 and John joined in 1947 and he’ll tell you all this, and he was there right to the end. And den they sold her to the Japs and another season they sold the Harvester. So everything involved with the factory regarding John is really, I can guarantee you anything John says is really true. LB]] That’s fantastic. DC]] So it’s not for me to pick on any of the boys. But John’s really is, and he can go into depth. And then even when she get to Norway and she was tied up, as far as the Venturer’s concerned and the men regarding the factory, John knows. LB]] Well, are you able to give me some insight into how you started? DC]] Yes, my first season was 52/53 LB]] How old would you have been? DC]] Sixteen and a half. But dere wasn’t much work in Shetland. LB]] And what were you doing? DC]] Well, I was on the Southern Opal. Now, the Southern Opal was, that’s the transport [indecipherable] [[interrupted for tea]] DC]] So, the Southern Opal… see, during the war we had lost all the shippin’, and we started buildin’ ships fast called Liberty Ships. So the Southern Opal was originally one of these, a tanker. It was built up accommodation, you understand that, so there were hundreds of men all goin’ to Leith Harbour in South Georgia. At the start I was there as a mess boy. Group 11, as they called it. So that was that on the way doon. And if you have a chance I could take on the first catcher I was on, was aptly named the Southern Hunter. And the remnants of her is lying down at South Shetlands, right there… LB]] So, what made you join the whaling? DC]] Well, firstly they were no, on Shetlands I stayed on the island of Yell and I’ve been 37 years here, and in that period there was no work, nae work. And my old man was doin’ the winter then, so I went doon… LB]] He was a whaler as well? DC]] He was a whaler as well. Now then, when I came down you can imagine the whalers, long hair, beards. On my birthday he came down to see me and the guy that was with him he said, pay no attention, I bet you’ll never recognize ‘em, and I walked right by ‘em! You understand, all this hair, long hair, beard. You won’t see him, and I never did. I had to grow a beard, latterly. So what you’re asking me – I did two seasons on the island whale catcher and you started at mess boy, I was group 11, two seasons on island boats, and then I get to the ice. Ice catcher, Southern Venturer. So I have a father on the Southern Hunter in the war, she was number two with the Venturer at the ice, so that was me there and then the other interesting thing was the Rover. Now, if you go to see John he can confirm this. We had the biggest blue whale, it was caught in maybe four or five, it was 98 feet. Once they got the claw on the tail and started to heave them up to the chute, he couldnae clear, they had to go cut some of da blubber off, it tilted the boat you understand what I’m saying. 14
LB]] Wow. What did you think at that point? DC]] Well, my job at dat time was to load, help the mate to load the gun, the harpoon gun. We were goin’, our top speed was about maybe 13.5 knots, which he’d be gone before we could within range to shoot, now the gunner, he preached when he was home in Norway and the Norwegians called him The Bishop. The foregoer, you maybe know all this… LB]] Nope… DC]] Well, below the gun there were two boxes and the foregoer was a rope, length being 120 fathom. We thought, you seen the flash of the grenade explode but the line was too short. So we hit twice in another 20 fathom and it shot and got ‘em. Now, I’ll never forget this, when I get down and looked, he’d dropped a killer harpoon, well this to me looking back on life I’m not really thrilled on what we done. You go on with Greenpeace, cruelty, can you imagine firstly an explosive harpoon with the barbs, explosive warheads on it. You’re maybe aware of all this, are you not? LB]] Yes, I know, but I don’t know this story… DC]] You know that, but then can you imagine. And we had to put in a… LB]] Can you tell me a bit more about what it was like? DC]] To me, I didnae think about it then because it was all money as far as we was concerned. See we got no overtime on the catchers, it was all done, it was on the whales you got bonus wae that really… you understand. But to answer, when you used dat killer harpoon this was the thing with a long pipe with explosives, you know, the warhead or whatever it was they called it. Well when I looked on it, you could sit a bus easy on the top of it. LB]] Do you remember what that felt like, when it was brought up? DC]] Well, to me, it was the biggest, I’d seen fin whale up to 80 feet and so on, but never a thing this size. LB]] What were your coworkers, your fellow… DC]] Well, funny thing with this you see, the catchers I was on, the Southern Nova, he had a bet with another fellow that was on the corvette, you see there were corvettes converted into whale catchers. LB]] Yes. DC]] Her name was the Southern Laurel and his name was Mat Olsen. He says, ‘I’ve got the biggest one.’ And all of us says, ‘No, I think our one’s bigger.’ And his one was 95 feet, so we beat ‘em by three feet. LB]] Wow. DC]] And of course this was flagged and they took it alongside and took it to the factory. Now de other thing, wae all da statistics dat I can get, with the number of blue whales dat dey reckon, whether it be in da North of da line or South of da line, I wondered if you have any idea, how many do you think blue whales now? They will be multiplying, have you any idea, does anybody know how many? Roughly? LB]] I have no idea… DC]] See this is the thing, and maybe I’m side-tracking you a bit. As you know the blue whale is the biggest whale, now to me the monitors even through satellite, see if you’ve one whale blowin’, when he blows, see there can be another one below and another two below, it’s very difficult to say. I wonder wae dose figures, whatever they are. And the Japs as you know, are still… there’s no playin’ ball with them. LB]] Do you remember at the time, were you ever hearing anything about anti-whaling or whaling activism? DC]] At that time, no. Now the silly thing we heard, we never seemed to think that this whales numbers were going to get exhausted, we thought dis could go on and on and on. Now, do you realize, de inventor of da explosive harpoon, Norwegian Svend Foyn, you’ll know him, now they would come out wae a harpoon gun anywhere you understand, at some period. Now can you imagine around South Georgia the place must have been teemin’, honestly. 15
LB]] So, did you not have any recollection at the time? Or feeling? DC]] No. Now the other thing I’ll say no tae, I was never a cameraman unfortunately, now then, the second season I was in the island whale catchers, you had obviously seen a map of South Georgia you’ll know that there’s Cooper Isle, there’s Green Isle at the south, at the North part there’s an isle they call Willis Isle. Now we had had a lot of boat trouble, we come up to Leith Harbour and went up to Willis and maybe 60-70 miles clearing dat. Now, dat is the most whales I ever seen in my life. To give you an idea, you can imagine the horizon, you’re there to there… now the point bein’ that when there were whales blowin’, some were under the surface. Dey were movin’ and we got to, we come up, stop, and pickin’ out de biggest ones as dey go past. De fog come down and we lost and couldn’t fin ‘em again before we got de air in ‘em, flagged, lost ‘em. Dat’s de most I ever seen. To be honest wae you, lookin’ back on it, it’s somethin’ I’m not very proud of to think de times I was at de crowsnest, and many more like me, can you imagine. Dat’s what it was all aboot. See de factory boys when dey, those guys was at the point to see what happened. Dey were puttin’ de meat into de abbatoir and through the boilers, it was cruel, no point in me sayin’ anything else. LB]] At the time, what were you thinking? That it was just necessary? DC]] No, that never entered by head. All we were thinkin’ was whales all de time. And de winches had a phrase when dere no whales, what you called ‘whale sick.’ LB]] Can you explain that? DC]] Well, everybody down dere has humour. If dere were no whales, no money, do you understand. LB]] Yeah. DC]] You’d come and say, ‘Ah I’m sick,’ which means you’re whale sick. Everbody wae ya, it was not de usual banter. So, I don’t know. LB]] Do you remember there being, a kind of known even when you were working there that it would end? DC]] Well we could see it happenin’. See to give you an idea, when I get doon to de ice, I think at the time it was about 52/53, or 54/55/56, now, everytime dere was some loose pack ice, de whales was in amongst de loose pack. So if you were goin’ down you’d know [indecipherable]. See de water only flow de same as the boat, because of de ice basically, but when I come on the scene de whales was gettin’ the few numbers depletin’, you’re out in de weather, and if you get caught in horrendous weather as we did and dere are no icebergs to shelter alongside, you just had tae heave to. So de other side of all dis is can you imagine we get to de ice latterly, we’re five months on de whale boat starin’ at de faces of each other and we’re fishin’ from de 15th of April and everything was frozen up by den, you can imagine. LB]] Was that stressful? DC]] Well it was. We didnae know what de result was. And on de catchers, it was open bridge, you were at de wind and had to be with de visibility. So if de water was comin’ up and de first time you see what’s coming in up over and we were all young as you can imagine, I thought I’d grow a beard for de first time den. Den when I came doon, it was like a Christmas tree and de skin was all frozen. Now imagine if you’d gone in de drink, you’d not have lasted five minutes. So, I mean, it was a rough point. No question about it. LB]] What would your dad tell you about it? DC]] Well, he was… now, the other side of dis, my dad, dere were motorboats in Leith Harbour. The motor boats was like a water taxi then, without them everything woulda ground to a halt. So that’s what he was. Driving one of dem. Towin’ barges, running line up. Now the other thing wit’ dat was, there was nothin’ with health and safety, dat motorboats had no communication, no radio. Now, you obviously know where Leith Harbour is and Stromness, now, dese men, snow and whatever, was runnin’ dere passing some of de boys comin’ from Stromness, and the picture house. Well dere was no communication, no navigation others dan de clock and de compass. And you could imagine de wind and blizzard conditions. And dere never were no mishaps. 16
LB]] When you were at home when you were younger, was joining the whaling what you thought you would do? DC]] Well, let’s be honest, my younger era and me early teens if you thought you were a whaler you were somebody on your motorbike when you come home. I don’t know if you been on Yell, and movin’ back to me, it kept me goin’ and it cost a bloody fortune for conscription. And hindsight is a wonderful thing, I should have gone. I married when I was 19, all my young life and many more spend doon there. LB]] Did you think that it was a way to avoid the conscription? DC]] For my purposes, yeah. Silly boy. And as you already know, dere was no communication just de rest of de boys. Most of your mail comin’ doon with transport about three months old. De fastest we got mail when I was an island whale catcher, I got all the air links to Falklands and de [indecipherable] comin’ doon dose letters were three weeks old. We couldnae grasp that. So your communication wit’ home was non-existent. LB]] So, can you explain to me why it would be more preferable to go to the whaling than to be conscripted? DC]] Well, to me it was… I don’t know. It was stupid. To me, Yell is no big place. To give you an idea, after de war I think dere were 100 whalers on Yell, a small populated island. So everybody, understand, seemed to be, a thing to be a whaler. You understand. So if I could turn de clock back I wouldnae done it. LB]] You wouldn’t have? DC]] Of course. No way. LB]] Because of the time away? DC]] Exactly. I lost me wife to dementia about five-six years ago and can you imagine when I packed me bags I knew when I left in transit den, you can’t, no matter what happens dere’s no way you can get back. LB]] Yeah. DC]] You understand. Dere was no way. But I don’t know, de only other thing I would say, de boys, even now de few of us dat’s left, dere seems to be a strong, how would I describe it, commonship, friendship, call if what you want. Now dat’s somethin’ I can’t explain to ye. LB]] I wondered about that. Do you think it’s a Shetland thing? DC]] No. No. No I don’t think dat. LB]] So what is it then? DC]] Well I can’t answer you dat. LB]] Maybe the isolation of the place… DC]] It’s funny you say dat. Because I asked about de quarters and it maybe sounds a bit silly, there’s something dere that kept you comin’ back. LB]] I don’t think it sounds silly, I think that it sounds likely but I wonder what… DC]] Now den, can you imagine, some of de scenery dat’s down dere, now can you imagine, it was daylight practically all de time around, and when you came first dere just seemed to be a break, a silence, a silence, I can’t explain it. Dere’s somethin’ about it. LB]] And you can still feel it now when you think about it. DC]] Well, put it this way, I wouldnae go back doon. No, that wasn’t… I wouldn’t fancy goin’ down again. It was tough goin’ on de whale catcher because I was involved with what dey called de buoy boats, so that was pickin’ up de whales that was flagged from the catchers, pickin’ em up and towin’ dem to the factory. Now can you imagine in all kinds of weather and first of all you had a flag stickin’ in it with the catcher number on it and latterly there would be a radar reflector and den latterly they had a beacon. See Salvesen, Salvesen among all whalin’ expeditions was way ahead. Helicopter and as you probably gathered at de ice asdic and all those catchers. The Norwegian fleets, dey all had none o’ dat. 17
LB]] I wonder what you think about the asdic. DC]] Well now it’s funny you say about de asdic. [indecipherable] De asdic operator over dere was from Orkney, I can’t remember his name, great guy, Navy man. So when de asdic was pretty [indecipherable] now he set up dis… and de trouble like de submarine and de whale, de trouble with [[moving chair]] DC]] Now with de asdic, dey had it in de Navy as part of security, we were gonna go through de, not what dey used on the de ships, from de deck to de bottom. I cannae tell you how deep. Now de trouble with whale was what dey called de blowing, dis is what you had to figure out. De trick wae asdic is what dey call Doppler. Dey find dat tone or not among all dis other disturbance, now I cannae explain to ye, now dis guy learned me. He was changin’ de range, I cannae mind, 1000 or 2000 yards was de distance. Now if you got dis Doppler now dere are things swimmin’ around and evertime you picked up de thing, you put it on the side like an old-fashioned model bike so you could knock de distance down. Do you understand? Now when you come doon to say about 200 yards de thing was going far flying. Now a good operator really was worth his money, but what de young guy did wae me, he used to blindfold me when we were stopped and he’d swing this thing and ask ‘What’s that Davie?’ I says, ‘It must be a lump of ice.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘There’s Doppler knots see.’ The thing was goin’ way over, it was slightly lower tone, but you had to know. A lot of ice was sittin’ and no blow. And de other thing he tried me, what’s that, I said ‘It’s somethin’ comin’ towards us.’ Well this Doppler tone, it was a penguin. The size did not matter. Now one of de other things that helped me is I play de fiddle, see. Now this helped I think, and he strongly recommended, he says, ‘Davie I recommend you to be an asdic operator.’ Which I didn’t do. LB]] How come? DC]] I just didn’t. LB]] What about… some people seem to think that the asdic was unethical. DC]] Well, put it this way, if you come up among a lot of whales and they’re blowin’, if you was to put the asdic on, whoosh! They were off. So the beam, I’m not sayin’ like electric shock, it certainly set them off. LB]] Did you ever hear anything when you were working on the catchers about electric harpoons? DC]] I did hear, we had mumbles of that, but we didnae hear no… no, no, no, no. LB]] What do you think that would have been like? DC]] Well you know de water comes up de sides. I think dey almost woulda got fried. So when you come to think about Salvesen, and thinkin’ about de whales, helicopter, the thing with the helicopter boys when dey come first, the things dey identify, well you know whales not much of de whale comes outta de water. You know dat, you seen photos of it. De trick was to identify what spaces between the blowin’. Now dis took awhile, helicopters would maybe, say for example, minke whales, but dey soon got to catch on and it made a big difference, see de helicopters were dere… LB]] How would they communicate? DC]] The factory communicated to us, the helicopter communicated to the wireless man on de Venturer. Now, some of dem was mischevious buggers, you’d be up on de barrel and some of dem would come right up and blow your bloody hat off! Some of dem was really. But I always mind one occasion, a mornin’ it was snowin’ and blowin’. And we were 60 miles to the factory and de helicopter passed now can you imagine his navigation if he’d missed? De target he was aimin’ for was dat distance away. But dat boys had to be smart. LB]] What did you think about all these new additions to the industry? DC]] Well, sadly what it did is that when I came on the scene in my latter years, I did nine seasons altogether, de whale numbers then was gettin’ very depleted. Now to give you an idea, I don’t know if you heard this, say a fin whale the minimum length of size it took was 58 feet, now another thing happened to me, it was very tragic is the whales we was gettin’ was milk full. Can you imagine a bunch of whales and you’ve got a calf with a small one among them, now can you imagine what 18 happened. The milk would just spurt out, and that was it. So de whale inspector as you already know, he was not a very happy chappie. And in one month we had two or three milk full ones. LB]] How were you supposed to know. DC]] Ah, good question. So we’d come up and in a bunch of fin whale. And dere were two young ones among dem. I was taken down on de gun platform and he said, ‘Right, you tell me.’ Which was impossible, but on de other hand if we got, which happened many times, a mother and a young one, we never touched it. LB]] But how would you know? DC]] Well dat’s the point, you couldnae. Dat was de kind of sad… all fairness to Salvesen and his gunner and his inspectors and all de rest, dey did play by de book, because as you know de Russians and de Japs… we couldnae be fishin’ fin near Christmas time. Dat was de rules. We fished sperm, around de South Shetlands. Until de fin whale season, baleen, but de Russians were doin’ what dey wanted. And de size-wise, I don’t think dey paid much attention, Japs de same. LB]] How did that feel then, knowing that you were attempting to follow the rules. DC]] Well, it was just de way things, we just had to recognize it dere was no other way around to be honest with you. But den de other thing that happened not so much in the factory, to give you an example if it was… the Southern Joker, whales were scarcer around Leith Harbour area, now south of South Georgia, Cooper Island and Green Island, we were 360 miles from Leith Harbour. Comin’ among dose whales. We had searched, we had bad weather, we got to Leith Harbour, we had three whales and three tails. De chain broke. And den on another location, you lost ‘em. Can you imagine, once we shot de fifth whale and flagged it, so we had 8 fin dat day and when we got de last one, his flag was 90 miles. Can you imagine backtracking course, chasin’ you know you’re goin’ all different directions and speeds, second mate was the navigator and some of dose guys I don’t know how he did it. But if he wants he can use de beacon, now every catcher had a different beacon signal dat could send out a signal for a 20 mile radius. To prevent losin’ flags, again dat was Salvesen. He was ahead, really ahead anything regardin’ helicopters, asdic. LB]] Did you get the feeling, working for them, that they had some concern about the quota numbers? Or were they just kind of going to ride it out. DC]] Well, we never were involved with that side. I mean dey did. De other things I don’t know if the boys has mentioned to ya, latterly when de numbers started to deplete dey came up with the digit number dey called de unit. Now one unit was one blue whale, I think it was 2 fin whale and 4 small sei whale. Now I couldnae tell you how many units in de pot started. Now then, once the baleen season opened every week your radio operator and whale inspector, that was mainly his job, and this was transmitted every week once dose units were fished up, stop fishin’. Now if you hadn’t been in a lucrative part and you hadnae, dat was your orders. Now what I’m sayin’ to you, de latter part when we was fishin’ to de 15th of April, I don’t think dere was any units. It was horrendous, de cold. De winter was settin’ in. So it really was tough, five months when you left Leith Harbour and you sail getting to know your shipmates better dan your family. You were stayin’ in the same place together for the duration of five months. LB]] So kind of no wonder then, even if they weren’t technically your coworkers, no wonder you would have a certain kinship than with non-whalers. You’ve looked at each other a lot. DC]] No, that’s right. That could be part of it. LB]] If I can tell you a little bit about what I’ve been thinking as I’ve been doing my interviews and my research, is that I’m kind of trying to answer what influenced the end of the British-Antarctic whaling enterprises and a thought of mine has been that whaling and war are actually kind of interlinked in some ways. That’s through technology and the technology that whaling benefitted from, from war, and the men that also participated. I wondered if you’ve ever noticed that. DC]] Well, see my… I could just mind de last of de war, I was still at de school den, and as you probably know I think statistics of de population of Shetland dere was more lost in de merchant side. 19
You understand, so dere was hardly a household dat wasn’t decimated. I mean, to me looking at dat and what we were doin’, dere was no comparison. Imagine young guys in a tanker, but couldn’t you imagine every bang and dunk well that’s how I see, is a cruel man. I mean we go on about stress in the modern age, but what was they goin’ through? Say young guys in tankers, it was them. LB]] Do you think that public sentiment around cruelty and being away for a long time would have changed after the war? DC]] To be honest with you, no. The way things is at the moment there’d be no whaling for de simple reason dat health and safety. Can you imagine a factory with derricks topped with all kinds? And with all hangin’ wires. Mind dragging ropes and goin’ around walls, and a guy with a bloody bone saw with a hoop in the middle to stop the whiplash. And not a hard hat to be seen. So fae dat sat of it, no. But de cruelty, to be honest with ya, I’m lookin’ back in life and it’s somethin’ I’m not proud. For de factory boys, when de whales come dere dey were dead. But we had to shot dem, and can you imagine harmless things. I always maintain, see, a big whale… LB]] Do you think it would have just been more present in your life? DC]] I’ll give you one example. It was a sei whale and he came up right under de fore and de gunner went bang with dae. De harpoon hit, it shot right on, and de grenade exploded from de top jaw but dat thing was goin’, but can you imagine what dat poor thing was… dere’s no way to describe it. And I mind another occasion where de only time I seen a whale, a fin whale, clear de whale. Harpoon in his belly and de liver and den up de shaft, can you imagine de pain? Some of dem would go right doon, and dat was it, never come up, dey’re goners den when you heave dem up. LB]] What did you think in the 1970s and 80s when there was activism around whaling? DC]] To be honest wit you, I couldnae contradict what… de only thing I could say wae young guys were de Japs, I was agreeing with what dey were doin’ but I don’t know if dey realized the risks they’re were puttin’ themselves in along sides, going across and among ‘em. I agreed to do it, but I thought the risk, after bein’ on a whale catcher meself, I know what coulda happened to ‘em. I mean I admired the whatever you want to call it. LB]] Some people have said that they thought they were deluded… DC]] Oh no, I wouldnae say dat. I mean you should be more, I don’t know what de more humane way of doin’ it, but no, as I explained with de explosive harpoon… it’s no different. But de other thing with all dis is the sperm whale. De sperm, first thing, a sperm, the top hide is thick even with an explosive harpoon you had to be close or de thing would bounce off. Now when de harpoon went in de sperm de first thing he did was retaliate, turn and sometimes dey would hit us or dere were occasions where dey’d knock blades outta catchers’ propellers. Now can you imagine dese old guys with their wee boaties and dere lances? Think about it. Now one of de other reasons that we couldnae get sperm in da old times with da boats was dey float, see. They do not sink, but a baleen whale once he’s dead you have to put air in his belly. And dere’s no way, dey had no chance. Now young sperm, I’ll tell you. And de other thing, the Norwegians said this to me and I’d been dere for a few year and he said, ‘David just realize this sperm we get is a bull.” Now that’s somethin’ I never thought about but he’s right, now on the Southern line or not, whenever a sperm comes to shore you’re guaranteed it’s a male, never a female, and it comes even around dis area. Now it appears once… once dey let de air out of de side, de bachelor boys and dat’s what it was. And some of de sei, some of dem would come up way up 60 feet. But young bull’s going to be big. LB]] What was going on at home when you were away? DC]] Well I was married in Yell and at dat period dere were no, de crofters didnae have telephones, at dat time dere were nae power on Yell understand, I mean, we weren’t uncivilized but we were goin’ back a bit. So the only way dat we could, any man made de same, at Christmas we’d send home an SLT which was a sealed letter telegram which would go home in a short period and all de families, my Mrs. Included, would havae dis telegram up on de mantelpiece and de boys would come in with dere bottles, cheers de boys doon. 20
LB]] That must have been difficult, don’t you think. DC]] Well. Wherever you were was irrelevant. My oldest boy, he was able to… he didnae know who I was, he just looked up at me. Like what kinda guy is this? Dat was de way. But havin’ said dat, can you imagine gettin’ home and back to your family how should I say this, it’s no, you dinnae make up for the time you were away, dere’s somethin’ I cannae explain to ya. You got home to your wife and family and back to what we’ll call civilization, I mean… LB]] When you were young, what did you feel when your dad went away? DC]] Well you see, my dad, when I can mind, my dad, off the track, all Shetlanders started on north boats as boys, he get on her and he did two three-year trips on the ship we called de Queen Maude, he did another year and he was away 7 years. He’d been in de States and had some gold plated teeth, so they called him Golden Gibbie. So it was all mother. But dat was different for me. So when de war years was on, dere was nothin’ in Yell, de big car ferry, my old man was in Yell with a smaller boat and he was there all de war years you understand. Now at dat time dere were no lights, clock, compass or radio, or nothin’ and dat was de only link from Yell to de mainland. So I was four and a half. [indecipherable] When he get finally back to sea again before goin’ on de Harvester for de whaling dat was away den 15. So dat period was lost to me anyhow. LB]] Was it hard for your dad to be away? DC]] Well of course it was, but den at dat time. You see, men it was hard when shippin’ was really poor, dese poor guys couldnae afford de fare to get to Shetland, dey didn’t have de money to get home, no bloody option but to stay put. And de other thing, someone may not like me sayin’ dis, but there’s a lotta Shelties that dey called the North Sea Chinamen. LB]] Yes I’ve heard that. DC]] Because dey were sayin’ other men would come and say dey cannae get jobs because of de Shetland North Sea Chinamen. All de Shelties. Bloody laugh. LB]] It’s not such a bad reputation is it… DC]] Well I suppose so. It’s clever, but de only sad thing about all this and my time down dere, de first year I was doon on the Southern Joker, we lost one over de side. I cannae get into too much detail because as years go by you don’t know… I’m hard and fast about dis… he should have been saved, whether he survived de cold water or not… you was only 16 and a half and he floundered for about 15 minutes. LB]] That must have been hard to see when you’re young. DC]] Well when I come back and into Leith Harbour and de flag at halfmast I thought my old man was in de morgue, he says ‘Okay Davie, I want you to come to shore.’ I says no. When I started a catcher, I was seasick but I was determined. LB]] How come? What was it about the catcher? DC]] Well I don’t know. See what I didn’t like about de factory was all de rattling and de smell. I mean, it was unsanitary. We could smell it long before we could see it on de horizon. You could bloody smell it! So that’s why, but mind some of de boys couldnae stick to catchers because they couldnae get over de sickness. It was like using a bloody trampoline. Some of dem modern catchers… and de mess boys strugglin’ along de deck. And climbin’ up on dat rope. LB]] What did you do after the whaling? DC]] Well I was involved wae… we did a bit of lobster fishin’ and den I was in a boat in de Sea of Forth. [[shipping materials]] So de council had a boat, she’s lying in Anstruther. Ships, concrete blocks, machinery, all dose outlyin’ areas. LB]] So what made you want to stay in the kind of sea… shipping… DC]] I was used to de sea most of me time. Dere’s another side to all dis now. I was on some of dis when oil was discovered and all of dat happened. Dey were meeting in de hall quite a lot in the de community and somebody asked for who was in favour and dere were three who held dere hands up for oil and de rest was all against. Now den, after dey started building de terminal, well I was lucky 21 and got a job on de barges and jettys. I was dere for 43 months. It’s like whaling times, not a lot changes. LB]] I wondered about that. DC]] Dere was no comparison, financially. Financially that’s when I started to make a bit of money. Now I finished up with the marine side, in charge of de barges, and dat’s a part of my job lookin’ back, dere were no comparisons. Some of dat boys are still complainin’ about de grub. I had never had it so good in my life. In de camp, grub, workin’ in a landlocked voe. He looks at me and says ‘You’re a different breed.’ It’s what some young guys… it’s a way of life. Another thing when you’re thinkin’ about life, when you’re buildin’ those peers if you’d said to me dat in a few years time I would be sittin’ down dere loadin’ a tanker I woulda said to you, ‘You might as well ask me if I can fly de Concorde.’ No. But dat did happen. LB]] I do see a few parallels in terms of natural resource extraction. In terms of whaling and oil. One energy replacing another. DC]] Well it was. But de other thing, de Bovril plant, dere’s no condonin’ de slaughter of whales, but all dat was used, dere was very little latterly dat was dumped. You think about Bovril, bone meal, meat meal. See I knew nothin’ about dat… LB]] Well thank you very much for meeting me. DC]] It was a pleasure meeting you.
22
Ex-Whalers Club 27 June 2017 Edinburgh
Daniel Morrison James Yorkston George Cummings Don Lennie
LB]] Can we go around, and I’ll get you to say your name? Just so I get it all correct. DM]] My full name is Daniel Morrison. And I was whaling from 1946-1963, 17 seasons and 5 winters. I made it to 88. JY]] I’m James Yorkston. And I went to the whalin’ in 1958 until 63. I overwintered in 1960, I did one of the last winters. GC]] I was in the 47/48 season, Danny and I were on the same vessel in 1947/48, the Southern Harvester. And then in the last season, the 1961/62 season, on the Southern Venturer. The reason I went back is I was unemployed, so I went to Salvesen and got a job and that was it. DL]] Donald Lennie, I was an engineer the last four seasons at Salvesens. And I spent one season on the same catcher as Danny. DM]] I can’t remember seein’ this fellow much, when I think of it, when we rode in we used the same cabin, but I can never remember us bein’ in the cabin together. DL]] At the start of the season it’s daylight 24 hours a day, so the gunner will go up durin’ the night and Danny would say, he’d sleep in his gear because you’d surely be up sometime durin’ the night. He would get up as I was going to bed. DM]] Well the gun went and that was it. There’s one gunner that says to me, on the last season it was a top gunner, he says ‘When the gun goes, I better see you on deck before the echo dies.’ LB]] And what did you think about that? DM]] I says, ‘Yes, sir.’ You don’t mess with this man, really big guy. Top gunner for the whole Antarctic that season he was. He was really… me and the top boat, you got the best of the food and we shot four albatross that season. Ancient mariner gave a warning about shooting, Taylor Coleridge. Anyway, there was… it’s the only thing in the Antarctic that has white meat. Everything else is black and dark. I’ve eaten seals liver, seals flipper. LB]] I’ve had that too. DM]] You’ve had that as well? LB]] Well in Canada, in the Arctic there is sealing, but I had it in a pie. DM]] One of the albatross fed the saloon, the other one fed the crew. And there were a big fridge on that boat and you put two in the fridge to take home with you. Because the boat was goin’ home, that was the last season. LB]] Can you talk a bit about how you got started? GC]] I got started not because of the whaling, but I had seen paintings of Antarctica and things like that. My interest was in Amundsen and Shackleton, not so much Scott. From the age of ten I started reading them, I would always go to the library at home, and I still do and I thought, how can I get to Antarctica? And just by chance I found out that Salvesen didn’t go to Antarctica, but they fished in Antarctic waters. And I thought, if I get a job there I should get down to Antarctica. I was only 15 and the whole idea with my parents was that I would carry on at the school, do a degree in art and become a commercial artist, which I had no intentions of doing. Then, I was just, I had just turned 15 and then you could leave school without your parents permission, in 1947, you could say ‘That’s me, I’m finished.’ So I said, ‘Alright, I’m not carryin’ on.’ So I came home and as a matter of fact the skips called me that afternoon and I got the bus down to Leith and signed on as a mess boy. Came 23 home, I didn’t say anything to my parents until after the meal and I said to my father, ‘By the way, on Monday,’ I said, ‘I’m goin’ to Newcastle.’ He says, ‘No, you’re going to school on Monday.’ I says, ‘No, I’m not. I’ve left school today and I’m going to the whaling.’ He says, ‘You’re going to the whaling?’ I says, ‘I’m sorry, I’ve signed the contract for 22 months, I have to go.’ He says, ‘No, you’re not goin’. So there was some rage for a Sunday afternoon. I remember my mother sayin’, ‘Once you go, that’s it.’ Mind you I kind of half thought when I got to Norway, should I jump ship and go back home? But I couldn’t face my friends, so I had to go through with it. So my father says, ‘Alright, I’ll take you to the station on Monday mornin’, and you’ll get the 10 o’clock train to Newcastle.’ My half-sister, she was the woman in charge for the seaman’s [indecipherable] in Newcastle, it was arranged that she would meet me and take me to the Muir Line offices in Newcastle and thereafter I was left and they told me where the vessel was, it was lyin’ just below… you know the bridge over the River Tyne? South of there, east of there I should say. I joined the ship and that was it, I did the season and I had hoped to do the winter but I wasn’t picked. So I went back the following season, and thereafter, at that time if you didn’t go back and sign-on for another season you got your papers to do your national service. So I got called up for national service and I beat a hasty retreat down to Leith, to be told that I had my papers and they can’t employ me. So I was stuck with two years national service, I tried to join the navy but even then my left eye was a bit suspect and in these days you had to have 20/20 vision both eyes to get into the Navy. So I elected for the Royal Air Force and I can remember applyin’ for an overseas postin’ because I wanted to go abroad and I was posted to Leuchars in Fife. [[laughs]] GC]] I ended up on a radar site, I was travellin’ back and forward everyday, so that was my national service. And then I got involved in the motor industry and vehicle components. I got laid off, and I just thought I’ll go back and sign-up for whalin’ again. I had ideas to save a bit of money and start my own business, but that didn’t materialize until many year later. But that was my induction to the whalin’ and how I got started. The strange thing is, I didn’t step foot in Antarctica until 1991, all these years later. I did a couple of trips back. LB]] Did you feel at the time, when you were down there, that you were… GC]] I was disappointed, but it was great to see the ice and things like that. Things that 95 per cent of the world had never ever seen these things. There’s a very small percentage that see things like that, actually. I was entranced, and have been ever since. It’s reflected when I started paintin’. JM]] When you were at sea did you do any painting? GC]] Yeah, I did sketches. Because I always remember the last season [indecipherable]… [someone asks] could you do a sketch of the ship for me? I did a sketch of the Southern Venturer, because I knew what the thing looked like. And many years later I had the opportunity to go and visit him in north of Scotland and he still had that sketch, but what he didn’t know, I had done a painting of the vessel for him. DL]] He does lovely paintin’s. GC]] So camaraderie is very strong amongst the whalers, and I tell you it’s the same with the men who’ve been in the forces. LB]] I had also heard that whaling was a way of avoiding national service, so what was it about whaling that was so much better? GC]] I think, for one thing, the money when you were away. You could spend money in the slopchest. JY]] It was that. Yeah. GC]] That was the attraction. JY]] It was the top priority. 24
GC]] The difference is that the national service was very regimented, very disciplined. You’re told to march and you’ll march properly, and you’ll end up running in a square with a rifle above your head, it wasn’t funny actually. LB]] But then you could also be told that when you hear the gun go off you need to be on deck before the echo… GC]] Yes, well what Danny was sayin’ was quite correct because it applies to the forces as well. When you’re told to do something, you do it. And the thing about the whalin’ and I only experienced it once, a chap from Hammersmith, the last season he was an absolute layabout. He ended up bein’ completely ostracized with the people because he wouldn’t get outta his bunk and things like that. That was very rare. You went there for one reason – to work and to make money, and if you didn’t work people would soon realize you weren’t pulling your weight. You’d get away with that in normal society, but you can’t get away with that at sea. DL]] George, you joined the Harvester in Newcastle in 1947, and you mistakenly thought I was there then. GC]] I thought you were. DL]] I was in Curaco in 1947. We were gettin’ the catchers ready in Curaco for South Georgia. I joined the Harvester in Middlesburgh in October 1946. GC]] So I joined it up in the Tyne then, in 47. I thought you were on the Harvester then. DL]] You’re thinkin’ that I had taken your job or something. GC]] Oh no! I’m thinking that, how did we not know each other? Mind you… DL]] Well I joined the Harvester in South Georgia. GC]] I see. JY]] So we’ll have to find this other guy that took the job. [[laughs]] GC]] When I joined the Harvester, I was put into a rather nice situation, junior officers you served. And I did something wrong after a couple of days because I was demoted to the whalers mess, which is the scum of the southern ocean, we just threw the plates on the table. It was a different concept but actually a much happier concept from my point of view, and there was a benefit to that because at the end of the season depending on how well you served the men they would all give you a tip and that tip was a lot of money and added considerably to your wages. It was quite good. JY]] Ten bob it was. Ten bob at the end of the season. GC]] That was a lot of money, then. JY]] I had the mess room on the Harvester and I had all the flensers, and then the others, you had two tables, you had factory workers. Engineerin’ and the separators gang, the cleaners was on another table. LB]] Was everyone free to sit where they wanted? JY]] No. Everybody had their own seats. And then you went in between again and then there was the same hookers… hookin’ the meat [laughs] LB]] Well I had heard there were no women there! JY]] Maybe that’s not an appropriate word right now. DM]] There was a very strong pecking order and god help you if you sat in… there was a big long table, the food came in on a kit stuck on the end so the man that got first, he had been the longest and most senior and god help anyone who tried to sit in that seat. I remember, when joinin’ the ship, a new person came and sat at the end of the table. And the commander says, ‘Move. If you love your wife, move.’ [laughs] DM]] So he moved one space along and somebody else comes, ‘You can’t sit there, buddy.’ Before the food come he’s right at the very far end of the table and gets the food last. There was always plenty. 25
JY]] The crew there were all brilliant guys, I thought they were giants when I went there as a small boy, really. You get the lads running up the ship, cuttin’ and slicin’ and doin’ all types of things. DM] If you think of cuttin’ whales, especially those sperm whales, they were so hard. If you’d shot one and it’s under the bow you try to put a fly in it, a big sharp spear, you had to put all your force just to get it to pierce the blubber fat. So the men always think back how hard they worked, all of them, malingerers got no sympathy. If you had a sore back or anything you’d shut your mouth. If there’s blood pourin’ out you, that’s okay. [laughs] DM]] But don’t mention it or you’ll be called all names under the sun – wanker, malingerer, bed swinger. It was really strong when I think back, no obesity I tell you that. JY]] I worked in the Caledonian hotel on Princes St at the time, I was a pageboy, and then I grew too big. You had to be small to be a page boy, anyway, I left there and my brother Tommy he had been at the whaling for 52/54 and it was the same as George, he got caught to do his national service so he had to leave the whalin’ at that time. So I said, ‘I’m gonna go.’ So I went down in 1958 and there were no jobs, so I got a job in a Duncans Chocolate Factory, they made famous hazelnut chocolate and that, a popular thing at that time. I was trainin’ to be a van man, salesman, so I stuck that for about two months and then I got a call from Salvesen – there’s a space if you’d like to go to the whalin’. So I went to the boss and I told him I had a chance and he says, ‘Don’t be so daft, laddie, you’re better stayin’ here and doin’ a job here.’ So that’s what happened, and as you know I’m gonna go whaling. So they gave me a month’s wages and all the best, so I went down and I met George Adamson who gave us the jobs and he said, ‘You have to go down this week. The ship’s in South Shields.’ It was so quick, I didn’t know what I was doin’. So anyway, I go down and sign on as a mess boy for the whole season, 59/60 and then I come home. Money didn’t last long, as usual, I had a lovely mother that saved all my money at home, I knew she’d be needing it, but I went back to the Callie hotel and then a night porter and after that I went back to the whalin’ again in 1959, as a mess boy at the end. LB]] What made you do that? JY]] Just wanted to get back to the whalin’ again, met with my friends again, and then my friend and I decided to do the 60 winter, but the story of that was he came, he was on the same catcher as Danny, and when he came back he’d dropped a group. So he ended up on the catchers and I was a friend at that time, so we did the 60 winter together and then we stopped and thought about it and nevermind. I went up to the secretary and said we wouldn’t do the winter. He says, ‘That’s okay.’ A month later I come along, ‘We’re gonna do the winter.’ So I went up to him and he says, ‘Now it doesn’t come off this paper,’ so we were tied into doin’ the winter. Then I come off there in 61, I went back on the Harvester for the 61/62 season as a galley boy, and then the 62/63 season I went back in the galley again. Group 8, which was more money. We all knew that the whalin’ is finished that year anyway. LB]] How did you know? JY]] Well, the Venturer was sold the year before and they knew that the whalin’ industry was gettin’ in a bad state. Probably I didn’t realize at that time but a lot of people knew that it was dyin’ a death in a way that there was no whales, you couldn’t keep killin’ them at that rate anyway. So, after that we come home and told that the whalin’ had finished, the Harvester had gone. There wasn’t much work and when I went back I decided to stay with the sea, I was going to try and make it on the tramp steamers at Salvesen, and the pool at that time would take any caterin’, so I went thinkin’ that, so I was a cook then. Or a second cook, baker. That was my bread. Anyway, that was my days at sea. Then I went down to fishin’, Salvesens fishery off of Newfoundland. That took a nose dive as well, the cod problem. They just take too much cod out of the sea at that time. You would realize that. How is that doin’ now? 26
LB]] I think that it’s bounced back to an extent but certainly not what it used to be. I think what’s interesting too is that there has been an identity shift around it, almost like you were talking about with whaling, where young people… you hear cod and you back up a bit, everyone’s family is all tied up in it. A lot of social discussion around fault. Immense success and how we deal with the aftermath. GC]] What Jim said about the demise of the whalin’, although I did three seasons, I can remember the first two seasons we were catchin’ quite a lot of blue whales, the biggest whales of the fins, when I went back in 61/62 season, we were catchin’ mostly sei whales and the yardstick the IWC set was 16,000 bwu per year. 16,000 blue whales you could take for all the factory ships operating in Antarctica. Two fin whales equated to one blue whale, or six sei. But the trouble is, it’s the same work to produce a sei whale as to produce a sixth of the byproducts, so obviously the writin’ was on the wall in the middle-50s. So the whalin’ was on its last legs and obviously is Salvesen is not making money, they’re not goin’ to carry on losing money. LB]] Do you remember how you would have heard from them that it was the last season? DM]] We got a letter in the post, Gerald Elliot wrote the letter, and told everybody that we were leavin’ that last season. JY]] I think we realized it was comin’ to an end when the product wasn’t gettin’ sold. They were bringin’ other oils in and stuff. I think politically as well, it was getting a bit heated. I wouldn’t have realized it then, at that time I would be ignorant to the fact. DL]] Of course the finance and the expedition was quite a lot of money wasn’t it. DM]] To finance an expedition was over two million. Towards the end. So if you think of probably 600 men on each expedition that wanted to be fed. In 1948, there’s 12 catchers, 10 fishing boats and 2 buoy boats. Each catcher, probably the top five or six catchers, could have 100 blue whales for the season. In 1963, there was one blue whale caught for the whole expedition. You can’t go shootin’ 75- 80 foot blue whales and expect them to grow. For that period, there was about 60,000 whales killed in a season overall. In 1932, there was 40,000 whales killed which produced 3.6 million barrels of oil. So the price of oil… anybody remember? DL]] I70 pounds a ton. DM]] I thought the highest it went to was 145… it could be down as low as 90. LB]] At the time, did you notice that there was a shifting in the use of products? Using the oil. JY]] The blood extract, the Bovril type thing, they put that on the ships which was very successful at the time, and then they had the dry meat for fertilizer and stuff like that. I wouldn’t know the price. LB]] Right, I mean I guess I wondered if you had noticed personally back at home if people were still using these products. JY]] Yes, they were. In soaps, all the washing powder and everything. LB]] Unilever. GC]] Worldwide, they bought all the whaling that was on the market. It was really, they still have as far as soaps, etc. is concerned. Towards the end, the things they was startin’ to make the money on was meat extract, blood extract. I actually worked at a plant, it was a much better job than the liver plant, an abomination. The meat extract was very profitable. When you tell people that they say, ‘I ate that!’ and it’s whale. LB]] Did they know that at the time? GC]] No, in these days you didn’t have to print on the package what it was made of, now you have to have the very last detail. Of course I always joke about sell-by dates, what does that mean. JY]] The meat, when they brought out the powder soups and stuff like that, it got its way into their flavouring and stuff like that. DL]] It was very profitable. We tried it, mixed it with hot water and it was just like Bovril. 27
LB]] And there was a large research project where the Ministry of Food considered how to go about marketing whalemeat to the average consumer in Britain. But they decided that people would just not buy whale. So what’s within us that we think it would be wrong to eat a whale? GC]] Well Jim knows better than I do as far as concerning the catering side, but if it was prepared properly it was actually pretty good. DL]] It doesn’t smell of fish, it’s a mammal. You think you’re eatin’ cow meat, but the grain was a bit coarser, the meat was bland, but if you had plenty of onions. One the catchers we’d have it about two or three times a week down there. DM]] One time there was an argument for if we were eatin’ whale meat or beef. We went to ask the cook and it was beautiful. People say, ‘Oh, but you got it fresh.’ But we didn’t eat it fresh, we hung it up for about a month and it would turn all black, then you would cut all the black off the outside and… LB]] Like aging a steak. DM]] Did you see Earth Planet 2 [Planet Earth 2]? LB]] I did. DM]] Can you tell me, I’m testing you, can you remember the name of the island they went offshore on to film the penguins? LB]] They had penguins? DM]] David Attenborough said hardly anyone had been on this island. It was called Zavodovski. A volcano. There are three islands, they’re Russian. They were goin’ ashore and they had great difficulty gettin’ ashore and they were showing you how penguins were trying to get back on the island but it’s a volcanic island. And the volcano had smoke and steam comin’ out the side of it. Two catchers went and we took loads of buckets and we collected hundreds and hundreds of penguin eggs and we took them to each catcher and gave them a couple of buckets of eggs and went to the factory ship. So we’re eatin’ them in all forms, scrambled, poached, fried. And there was repercussions in as much as I ended up constipated. [starts discussing the use of Epsom salts to cure this…] JY]] To much information, Danny. GC]] Too much info, Danny! [Still discussing the cure for this.] [laughter] LB]] So what did people think about eating scrambled penguin eggs? JY]] They were quite nice. I remember on the island one of the lads came back with a big load of them, went aback the small rookery and then he come back his thing was half, the wee penguin was inside… they just didn’t pick the right ones. It used to be that the baker would get them and he would take them and make beautiful sponges with them. DL]] You tell me now! JY]] It was Vienna cakes and stuff like that, on the island. [Talks about the baker.] So that was… a lot of the eggs came to the galley but there was plenty of other stuff there. Salvesen used to give us big tins of fresh egg, sealed. I couldn’t believe, they were super cakes. It was all egg yolk. Because the cook wasn’t usin’ them. DM]] You got a fried egg on a Sunday and a boiled egg on a Wednesday. And that was very limited, but if cook… when you put them in to boil, if they float you know they’re gone off. So anyway, I found out that this frozen egg on the boat deck in a tin, he wasn’t usin’ it, so I was readin’ the Sunday Post one day and thinkin’ I never get a cake, a few times I got a tin of biscuits but that went very quickly. I’m lookin’ and thinkin’, well I’ve got that, I’ve got that. So we had scales for weighin’ the gun powder and I got them in the galley, and I’m weighin’ out all the stuff. And my pal Jake we were watchmates then, Jake Nesbitt from Tynemouth, so we’re goin’ at night, you’re on the bridge yourself and you’re goin’ pick up whales that hadn’t made it to the factory. And so I would go and get it all written up and he would go and he’d be stirrin’ it with a fork, quite a big one, then I’d go 28 down and put it in a baking tray, we had all the stove all heat. I remember we were goin’ alongside the factory and he says, ‘Remember the cake?’ Well Jesus Christ, goes down and we open it and there was a huge… bloody hell, take that out! But I got a big thing of regret now, but I shoulda been makin’ two because we’re takin’ that to the foxhole and the officers they’re not gettin’ any cake. One time the gunner comes down with half a glass of rum and puts it on the table and says, ‘Can I have a piece of cake?’ [laughter] DM]] I says, ‘Help yourself’ and he takes a chunk. That was terrible, I should have been makin’ two. The first time I made it, the cook says ‘Well, where did you get… did you make that?’ I said, ‘No, my mother sent it.’ Stupid. But then they were gettin’ gobbled up and so then we had icin’ sugar and I found out I could put a bit of cocoa powder and make a brown one or a custard in, and you could put jam in and icing sugar, and by the end of it I could take a cup and go, phew! Jake would be stirrin’. Anyway, let Don tell you about he came into the whalin’. DL]] I was going to say, while you were talkin’ there, you have another story… I’d been at sea for about three years, I was on a tanker and I came off there and of course the shell tankers, some of the ports you went to you know, in the middle of nowhere, because all these refineries are outside town. So I had just over two years with Shell, came ashore and I thought, during the post-season if you didn’t have a ship you’d take a job somewhere else. But I got a phone call from Salvesen… no, that was the next season. What I done after that, I done a time [indecipherable]. And there was another whaler down there who had an engineerin’ place.. anyway, I went on the coast. Salvesen bought the line for about 18 months I was up and doon the Forth, I was home every weekend. It’s only 4 to 5 hours between London and Grangemouth, as soon as I hit Grangemouth I jumped off and got the bus home for the weekend, and if it rained I got an extra day because I couldnae load cement. So that was fine, that was a good job, then all of a sudden he says, ‘We’re going to have to go to lay the ship up, the dry dock.” Because that ship was gettin’ on. So I says, ‘Well, if I don’t have a job I’m going to have to go back to sea.” So anyway, Williamson used to be in the Federation, he says, ‘Don you were on tankers, weren’t you?’ I said yes, and he says, ‘Well, there’s a job goin’ for a fourth engineer and the ship’s in London.’ This was a Gulf Oil tanker, and I said ‘Aye, I’m free for that.’ So he says, ‘Can you go down to London tomorrow,’ and I says, ‘Aye, you’re on.’ So packed the bag and went to London and joined the ship. This was an American ship, built in… the shipbuilding place in America. A good ship and there’s plenty of room in these ships and you were treated well and everything, but most of their furniture was steel, you know steel cabinets, steel desks, whereas Shell was more beautiful because it was all wood. It was like five star hotel, had your own steward and everything. I went to that job, so we were runnin’ from the Gulf to Brazil and done a couple of trips there, we were supposed to be half a dozen trips, so this night at dinner the chief engineer says to me, ‘The boss wants to see you.’ This skipper was a… Thompson his name was, and he was one of the boys, you know. He’d come to Danny’s room one night, you’d supply the beer Danny so all the engineers would go in his room, and the next night it would be his term. And the end of the week, come up to my cabin. So anyway, I went up to see him and he’s sitting there and he says nothing’s wrong, he’s just sitting there. I says, “Well? What do you want me for?” He says, “So you’re a whaler are you?” I says, “So?” He says, “I got word from home, Salvesen wantin’ to know if you’re comin’ back for the next season.” I says fat chance of that, look where we are. We’re running from the Gulf to Brazil. He says, leave it for now, “But what do you do at the whalin’?” I says, “Well, the catcher…” He says, “You mean to say you’re goin’ back and give up this life to go back to the catchers?” I says I’d do it, don’t forget we were all in our 20s at that time. So I says, “I’ll do that.” He says don’t answer it until we had our cargo. Then he sent for me again, he says, “We’re goin’ back to Southampton.” So I got him to let them know I was comin’ back, I got back to Shields to join the Harvester, the next day to stand by the ship. I did one short time in the Gulf Oil so the super came aboard in Southampton, so I packed my bag, the first day it was nearly gettin’ time for sailin’ and me 29 and this other lad, this other engineer, he says come on and get a pint there’s a pub at the top of the road. So we went up there, it was half six in the evening. And there was a door on either side of the pub, so the door opens and this guy comes in, orders his pint, and I thought he looked familiar, and it was the super that I’d just left off the Gulf! He didn’t tell me he lived in South Shields! He just laughed. He says there was always a job for me if I wanted to, so that was me back at the whaling. And after that, the next three seasons. I was two on the catchers and the last season I was on the Harvester. Well I stood by the Harvester quite a few times, in Norway and in South Shields. So that was it. Once we knew that it was going to be the last season, 62/63 all the engineers were goin’ here, there, everywhere. Lookin’ for new jobs. When Venturer went, about half the catchers were back. Took them back to Norway and then we came back down again for the next season and it was Harvester only this time. I thought, ‘Have I done the right thing here?’ Because the first time I went down at the whalin’, I was taken out the catcher and I went in the engine room and I wondered, ‘What am I doing here?’ The engine room was maybe half the size of this room, less than that. But I thought, ‘Well I’m here so I just have to put up with it.’ You go to sea for four months, that’s it. Once that was over, that was fine. That was it until the end of the season, then we unloaded at Liverpool, took the ship to lay-up because the Japanese had bought the ship and bought the quota, so then it was four engineers and the chief. Salvesen brought it back to do something else, and then they changed their mind but then the ship was scrapped eventually. [Lists the death order of all the men who were with him on the Venturer] And that left me and the chief, and he just died here last December, 100 years old. [Talks about this man’s 100th birthday party and card] GC]] It was the end of January. DL]] So that left me the surviving engineer of the whaling factory ship. I’m the end of the line. I’m history now. [laughs] GC]] Whale meat’s good for longevity. LB]] I suppose that’s how they could have marketed it. GC]] If you go to Norway you can buy whale meat there, and I’ve been a couple times and it doesn’t taste anything like the whale meat we had whalin’. It’s off a minke whale which eats herring and has a different taste. It was 115Kr for a small piece. DL]] Yes, everything’s expensive there. DM]] What was it, a tenner for a pint? DL]] Five pound a half. JY]] If you remember when we went to Norway, they had a whale meat day when they had a big tent up and was cooking the different ways of cooking whale meat. The stew of it is lovely, I think. You’re actually tasting the gravy and suet. That was the thing with the, we used to get steaks on the Harvester when it was a whale meat day come, I used to go into the butcher, they were 3x3 square so you look at that steak and it was… the oil was still comin’ out the stuff when you were fryin’ it. I didn’t like that because after I used to do a big fry, huge big pan it used to go in and you’d have to take it off the stove and dump it and clean it and put on the next… DM]] That’s why we hung it up… JY]] That was hung up as well, for a long time, aye. Well after a month they used to take it down the butchers shop and the butcher would prepare it all. He would use a lot of the stuff for sausages and burgers, all different things that the made up. They used to call.. chip… the fish ball, the meat ball. Khipballe… they done that in sauce as well and it was quite nice. But there was whale meat in that, they knew that. In the Board of Trade articles you weren’t forced to eat whale meat, you could have somethin’ else. Which was probably corned mutton. Because says it was corned beef it wasn’t, it was corned mutton. Completely different, came from Argentina and Brazil. LB]] Did many people say no to the whale? JY]] Oh yeah, oh definitely. A lot of the Brits wouldn’t eat it. GC]] I thought it was very pleasant. 30
JY]] The men knew, they would have it fried. But… it wasn’t very nice. So everybody went on the corned mutton. GC]] It’s a bit like when you see bacon, I just don’t like it. You put it in the pan, you fry it and you see all the water comin’, a white emulsion and you don’t want to eat that. JY]] It’s salty and it comes out lookin’ it, the extra weight. But I must say, the Norwegians made it nice when it was in the sauce. LB]] Did you ever think it could be something that caught on at home? JY]] I don’t think they would. DM]] I think during the war years it was supplied, to some degree. GC]] It was sold in fishmongers, which is the wrong place to sell a mammal. I can remember at the beginning of the war, I’d be eight at the time, first year of the war, and I can remember the fish monger sellin’ whale meat. Completely the wrong place to buy it. LB]] I suppose it was different times, because the documents that I’ve read, there’a line that says that at first they won’t be able to tell people that it’s whale. You could never get away with that now. DM]] Whale was available during the war years because it was Salvesen ships that got sunk durin’ the war. LB]] What was it like to work for Salvesen? DM]] I think at heart he was a good person, he’d done a lot of charity work, especially in Norway, and he paid to get a church built in Leith. When I went to the whalin’ it was poverty. I was born in Leith down by the shore and my father was dead from the war and I was the eldest of three. I remember the food at that time, we were always getting tripe and potted meat and rabbit and all that and sheep’s head, boil it and scrape it all and make a patty. She asked me to go down to the butcher for a head, “and tell ‘em to leave the legs on it.” I said, ‘My mother said to leave the legs on it.’ So he said, ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do, I’ll leave the eyes in it and that’ll see you through.’ My granny, have you heard of people in Scotland talking about a… fourth pip of a stone. So it’s 3.5 pounds. So you say fourth pip ties. So my granny would say ask for that, and they’d say, ‘Oh there’s nae four pits of ties now, it’s all kilos.’ ‘Oh my god, well give me a four pit of kilos then.’ [laughs] DM]] As I was sayin’, it was sheer poverty that… my mother, was at her wits end to feed us, I remember one time I said to her, ‘Can I go to the swimmin’ baths’ and she had her purse upside down and says, ‘If I had it, I’d give you it…’ Empty. So I ran away up to junction street and go a wee box, people was always puttin’ them outside the door, chopped it up, everybody needed firewood sticks, but run up to the swimmin’ baths, the old man’s at the door, he says, ‘Full up son.’ Anyway, when she put a meal on the table for us, now it was a very small room, it was about the size of this, it was a total… there was nae wardrobe, well nobody had much to put in a wardrobe and the table we had was a card table that folded against the wall, so I can remember sitting at that card table, three children my mother, and she always quartered everything. If we got a cake, a small cake, it was quartered, no fightin’, no squabblin’ and she used to say a wee prayer, thank God for providin’ the food for us. So this day she puts three boiled eggs on the table and I says, ‘Can I say the prayer?’ She was astonished. ‘Oh yes, Danny, you say the prayer, that’s fantastic.’ ‘Three eggs between four of us, thank God there’s no more of us,’ I said. Well she picked up the plate in front of me and broke it over my head. She screamed ‘Blasphemy!’ She said go to your room. So anyway, a few days later she says to me, ‘Alright I’ve been speaking to Mr. McGregor, our neighbour, he’s going to take you down to Salvesens to get you a job.’ LB]] How old were you? DM]] I was 16. And we go down to Bernard St. and he takes me down there to see George Adamson, and he says, ‘If the mother can get rid of this one, she can feed the other two.’ I’m skin and bone. So they said, I think we can fit him in, that’s fine. So I got a mess boy’s job. Six pound 10 a month, and three times he says, ‘Now don’t forget that includes your food, your bed, your board. Everything, all 31 you can eat.’ He says there’s overtime on a Sunday. Which was counted in Norwegian, funny enough. It was a big number in that! But the people would say to me, well that was a lot of money then. But I say, ‘Aye, but a month’s just as long now as then.’ So you could leave an allotment and I left my mother some. So I realized I didn’t have any clothes for going to the Antarctic, and there was another room in the house, same size as this, there was five people there with one bed. You can imagine the sleeping arrangements. Well my dad had been away at sea before he died. Next door, there’s a granny and a mom and da, it was sardine style I’d imagine. It was so bad, I would shy away from tellin’ anyone where I lived because the state… the plaster was off the wall, there was no electricity, just gas, you had a gas mantle and so delicate, if that broke then in the morning all you had was a blue flame. Imagine, there’s no heatin’ and a coal fire. Well one of them, he says I can have his coat, this white oatmeal colour and my corduroy trousers, and this other uncle says you can have my… he was in the Russian convoys, and he gave me his blue polo neck jersey. So what I needed now was a kit bag. He says, use a pillow case. Then someone said I could have their suitcase, and it was green, cardboard covered in some green stuff. So I had a pair of shoes that were worn and I could have used a new pair of rubbers, so I got a pair of those. 6 pence each. So that’s me off to the station and I met a pal from Glasgow and we arrived and the bus took us from the train station to the ship, the ship was the noise, so night and day you can imagine trying to sleep and there’s drillers in your ear, really noisy. When we joined the ship, we got a mattress and an older guy said we were lucky, it used to be a donkey’s breakfast we slept on, just straw. And you got a couple of blankets and a pillow and a bucket. It’s to be sick in. It was to do all your washing. Because they needed all the water they could get to cook steam to process the whales… I was told to go up to the galley the next mornin’, there were four mess boys in the cabin and in the mornin’ the guy would come around with a big triangle, and he says, ‘If I have to come back it will be with a bucket of cold water. You make sure we never have to come back, you hit the deck when that goes.’ Yes, sir. So I’m up in the galley and a big Norwegian cook…. Everything on this ship was very, very clean. Everyone had that personal hygiene… cabins, alleyways, everything scrubbed. 10 o’clock comes along, I go up to see Sam, a mess boy in the fireman’s mess, and they’re all talking about how they got on the night before at the pub. This girl had a face like a coo’s bum… So anyway, and then this one says, ‘Did you see that crowd joinin’ the ship yesterday? There was one of ‘em, a white coat, a green suitcase, he must have run away for the bloody circus.’ [laughs] Well I tell you, I never said a word. I was going ashore at night, no coat. GC]] Actually Danny, he reminds me, you’re talkin’ about the chap in the white coat, in 1957, after I left the whalin’ and I left and decided to go down to Canada, I remember I had a sports jacket on and a pair of corduroys and when I got off the train, at a place called Wellington, they says, ‘Get in the car.’ I said, ‘What’s wrong?’ They said I looked like a refugee from Hungary, during the Hungarian depression. That was the first time I had been in a supermarket. The other thing was, my mother, when I first away to the whalin’ on the Sunday, my mother managed to buy a warm, and in these days the police stood in traffic circles in long rubber coats, and she bought me a long rubber coat. What am I supposed to with that as a mess boy? I haven’t the slightest idea in the world. I know I threw it over the side after a couple of days at sea. I think the phrase I always remember now is Gibbie Fraser said ‘You went away a boy and you came back a man.’ And it was very true, you learnt the hard way, but quickly what you had to do and what you couldn’t do. But I have no regrets… DL]] The fact that you worked two weeks in a week, in hours. DM]] I was on the bridge once 72 hours. And at the end of it I could feel my heart was going [thumps chest], I lay in my bunk and couldn’t get to sleep. Bump bump bump bump. Took about an hour to fall asleep I think, and I got four hours and I was up to the gun goin’. We were havin’ a lot of trouble with the gun then, misfirin’. After we went in and changed the gun. DL]] Changed one of the solider remember… 32
DM]] Angler… DL]] No it was a solider… DL]] He said it’s not the gun, but it’s obvious it was. GC]] There’s a book, the History of Modern Whaling, but it’s actually very interesting. JY]] It’s a big read… LB]] I think at one point it was a series. GC]] That’s right, it’s a condensed version. Because one time we were in Norway, we were at the whalin’ museum in Tonsberg and they asked if I was interested in the book and it was only 10 pounds, well yes grab that. LB]] Do you remember… can you tell me about how you got paid? JY]] They paid you, well we knew what we were signin’ on for, you knew what you were gettin’ per month and then your bonuses came on the catch, so you wouldn’t have know that. My overtime used to be 56 hours a week, as your workin’ week… It could be night shift or day shift, because it went in a big circle, so you got two hours for that from Monday to Saturday and you got 24 hours for workin’ a Sunday which gave you some extra cash, double time for a Sunday. That was all the Harvester men got. GC]] But that was just basic pay, of course, they tend to… JY]] You knew that was what you were gettin’ for your overtime. And another thing, if you did the winter you could claim your tax back from Falkland Island tax. And then it used to be April to April it was the tax year, so we were away for the whole year, so we could claim the tax back from the British Government and the Falklands, it wasn’t a great deal… The whale bonuses and stuff came with the catch, so you wouldn’t know what you were goin’ to get. So if you got 80,000 barrels or whatever and the other byproducts you got somewhat bonuses for all these things as well.. LB]] Would they send you some sort of statement that showed you how it was calculated? JY]] Yeah, you got your pay of day. And what do you call it, it could be a week after you got home. LB]] I thought it was later than that for some reason. DL]] About a week… it was all done formally, you informally got the information… Time we got to, I don’t know if the market, how they were sellin’ it to Lever brothers or so on. DM]] That could be adjusted for the… [indecipherable] JY]] Did they know how much they were going to get? GC]] Negotiated… It makes you aware of what was goin’ on with the competition, because if you were on the Harvester then each day the back end of the bridge structure there was a report tellin’ you what the other factory ship had produced, so there was an incentive there, we had to beat them. The Venturer was always the top catcher anyway. [laughs] JY]] So they sold it within the time we got home. That would be… DM]] Six week journey. Then they could arrange for dockin’ at Liverpool… Let me show you this video. That’s coil on the floorboard, and what I remember… What I was wantin’ to tell you is, more than anything, is sometimes I’d be coilin’ that rope and I can remember one day in particular there was a howlin’ gale. Really massive. And we saw a whale. And the gunner looked at me and without sayin’ anything I knew what he meant. Should we go for it? I said, well we’re doin’ nothin’ else and he fired twice and missed, so I’ve got to get up there and get the gun loaded. Now the whales goin’ up into the sea so we have to try and keep up with it, we can’t stop and do this because we couldn’t go full speed in the sea after it. So I’m with my feet over the bow, my back’s to the sea, I’m coilin’ the rope and I can feel the ship goin’ down, down, down and I know a big wave’s going to come and I would wrap my arms around the gun and usually there were three big ones and the force of the first would slow the boat a bit. So I’d get a bit more coiled but then he can’t wait, give it a wee bit more speed to keep after it, and another two more big booms… 33
GC]] I did a painting of the Venturer in a very big sea and you can see the bow punchin’ out of the wave and the stern’s right up in the air and people said it couldn’t have been like that. I said yes. Because when it dipped the stern into the sea the water would come right up the slipway onto the afterplan. I think of catchers chasin’, searchin’ for whales in conditions like that, if there’d been health and safety executive they would have jumped over the side immediately. LB]] Where you ever afraid? JY]] No. DM]] I could say I was. JY]] The hurricane comin’ through the Roarin’ Forties, that was really bad. DL]] The penguins were jumpin’ right back into the sea again, the ones we were bringin’ back for the zoo you know. GC]] I think if anybody said they were never afraid… I was afraid a couple of times and that was even on the factory ship. DM]] On the catchers, it’s a wee bit different. GC]] Well they were like submersibles! [laughs] JY]] She was just like a big box, really, once the Harvester… DM]] The catcher, one of the catchers I was on, was a sister ship to one of the catchers that turned over. I remember sometimes if she took a really heavy roll, you know there’s no… you got the keels, but no bilge keels which can stop the rolling. The rope could get cut on them, so the boat could, like that, one guy was tossed out of his bunk and… I can’t say I was every afraid but I’d get a fright when the boat would go like and your heart would go like that because you wouldn’t get out the hatch. I never said I was frightened, but I’d sometimes get a fright and your heart’s goin’ like that, I thought she was goin’. They had put a lot of harpoons and weights under the boilers, so the deck was awash all the time. DL]] A half submarine. DM]] Well that boat, the water was slushin’ around all the time and you had to keep the foxhole doors open because that was the only fresh air. A wave would come over and hit the mast and if you got out your bunk, there was a little locker in front of your bunk and you could stood on that to get dressed. To get your shoes on, a lot of time you’d go to bed with all your clothes on. And of course the water and there were steam radiators, the water hit that and it turned to steam and it’d hit the cold deck and it’d be rainin’ in your room… [interrupted for tea] [break for lunch] JY]] Nothin’ wrong with that whale meat! [laughs] DM]] Whale meat again… LB]] Well, I’ve been wondering what it was like… Did you guys know what it was like at home when you were at sea? DL]] There were ships that came down with oil for the factory ship, they stopped off at wherever and picked up the mail. LB]] Were you guys married at the time? DL]] Well of course when the mail arrived, they would call our names out and there were always one or two sittin’ waitin’ because their wife left them or whatever. I think that was 1954/55… LB]] Were you married at the time you went out? JY]] No. LB]] Young men, then. DM]] I mean, we were all in our 20s then. LB]] Did you save your earnings for yourself? 34
GC]] There was the slopchest on the factory ships on which you could buy all sorts of things, cameras if you wanted that. But you only needed certain things, but I think the thing I remember about that is, when I went back to Georgia in 1991... When I went ashore at Leith Harbour I went to where the slopchest used to be and there… and I wondered, why would they want a thousand things of Bryl creem? It wasn’t it for the hair, they wanted it for the alcohol. LB]] I wonder if, as you continue to work multiple seasons, did you consider yourself a whaler? GC]] I never have. Because I was only there for three seasons… [talks about a photo exhibition] Her brother worked for Salvesen as well. LB]] Really? GC]] Yeah, but anyway… they let me join the Ex-Whalers Club even though I was essentially a part- timer. LB]] Do the rest of you consider yourselves whalers? DM]] Oh yeah. I did an interview in Dundee with George. After we were finished filming, she turned to me and says, ‘I can’t believe you went whaling!’ I says, ‘It wasn’t only me, it was thousands!’ But I know what she meant, because we were quite… in that time we were in our 20s… if I told or wrote the truth about the whaling, I’d find that I’d have no Norwegian friends. LB]] Really? DM]] Do you know what I mean? LB]] I don’t. Are you going to tell me? DM]] I don’t know if it’d be any good. LB]] Part of my interest in whaling is how you experienced the act of it on the ships. When you saw a whale, what did you think? DM]] Well, first thing is there’s lots of catchers lookin’ for this whales and on the horizon you can see the masts. So you try to get to them before the other one. I’m thinkin’ whether I should tell you this. DL]] Of course all the messages go back to the factory ship in code, so that other… LB]] What did you think when you saw a whale on deck? The immensity. GC] I think, when people ask that question, they ask how big is it? And I say, if you can imagine a full-sized blue whale on deck of a factory ship, before they do anything to flense it, if you can imagine a railway passenger coach, that’s the length. I didn’t have a camera unfortunately, in the 47 season I remember they were talkin’ about this, you had a bit of time off, you had a wee bit of time to look at what was goin’ on the deck and I remember one whale comin’ up the slipway and above the slipway where the claw goes onto the whale there, and that whale, it was so big. I wish I’d had a photograph of that, some sight. DM]] Well the whale, I’m tellin’ ya, bent the gangtray up because when I was on the boat in South Shields the guys who were repairin’ it said did… when we picked that whale up, and we got it alongside the boat and said this must be the biggest thing on the planet, we measured it was 198 feet. The girth on it was incredible. It was a female and they were actually mostly bigger than the males. The girth of it, it was golden brown and full of krill, we put this big heavy chain around it and lifted its tail alongside to tow it to the factory and when it went along the chain snapped. We picked it up, there’d been loads and loads of these whales towed with these chains, picked it up again and a mile later, snapped. So we put two chains on it and that got it to the factory. When it went on the factory, that’s the one that bent that gangtray up, and there was four foetus in it. DL]] So five whales lost in one go. LB]] So would this have been before the time of not catching… DM]] Well you couldn’t tell if… LB]] So was that rule something in writing that might not have been practiced… DL]] We had an inspector. 35
DM]] If there was a big school, the gunner’s on the gun goin’ full speed, the whales are goin’ full speed, and you can see if there’s a couple of baby whales there, so if you shot the mother you wouldn’t get paid, how would they know? Because it went to the factory and look for milk in its teats. If you had a whale, but it still got cooked but it wouldn’t have been an individual catch for the boat. So the gunner’s on the gun and he’s got the watch and he’s lookin’ for the biggest one because there are other boats waitin’ to get in there, so he’s got to take the biggest one but the baby would keep comin’ back to the mother, so that was where your experience came in. And they’re only up quick, then bang. LB]] How would the inspectors fit in to everything? DL]] They checked every whale that you got, measured them Danny as well, didn’t they? DM]] Oh aye. Every one. DL]] And like Danny says, inspected if there was milk. DM]] Can you remember how they measured it on the factory? [general murmuring] DM]] You’d see the boats and they had a tripod this height and he’d just go like this, like an army walkin’ stick. You just walk along. You’d think the rope and that woulda got all muddy, but the tripod was nae bother, spotless and put it to the side. Suprising how many people dinnae remember that, I see them doin’ that quite often. JY]] I remember one at the end to the other, the inspector holdin’ it… GC]] I’ll remember that name until my dyin’ days. [laughter] GC]] Because he’d ask me to do something and he gave me a job in the liver plant. Now the temperatures were 30-35 degrees and said he would get someone to cut a hole in the side of the hopper and I want you to go in there, and I want it clean as that tabletop, right to the bottom of the hopper. All I had on was underpants and plimsolls and the sweat was pourin’. He was Shetland. [Imitates Shetland accent] GC]] So I ended up in the liver plant, 61/62, not a good job. DL]] Some of the things that were done on the factory ship, they wouldn’t be anywhere with the health and safety people. There’d be nowhere. JY]] It used to be the big boiler where the big bones went down, would boil up everything, and when it was cooled down they used to open it up and let all the debris and they would shovel from there over the side. So I remember goin’ down there and seein’… the Arab… Thompson, just sweat. What an effort he put into that stuff. GC]] You’ll remember the fore end of the galley, with the dishwashers. Now, if they had an egg, you went and you rinsed ‘em and you put them in with a handful of soap so it frother up and you had a clear, and the eggs, for some reason egg yolk,, stuck like glue. I got a plate and I left a tiny bit of yolk on the plate and he said to me, ‘Don’t you ever dare serve me a dirty plate.’ I said, ‘No it’s not!’ Funny enough, he was the one that gave me the biggest tip at the end of the season. JY]] Oh, he thought you gave him extra! [laughter] GC]] What a character. It was a rough and tumble life. JY]] He was at the bottom table when I was at the top table… GC]] Tell you what, the two seasons I did the mess boy, if you come from the foreplan early and you walk up the galley way and the first few tables were my tables. JY]] The top two tables was the flensers. GC]] Aye, I forgot about that. JY]] They were on the port side. GC]] Nah, the starboard side. 36
JY]] That was adjacent to the big mess. Now the fireman’s mess. The laundry room was up, the bakery was up as well. GC]] Ah, because I can remember in the laundry room and… [indecipherable] He was layin’ against a pipe that went to the laundry and they let the anchor go, they dropped the cable and of course it made a hell of a noise and I’ve never seen anybody jump so high. Things like that you remember after all these years. JY]] You’re talking about somebody in your spot… I’ve done it at the bakery. Used to wait in the queue to get your bread, sliced bread. Well I stepped back and put my feet right in a freshly baked cake. [laughter] JY]] [[Imitates the angry baker.]] Never went near his stuff again. DM]] Tammie was a better baker than he was a cook. Or maybe it was the other way around. JY]] He never took any nonsense fae anyone. [Starts talking about Norwegian food.] GC]] You’d go to the galley and get the big dixie and you’d take it to the table and pass it down the table and it would go right down the table. Some would take it and at the end of the table there was a port and someone would open the port and put it out. [laughter] GC]] There was plenty of grub on the table. JY]] Buccleuth was an invention from Newfoundland. Portugese was the recipe. So they used to do all the dried fish, all came from there. They were solid. They’d steep them overnight. The Norwegians really like lutfisk. DM]] I was sitting here thinking ‘I cannae believe no one’s mentioned lutefisk…’ [laughter] DM]] The most horrible thing that ever was served at the whalin’. JY]] It was the same cod. What they done, someone took the recipe and would do it with all the tomatoes and garlic. GC]] All the things I don’t like. JY]] It was not bad… DM]] When it was comin’ on board, the cod, I thought it was firewood because it was tied in bundles, handable bundles. I said, ‘No one can eat this!’ They said, ‘Just you wait and see.’ Because it’s good, it doesn’t have to go in the fridge, there’s no worryin’ about it. We had to put it in caustic soda overnight. JY]] No it wasn’t caustic soda. DM]] It was caustic soda, I swear. I’ve Googled it since. And then put in freshwater. JY]] It’s not. DM]] Anyway. It had to be cleaned by freshwater after. And the smell of it, you’d need a pin on your nose. [More discussion about caustic soda.] DM]] Well we made soap, and I used caustic soda for that. Of course at the end of the season when they’re washin’ the ship down, they’ve got this caustic soda sprayin’ and everyone’s getting it all over them. [Talks about milk for the coffee] DL]] The weevils, there was quite a lot of weevils. JY]] They lived in the flour and things like that. [Talks about alcohol on board, Cremo foam.] DM]] Another thing that everyone seemed to have was a tin of Andrew’s liver salts. [Talks about alcohol again, Norwegian drinking habits.] DL]] Not on the catchers, you see. 37
GC]] I remember you got a can of lager at Christmas. [agreement] JY]] Tennent’s lager, one can. I sold mine. [Tells a story about a man named Sinclair.] [Talks about scrimshaw penguins] GC]] You didn’t ask about recreation, but what we used to do was steal the teeth, you weren’t supposed to take them because they were the company’s property, but you managed to get teeth and all sorts of things were carved on it. DM]] I started makin’ it myself, a wee penguin. It’s still lyin’ in a drawer in the kitchen. GC]] I’ve got needle files, get on with it. [Talk about the chief storeman in 1947/48. Talk about food being stolen, loads of stuff missing from the store room.] JY]] Dockers do that on every ship. [Move back into the living room.]
GC]] There were companies like… Onassis. DM]] That was some size a’ ship. I thought what was this? It’s a factory ship! GC]] Has four funnels! He didn’t care. JY]] I think the Russians were guilty as well. They didn’t go along with the Commission. [Talks about trip down the South Georgia, now the Japanese whaling under the research guise.]
LB]] Do you think that your perceptions of whaling have changed over time? JY]] Yeah. DL] We did an interview in Dundee. Someone asked, ‘Isn’t that cruel, Don?’ I said, ‘Of course it is!’ How much worse can it be, shooting a whale with an explodin’ harpoon. I says, but you just gotta shut your ears off and your eyes off for a little bit. If whales could scream or roar like a lion, there wouldn’t be any whalin’. That’s it in a nutshell. Most of the guys think the same thing, but this is an industry. JY]] It was an industry when we done it, it was somethin’ that was done and it should stay in history as well, it should never be… it should be protectin’ the whale now, so that’s our feelin’ bein’ ex- whalers. We didn’t realize probably what damage we were doin’ at that time. But what now is… we would rather see them bein’ protected . DL]] The mother whale suckles here young for two years, and if she gets pregnant again it’s another 15 months or somethin’ like that. And she has to feed the other one, you’re only gettin’ about two whales in five years. JY]] It’s the migration as well. But will there ever be enough to come back? No, the blue whale is still endangered. [Talks about a beached whale and one in the Firth of Forth.] DL]] Mind you, I think the submarines have got a lot to answer for as well with their ASDIC. JY]] No, that was not a problem, really. LB]] But quite a controversial tool, was it not? JY]] Yeah, the pings and that. [Talks about bringing the sea lion back to Edinburgh Zoo.] GC]] I think if you look at the whole thing of the whalin’ and how people perceived it, people say to me it’s a horrible business but if you think about a cow goin’ to the abbatoir, or pigs. That’s inhumane as well. Comes to another point that I forgot to mention early on – if a whale was shot a bad shot, down the back, that whale was still alive and its heart was still beatin’ but the bacteria from its gut would enter the blood. So unless it was processed very quickly, and often it was a day, when 38 that whale got to the factory ship the grade of oil was much, much lower because it had been polluted. DM]] We came across a whale once at lunch time and they started chasin’ the whale and it was a fin whale, and we chased it for 10 hours. So I was done from 12-4, then I came back again at 8 o’clock at night and we’re still chasin’ that whale at 10 o’clock. So that’s 10 hours, imagine the strength, you know, of a whale that can do that even if we could go any faster it was going to go that wee bit faster. Well, the line came out and it just burst, because they’re that strong. We just had to go back to the factory ship. The next day when we’re reportin’ the catches the next day, the raider says they found a whale with a mile-long line it in, and that’s the one that musta been shot. That whale musta been sufferin’. So that would be a 60 ft whale, maybe more. GC]] You know they actually tried electrocution. DL]] That didn’t work. GC]] But it wasn’t successful and the gunners were very apprehensive. You could see the implications of trying to kill a whale with an electric harpoon. How does that foregoer and whale line stand the strain? What they were interested in was a higher grade of oil, instant death. If you kill it and it lies in the water for 24 hours, the hole wasn’t shut in the back and the guts been ruptured. And I well know having worked in the liver plant how much shrapnel can be inside a whale. When that bomb goes inside, it goes everywhere. We had to pick out the bits that had the shrapnel in it. And then start again. So it’s a pretty brutal death, it really is. I can’t think of anything more horrible than to be shot in the stomach by a grenade. JY]] I remember the inspector on the Harvester, he was right against killin’ whales, he had his own points of view on it, he says ‘You imagine yourself runnin’ along the road and you find a thing the size of a pen and it goes into your hip and you keep runnin’ and they keep pullin’ you back, that’s what a whale’s goin’ through’. So you could see that point. If it’s not killing you instantly, it’s in your hip… GC]] That’s why there was a full-time blacksmith on the factory ship, to straighten the harpoons out. In the harpoon there was a slot all the way down, and it’d be all bent. DL]] And at that time, steel! It’s pretty brutal, aye. JY]] That’s a question that we get a long when we do stuff like this: what did you think about it at that time? And today? LB]] I wonder too, how did you experience what other people thought about it? JY]] I didn’t, it was just another industry job. DM]] In the pub for a drink, people would say, ‘I thought you said you were in the Antarctic?’ Aye we were, but it wasn’t… [Talk about life on the decks on the way to Antarctic, the deck Olympics.]
LB]] Do you mind if I ask you a question? MC]] Aye. LB]] When you were at home, how did you experience or see whaling… MC]] I’m very… DM]] I don’t think it would be broadcast. It’s only now in the modern age. LB]] What is it about whaling that sticks with you? JY]] It’s the stories. DM]] And the camaraderie at the time. GC]] It wasn’t a normal kinda job. The percentage of people who have been to Antarctica in the world is very, very low. JY]] The fillin’ station at the Caribbean at that time, you used to pick up our oil there, it was cheap in Venezuela. [Describes jobs after whaling, in the merchant navy, etc.] 39
Gibbie Fraser (Gilbert A.) 12 July 2017 Voe
GF]] When I grew up in Shetland, whaling was a very, very important source of employment. The alternatives were maybe the forces or the merchant navy. I tried de merchant navy, I was on a ferry it was then known as the Steamer, because it was a steamship, running from Shetland to Orkney to Aberdeen to Leith and then comin’ back again. LB]] What was it transporting? GF]] Same as they’re transporting today, but everything was lifted on and off by cranes and dere was no roll on, roll off. And basically I hated every minute of it, I stuck it three weeks. You’d be comin’ into port very early in de mornin’, get tied up, by the time you got tied up it wasn’t worth goin’ to your bed again. Bit of dredgin’ during de day and it just wasn’t for me. So I left it and I went fishing, a job that I liked, but I then wrote to Christian Salvesen, the company in Leith and asked them for a position with their whaling fleets. I said that I would like to go on a whale catcher because the people I knew, some of de people I knew had been on dem and some thought dey were terrible, others thought dey were great. I thought it was a… it was an adventure. So we went down south and you saw your first double decker, your first black taxi and your first train journey and dere was a whole lot of men goin’ away with us, they sorta looked after us and den when you down to Leith they were meeting with men dat dey knew from well all over Britain, de western isles included. But before you went away, de first letter I got back from Salvesen was thankin’ me for applyin’ and dey said dat dey would keep me in mind when dey made up dere crew lists later in de year. And den in August I got a letter from dem saying dey were offering me a position and I’d had this, I didn’t realize dis at de time I had dis W/C and I thought, ‘Hmmm am I going to be cleanin’ water closets?’ [laughs] But I was wantin’ to get away and do it. LB]] What was it? GF]] Whale catcher. So you had, you ticked de box yes or no, and den you got a letter back saying present yourself at the hospital on a certain day and certain time for de chest x-ray. And I remember goin’ in dere and dere was a lot of men in dere and dey all seemed huge and in dose days dey all wore, Shetlanders were like dat, dey all wore their dress clothes as almost a uniform, little gaberdeen coat with a belt around it and most with a paddy hat and very well-brushed shoes. And you took your turn and went and had your x-ray and dere were boys dere who had been down de year before so dey were very kind. LB]] Do you remember how old you were? GF]] Sixteen. Dey were very helpful and you had to go back about a week later and collect dis, maybe two weeks later I think it was, when you went away down to Leith you collect this x-ray. You got a very, very strict medical, the old doctor there he really went to town with you, and teeth was a very important thing. I think it was to do with the water, the water in South Georgia was off de glacier and de water dat we got at sea was evaporated from sea water so he made a point of giving you a thorough examination and you got past dat and den you had to go and sign various things and contracts, whalers were employed on a group basis, the lowest group was 12, 11 was higher and it worked its way up. I suppose gunners were maybe in a special group because they were de big boys. So you all had to start down de ladder but having had fishing experience instead of goin’ in at Group 12, I got in at Group 11. Quite a lot of Shetland boys did dat. Many of dem had never set foot in a shipping boat, they just knew somebody who had one and they said how about a reference? Oh no problem, dere you go. But I’d had two or three months at dat time and went away and just joined den with de rest and I remember we joined de ship dat year in Glasgow. In Glasgow, I don’t know if you’ve been dere but Glasgow in dose days was very different than today. It had a smog hanging over it and dere were aeroplanes goin’ over you thought was goin’ to hit de masts with the ship 40 because you couldn’t see dem, a dingy sort of a place. Today it’s much different… and we were the first of the crew on board, we had to get de mess room kinda cleaned up and ready and everything and men were comin’ up everyday all day so de mess room filled up, I think it was about 120 or 130 men dat came. And we set off across de Atlantic, for Venezuela. A place called Carapito. It was about 60 miles inland up a river and it was basically nothing but a bunker station just where de oil pipes come out of de jungle and dey filled it up and went away again. When we left dere we sailed for South Georgia, really enjoyed de tropics and den of course as we got further south we got into the roaring forties and it played its part. LB]] What do you remember, about the first time that you went through there? GF]] Well, at dat point it was all an adventure. The one thing I do remember is de size of de seas in de roaring forties. Now we were accustomed to big seas crashin’ in on de islands here but dey were deadly. And we went in and you were assigned to your catcher, you went on board and den de factory ship came down and she had all the Norwegian crew… it was mixed crews dat were on dem and de one I was on, 15 Norwegians and 4 British. So you had dis foreign language dat was goin’ around, but I found it fairly easy to pick up. And we spent two or three days in Leith Harbour taking aboard everything from de harpoon to de teaspoon, every single thing that you would ever need. Finally we sailed and I woke up sometime about 2 o’clock in de morning, we sailed about midnight and dis ship was goin’ all over de place, dere was sea rollin’ over de deck above your head, whistlin’ in de rigging and oh god what have I done? [laughs] And went back to sleep, wasn’t too bad until we got up in de morning and dere was two of us in de cabin, dere was myself and a Norwegian boy, dat was how it was on all de catchers, and he was a bit older den me, he was 19 I think. But we got up in de morning and not feelin’ too bad and went along to de galley dat was our job dere to help lay de table for breakfast and get everything ready, you got de smell of fresh bread, de smell of de cooking, de rollin’ of de ship and oh… dat was it. We both succumbed. And de cook gave us a slice of dry bread and he says ‘Go up on de boat deck, stand dere for a minute you’ll be alright. You’ll be okay, eat dat.’ So we went up dere and we both took a bite of dis bread but it just went round and round. Eventually it went overboard and de rest of de slice with it. Went to bed dat day, dey couldn’t get us up until next mornin’ and never ever been seasick since. LB]] So you got through it fast. GF]] Got through it very fast, yeah. And really enjoyed de whale catcher life. You were part of a small team and you were needed de same as everybody else. You all had your own jobs. Our job was primarily keeping de ship clean, we were like de housewives. We kept de ship clean, alleyways, toilets, cabins, galley, mess rooms. Washed up everything in dere. LB]] And how many seasons did you do? GF]] I did four seasons. I did three seasons, and den… LB]] Can you remind me what year it was again? GF]] 58/59, 59/60, 60/61, and den I missed a season, I had a motorcycle accident which broke my hand and dey wouldn’t take anybody on with a plaster. And yes, I got down for de very last season. LB]] What was that like? GF]] After some of the previous ones, I’d say it was a bit depressing. De whales really were becoming very scarce. And dey were taking a lot of sei whale which was a really a no-no in previous years. It was fin whale and sperm whale. You started de season hunting sperm whale for so many weeks and den de baleen whale season would start and you always found fin whale. We saw dese sei whale but we didn’t pay any attention to dem, but de last year it was mostly sei. It was small and didn’t have de production, de writing was on de wall really. And dat first year I was down, dere was one blue whale dat was caught for de whole expedition and we caught dat one. LB]] What did you think at the time? GF]] Well… you sorta thought, well everybody was talkin’ about blue whales, hoping to find blue whales, and we’d been told stories of when de blue whales was all plentiful, and so you did, it did 41 begin to dawn on you dat dey were becoming extinct. De following year dere was one or two, and de last year I was down dere, de third year, dere was one day we had quite a lot of blue whale. We came on a bunch of dem and got most of dem. But we caught one dat was 96 feet long, massive animal. But no, we came to realize, we talked a lot about it, and we came to realize dat dis way of life couldn’t go on. LB]] Why was that? GF]] Well, we were on de point of bringing de whales to extinction, to de point of extinction. De world had moved on, dis was de early-60s, de world was movin’ on very rapidly in de 60s and dere were many substitutes. De original whale products were no longer needed. LB]] That’s interesting because you’re kind of confirming something for me, which is that the end of the industry was not only overfishing but a decline in demand. GF]] Yes. And people’s attitudes were beginning to change, as well. LB]] How did you see that? GF]] Well, we saw it from afar, we never had anybody say anything to us at de time, but I remember de, it was in de media that people were condemning whaling and dat sorta thing. And although it was how you made your living, you could see where dey were comin’ from, it was a brutal game, it was not always clinical. LB]] What do you mean by clinical? GF]] A clinical kill to me is one harpoon, one dead whale. It wasn’t always dat. De gunner I was with was very good and I would say at a guess probably 80-something per cent of de whales we caught were dead. Some of dem would take out a lotta line and thrash around and you’d heave ‘em back in and dey’d put a killer harpoon in and sometimes dat killed ‘em sometimes it didn’t you had to load another one, and it was a living warm-blooded animal with fear probably same as you would have. And it was a little bit conflicting when you think back on it, you were dere watching and getting closer and closer and dat’s what you’d come for, to get de whale, but when de gun went off and dat harpoon blew you couldn’t help wincing as it went in because you knew dat was a livin’ animal. And den about three second after dere was a detonator in it and it would explode inside it and could see de body go like dat. And you would hope dat it just severed something that would kill it, but not always. LB]] At the time would you have thought that it was anything more than just hunting? GF]] Yes, it was hunting but man is a hunter and dere was a thrill to de chase and you didn’t always get de whales dat you chased. Some were very clever, dey’d just point a gun it was ready to go and den dey’d go like dat and wave their tail and away down they’d go. And you’d wait maybe 10-20 minutes and den dey’d come up way behind you. And off you’d go again after dem. And some you just had to give up on, you never ever got dem. [[interrupted]]
[[Gibbe Fraser 2]]
GF]] Where were we? LB]] We were talking about how the whales would kind of dive down and then… GF]] I suppose dey’re de ones that really helped to keep de species alive, de whales that it was just sheer murder was de humpback whale. Dey were slow, dey were smaller and it was just… LB]] Do you remember at the time kind of knowing about that in terms of noticing changes in the quota that you were allowed? GF]] Yes, the quota was coming down every year. LB]] And how was it communicated to you? What the quota was? GF]] Well we knew when we left what the quota was going to be. You were kept very well informed de whole way through. When we left Leith Harbour that was us at sea for 4, 4.5 months, and the big 42 factory ship was the mother ship. We had to go there for fuel and for food and also when the whales had been shot and then of course de harpoons were in dem, de flags and de beacons were in dem, that was all taken out by the boats that towed them to the factory. They were pulled out there for us, then we got it all back. So along with dat, when de whales came on board every whale had de number of de whale catcher that caught it in it and de flags of dat whales had a small three digit number and dat was noted down so that when dat whale was hauled up on de plan dey knew exactly which catcher had caught it. So dat followed right through de production so you could have maybe 20 whales and you could, dey were maybe scrawny little things, and you’d get poor production, and you could have maybe 15 whales and get maybe more production. De gunners always tried to pick out de biggest and best. Another thing they had to watch out for was a cow with a calf. And when de whales were running as dey said, that was during about, well we did about 18 knots and it might take you an hour or two to overtake them when dey were runnin’, den dey got mixed up in de herd but dey were all goin’ de same way so if you got a lactating cow you got no, nobody got paid for dat, and nobody liked dat. LB]] It’s interesting to me that you wouldn’t get paid for that because it kind of implies that really you are in it for the money. GF]] Yeah. But the gunner had about two seconds to make up his mind, shoot or no shoot. It was… it led to dem being pretty careful really. I never saw us take one that was lactating. But it did happen and sometimes dere was a minimum length and sometimes dey were a little bit under de length and dat was illegal as well. LB]] Did you progress to being on deck, then? GF]] Well my designation was deck mess boy, and the way it worked de boys, dere’s always one a bit older dan de other and dat first year I was de youngest and it so happened dat next year I was de youngest. I didn’t have to go on deck but you went up dere and gave a hand. It stood you in good stead because de first year I was dere you were to go up with a cup of coffee to de gunner at 10 o’clock in de morning. De watchers were four-on, four-off, you see, so dey went on watch at 8 and dis was midway through the watch you had one man on de whale and one man up in de barrel. And de man would come outta de barrel at de two hours’ end, dey changed places at each hour’s end and de man who came outta de barrel would go to de mess room, have a cup of coffee, smoke a fag, that was a big thing, den he’d come up, take over from de man at de whale, he’d be down dere maybe no more than 10 minutes, then he’d come up again and go straight up to de barrel. So I went up dis day with a cup of coffee and this man at de whale said ‘I need to go to de toilet, here you steer.’ Me? ‘Yes you.’ Open bridge, you see? Very cold and he clapped this big furry hat on my head and gave me his gloves and his gloves were… you knew what colour his wife’s hair was by his gloves because the ladies used to grow their hair long and den knit, weave it into de wool and knit it into gloves for their men, that was Norwegian tradition. And I went up dere, it was a beautiful day, and I’d never steered out of sight of land before and I didn’t really understand de compass and I looked around, dere was a little mark out dere, so I said ‘Okay I’ll just keep dat on de rigging dere’ and I didn’t realize dat dis damn thing was on de move. I was going around it and den de gunner looked back and over and says, ‘Are you trying to write your name?’ [laughs] And de mate had been standing at de other side of de bridge, he says, you’ve never steered out of sight of land before, and I said no. Right, I’ll show you and he explained it very well. So after dat I would go up at 10 o’clock, this let both de men down at de same time, and den not only did dey play cards and have a smoke, but dey also had a game of crib. Crib was a big, big game on board dere. I could take de whale and I thought this was just madness. Now towards de ends of de season when de nights were long, den it was de wireless operator who made up a graph and all dese men smoked, I was the only one who didn’t smoke, and dey’d play for cigarettes. I can’t remember what dey put in.. 500 cigarettes or something like dat, and dere was 18 men so that was a lot of cigarettes. And I was never really interested in cards and I didn’t see why I should win cigarettes or lose cigarettes so I didn’t take part, but any night that they were 43 going to play after our evening meal and de watch changing time, den dey’d come town and say they were going to play cards tonight, when you’ve had your meal would you go up and steer? They didn’t have to ask twice. Dey washed up everything, put away everything and you go up to the whale and de man would say the course we were on, there’s a bit of ice out dere, and dere’s something appearing on dis side and dat ship over there is a certain catcher and we’re going until 11 o’clock tonight. So you were up there for two hours… LB]] Were you ever afraid? GF]] No, no. I was a whaler! [laughs] And you stood dere and you had to go back into a little hut at de back of de bridge and have a look at de radar, watch this bit of ice, decide when to go around it and pick up your course again, and den when de hour came you have a little telegraph and bring it to a stop and tell de engine room on the loudspeaker system you were finished with de night, letting dem get on with small bits of maintenance that they couldn’t do when de engine was running. I also remember comin’ down dere to de mess room and you could have cut it with a knife, it was terrible. LB]] Just the way you said you weren’t afraid and you were a whaler, it made me think that… do you think being a whaler is part of your identity? Was it more than a job? GF]] I’m not sure how to say it, but it set you apart somehow or other. The whalers had a reputation for being quite boisterous when ashore and you had to live up to dat. LB]] In Liverpool… GF]] Liverpool and all de way home [laughs] No, I’m thrilled to be an ex-whaler. LB]] Part of what I’m interested in is how people kind of form their identities or see themselves after people protest their work. How did you experience or deal with that? GF]] I’ve never been faced with that. We’ve been… I’ve spoken to people who didn’t like whaling but there’s nobody ever challenged me on it. All I could have said was we did whaling when it was acceptable, it’s stopped now. And I think you could go around many of the men you’ve talked to, go to any whaler in Shetland, and they would say they were glad that it stopped when it did. LB]] How come? GF]] Well it would have been a hell of a thing to say that you brought a species to extinction. You know. We wouldn’t have liked to have done that. LB]] I wonder also if there’s something about the whale that people get kind of worked up about. It’s meat, and we don’t protest killing other animals, you know? What is it about the whale? GF]] I don’t know if it’s the fact that there’s no easy way to kill it as there is to kill a cow or a sheep. LB]] So it was violent? GF]] Very. Very violent. LB]] Can you talk a bit more about the shift in social norms that you mentioned? GF]] Well I don’t recall any public sort of reaction, we came home in ’63 knowing that it probably was over and then we got a letter from Salvesen after we paid off and been home a week or two saying that that was it. Dey were pulling out. LB]] What did you do after that? GF]] I had various little jobs, dere was not much work in Shetland at dat time. Shetland was really struggling. Dere was work at de fishing but fishing was an industry which a group of men got together, had a boat, they had a crew if they went white fishing that was the crew, if they went to the herring in the summer, den dey needed more crew so they’d take on maybe one or two more men. And dey would get dat bit of work for de summer. But den there was a long, hard winter with nothing. I knew a man who had a boat building yard and I’d been trying to get a boat and start lobster fishing on my own, and he said there’s a good scheme going just now where you can get a boat built and you can get loan and grants from the government and you get a third as a grant, a third as a loan and you put up the other third. So I explored that, I liked the boats that he built, I got him to build dat boat for me, so I worked with dat. But again dere were drawbacks because in those days we made all our own lobster pots, we needed wood and netting and wire and what have you. And if you got a 44 storm and dey were in shallow water it just destroyed de whole lot and you’d sit dere and make another hundred or two. And de winters was really hard and I used to go to Aberdeen in de winter time and I went on de trawlers, we were fishing up around de Faroe Islands and den come home and work my boat in the summer time. LB]] Were you married at the time you were whaling? GF]] No, I was married to a motorcycle. LB]] Well I’m interested also in what whaling would have been like for the people who stayed at home. Because whaling brought money to the community… GF]] When you think about de whaling, whaling was far more in tune with de Shetland way of life than going in de merchant navy. Some of dese men go away and hang around de dockyards for weeks on end. [[interrupted]] GF]] They’d finally get a ship and dey might be forced to sign on for two or three years. And dat meant dat whoever was left at home, it fell very heavily on de wives to carry on de crofting which was just a small farm but heavy work, a lot of it pretty manual. Nearest to a machine you had was a pony for plowing. But whaling took you away in de autumn when most of de crops were in and you were away all winter and you were home in time to put de crops in again in de summer. It fitted us very well. Salvesen’s first experience with Shetland men was along here at Olna. Dere was a whaling station dere. That was where he, I suppose in a way came to appreciate the Shetland men. So when this whaling died off and he moved to the Antarctic and Southern Hemisphere then he asked Shetlanders to come with him. It seemed to be a good way of life and you could do your 4 or 4.5 months on the catchers and den instead of coming home you could overwinter on South Georgia, which I know Davie and most of the men you’ve spoke to have overwintered. LB]] Yes, almost every single one. One whaler told me it was a requirement? GF]] It was, but I never wintered. I put in the second year I went down, I put in for the winter and I got a job, but the catcher I was on dat year we broke down and we were never back at de island of South Georgia we were off a piece of Antarctica called Enderby Land, it was a hell of a place with storms and bad weather. Another catcher, in fact de one Davie Clark was on, towed us up to Cape Town and den dey towed us to Dakar and then Middlesburgh. So I never got to do that. And the following year I put in for de winter again but de writing was on de wall then, everybody who really wanted to make something was putting in and I didn’t get a job. LB]] When you say the writing was on the wall, can you explain a bit how? GF]] The catchers were falling off, de quotas were coming down, we just knew dat it could not last. LB]] What did you think about some of the proposals for different things like the electric harpoon, and the asdic. GF]] We used asdic. LB]] And what did you think about that? GF]] It certainly gave you a better chance, but it could spook de whales sometimes and dey’d scatter, others would just run and you could follow dem under water. It certainly did help with the baleen whale but dere was no use with de sperm whale. LB]] I know this is a philosophical question, but is it really just business that would encourage companies to kind of push it that far? Is it the desire to just take more? Without quotas, do you think there would have been extinction? GF]] I don’t think the IWC made much difference, it seemed to be a bit of a toothless tiger if you know. If a country didn’t agree with their ruling dere was no punishment for it, and that’s really where it all went wrong. Many, many whales were dead. We had a four day season on humpback, if you found ‘em you found ‘em, if you didn’t you didn’t. But out of season we saw de Japanese and Russian catchers taking humpback. See all dese whales could be identified by dere blast and a certain shape. So dey really, you could just say dey just raped de sea. It was… 45
LB]] It’s kind of tough to consider overfishing because you wonder if regulations work and what motivation is for continuing to take more. GF]] See de Japs and de Russians wouldn’t have whaling inspectors on board, but we had inspectors, dey were de ones who noted de size, sex and everything about dese whales and dat kept us in line. Us and de Norwegians certainly towed de line, de others didn’t. LB]] And at some point there were scientists on board as well. GF]] Dey were de guys who tended to write de books about whaling, it’s a pity because some dem were good up to a point. But dere was one, I was readin’ his book and I thought he knew what he was talkin’ about and den he said catchers anchored around de factory ship on Christmas Day. And de gunners all go on board and have a hell of a party on board de factory ship. Considering dat we were in probably two or three miles deep water, we couldn’t have carried enough chain to anchor. She wouldn’t have floated with it, to me it just destroyed de whole thing. Have you seen de book dat we as an association took on? We did strive dere to get everything accurate because we’d all read so much nonsense about it… LB]] There’s a lot of romanticism around whaling that encourages people to exaggerate. GF]] Yes. LB]] It’s this idea that… that it’s exotic and exciting and adventurous and it is to an extent. GF]] True. I’m also a member of the Edinburgh Ex-Whalers Association and Norman Jamieson used to stay down in Leith and it was a nice little excursion for me to go and stay with him for a week and meet all de boys down dere. And dere was one time dat dere was an American girl staying over in Britain and reporting for some paper down dere and she came in and some of the nonsense dey told her. It was just maddening. Dat de catchers were 80 feet long and de whales were 120 feet. That’s not… LB]] How much of that is the fallibility of memory and how much of it is on purpose? GF]] A lot of it’s on purpose! LB]] So what you’re saying is be careful? GF]] Of course you would… Yeah, it was a good way of life. It’s a pity it had to end, we saw de need and I’d love to go back down to Antarctica and shoot it with a camera dis time. I know dat those buildings, if dey’d been built here and left the same amount of time, there would have been little bits of rusty metal left all over de hillside. There’d be no buildings standing. LB]] It shows the split-second decision not to do it anymore because it wasn’t as if anyone went down to dismantle. It’s kinda easy because you can forget it. GF]] See that’s what triggered off de Falklands War was de Argentinians going down dere. If dey’d takin’ de metal and left de flags in dere pocket we woulda been alright! Opportunists [[laughs]] LB]] What else do you think is important for me to know? GF]] I don’t really know what to say. It certainly was your way of life had been taken from you, a way of life dat really suited us so well because you come home in de summertime and you had your motorbike and I worked on a little lobster boat, dat was fine and I enjoyed dat. LB]] Did you live at home? GF]] Yeah. Where we stayed, it’s called West Burravoe, and dis man had a boat on dat side and I just nipped around on my bike. It paid well, he was a clever guy. A lot of what I learned from him helped me when I went into de job myself. LB]] Do you still have your motorbike from the time? GF]] Not dat one, no. You’re about three years too late. I bought one in Aberdeen on de way home which I can best describe as a successful failure. [laughs] [[Talks about brands of motorbikes that he has owned.]] [[On whale meat]] GF]] I can’t say for certain, but I think what went wrong was the way it was dealt with. The Ministry of Food people said it has to killed, butchered, packed up in a certain time. Now when we got whale meat on board de catcher, we’d get a lump every now and den, and it was a big 46 one like that, and you’d take it up on de boat deck, put meat hooks in it, hang it up and over a period of maybe another week or 10 days it would shrink. Blood and oil would run out of it and it would turn black on de outside. But become very firm. Den de cook had to cut probably dat much off all around to get at de nice red meat and make de big rounds. LB]] So basically, the Ministry of Food didn’t understand that it wouldn’t really be edible to eat fresh? GF]] Yes. LB]] And then you’d also kind of have to teach people that you’d have to hang it. GF]] I don’t know how it would have come on being in de tins with oil and dat in it. But de whale meat was absolutely lovely. LB]] Well, do you have anything else that you’d like to add? GF]] No, I don’t think so.
47
Alf Hughes 15 June 2017 Leuchars, Scotland
AH]] Many years ago, the church magazine and we wrote the first episode which didn’t give very much information it was only what was happening on the ship when we were travelling down to South Georgia and we put it in the magazine and a week after I was getting people coming up saying you’re a murderer. LB]] What year would that have been? AH]] Oh… I just couldn’t tell you. It would be at least 20 years ago… It was a cruel way to kill the whales, but we weren’t actually murderers I wouldn’t say. But that’s what we got called. And even in the club, we’ve been told there that when you’re doing anything you shouldn’t give your name and address because some people have been – not attacked – but they’ve had letters being sent to them. LB]] What do you think about that? AH]] I think it’s disgraceful. Because at the time, I mean times have changed now, but at the time whale oil and blubber and everything was used for commercial uses. For making soap and hardening steel, making munitions and things like that. It was needed at that particular time. LB]] Do you remember when you started? AH]] Yes. 1950. LB]] And can you tell me a bit about it? Why you got into whaling? AH]] I was supposed to go into the army to serve my time, you see. Had to do conscription and a lot of my friends had been put up for conscription and they told me about things and I said, ‘Well that won’t agree with me at all.’ I was a motor mechanic you see, and of course you have to [indecipherable] in the army. And they said you’re getting boys of 16 and 17 coming in and telling you what to do that knew nothing about what to do about vehicles. And I said, ‘Well, I don’t like that at all.’ I said, ‘I’ll have to go to jail because I’m not going to do what they tell me.’ And I met this gentleman and he was a whaler and he told me to go and see about it. So I went and saw about it and I didn’t think it was going to be quite honest, but the day the ship sailed from Newcastle I got a phone call asking me if I can join the Southern Harvester in Newcastle because they were one engineer short. So fortunately enough I worked with my father, and he said ‘Well, just go son.’ So I just packed a few things, went down to Newcastle. They’d have everything on board the ship because we were sailing in about six hours, everything was done and I’d got on board the ship, was given my cabin and I went out on the deck and I was looking at all these men. And I was only a young man, I was only 21 at the time, I looked at all these blokes on the ship and I said I’m not going to enjoy this at all. They were all big, burly, hairy men, and I says, oh tomorrow morning I’m going home. LB]] Where were you living at the time? AH]] Dundee. I belong to Dundee, I’m originally from Dundee. So I went to bed and I didn’t unpack any of my gear, you didn’t have very much to unpack of course. During the night I heard this thump thump thump, and I thought that was a terribly noise. I go up in the morning and we’re in the middle of the North Sea. So I couldn’t go home. I was shanghai’d. But when I did get to meet the people on the ship all these blokes I saw were dockers, and the chaps on ship were quite nice. So I did four seasons on the Harvester and I left that, I still stayed with Salvesen I went on… well actually, I came home and my wife fell pregnant. So I said ‘I’m not going back to whaling before the baby’s born anyway.’ So the baby was born and about a week after the baby was born I got a letter from the army saying I had to come for a medical. LB]] Do you remember what year this would have been? AH]] 1956. What was I saying? I’ve forgotten. LB]] You got a letter saying you had to go for a medical. 48
AH]] Yes. So I was working at that time, I went to my boss and said, ‘I’ve been called up for the army, have to go for a medical, I don’t want to go, can I go to Edinburgh?’ He said, ‘Oh yeah, take the day off.’ So I went to Edinburgh, went back to Salvesen’s office and they gave me a ship. So I had to join that the next day. So I went home, packed my gear, went and joined the [indecipherable, Colrain?], the name of the ship and my wife went down to the Labour Exchange with the letter and she said, ‘I’m afraid Mr. Hughes won’t be able to come for his medical.’ They said, ‘Why?’ She said, ‘Because he’s away back to sea.’ They said, ‘That was quick.’ [laughs] So I never went the army all my life. I went by the sea. LB]] What did your wife think about having to leave so soon to go whaling? AH]] Well I wasn’t married that time, I wasn’t married when I went the whaling. Two seasons before I got married. And then I was three seasons after that, my first child was born. She’s now 62. [[Discussion about oldest daughter and yard work.]]
07:33] AH]] Is there anything else especially you want to know? LB]] Oh there’s lots I want to know. On your first trip down, what do you remember about being on the… AH]] My first time, I was a repairer, what they call a repairer. That was an engineer but you just worked during the day and if anything broke down you’d have to work at night. On the second trip, the ship was taken over and I was an engineer then, a seventh engineer, and the time after that I was a ship’s engineer. LB]] Did you… because you’re from Dundee I wondered if you knew beforehand about the city’s history of whaling? AH]] No. No. I didn’t know anything about whaling, it was just a shot in the dark. It was only to stay away from conscription, that was all. LB]] Because I know a lot of people also did it because it was good money. AH]] Oh yes, yes. It was good money. No, I never thought about the money at that time. I was looking up on the computer last night, I put in ‘Southern Harvester whale factory.’ And I must have spent about half an hour reading all the things about people who have been on it, requests for people who have pictures. I knew quite a few of them but I have no pictures or anything from them. I was supposed to go to Norway last year with the whaling club, my wife and I had our honeymoon in Norway, for three months. LB]] What made you go there? AH]] What, Norway? Well that’s whale factory, that’s where it started. LB]] Yes, but what made you and your wife go there? AH]] We just got married. We got married a month before we were supposed to get married because my wedding date was set for the 7th of July and I got a letter from them asking if I would come back to the ship on the 10th of June to Norway. So I went to the court and I got a special license to get married on the 5th of June we got married, and then we went to Norway and stayed there. No place to stay in Norway, we didn’t know where we were going to stay. LB]] That sounds very nice. AH]] Yes, it was. And I was supposed to go back last year. I had a heart attack 22 years-ago and I was on holiday with my sister. I just lost my wife, she just lost her husband nine months after my wife. So we decided to go on holiday and I had another heart attack while I was on holiday. My flight and everything was all booked but I got told I wasn’t to fly. So I went to Norway on a cruise from Dundee but I didn’t get to where I wanted to go, the ship didn’t stay long enough in a port in Norway for me to get a train from Bergen to Tonsberg. So I didn’t get to go there. But I was in Norway. LB]] I just think it’s interesting that Norway was such a whaling… AH]] Oh it’s a big whaling… and so is Shetland islands. 49
LB]] I’m interested in how whaling becomes part of your identity in a way. I wondered if you’d ever seen yourself as a whaler? AH]] Well, as I told you on the phone, I wasn’t actually a whaler. I was an engineer, I was on the whale ship but I didn’t have anything to do with whales. I had a lot to do with electricity for cooking them and making the water for the steaming for cooking them. I had a lot to do with that but not actually whaling. But I mean you used to watch the whales come in and things like that, which was quite interesting. Now that, but what I was watching on the Internet last night, you can see them grabbing and pulling the whales on board the ship which is when the catchers come alongside with the corvettes with them. I don’t know if you remember on the Hell Below Zero you saw a basket bringing Alan Ladd up to the ship? I’ve been up and down on that a few times because you need to go on the catchers to work on them. I just about got lost over side when that basket toppled over. I had a bottle of oxygen and a bottle of acetalyne and my tools and I was dropped over the side and whoever was working the derrick went down too fast. There were whales as fenders between the two ships and he dropped me onto the whale and of course I held onto the ropes, but the basket went and toppled right over and I lost all the equipment, but they didn’t lose me, I hung on. Oh a lot of excitement and working long hours, about 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, never a Saturday or Sunday off. LB]] Do you remember how much you would have been paid? AH]] Yes. I can’t remember exactly how much I was getting paid but after the slop chest I think I was coming away with 1500 pounds for the seven months, plus your feed and your keep, you have to take that into consideration as well. And we found a big piece of amber [inaudible] and that was after I left the whaling, when I got… I was at the whaling but we didn’t get anything. It was after I was away from the whaling that I got a cheque from Salvesen for 300 odd pounds because that was my share of it, which was quite good. Have you met any of the chaps from the club? LB]] I’m meeting them next weekend. I’ll meet George and Don Lennie. AH]] There’s a picture that George made if you want to see it. You’ll have to come… George painted that. LB]] Oh wow, yes he’s a painter. AH]] Yep. I speak to them quite often because I keep getting letters from them. LB]] Yes, they are quite active aren’t they? AH]] Yes, they are. Although I always thought George was older than me. LB]] Is he not? AH]] No, no. It was just the last meeting, he says he’s thinking about… it was the AGM… so we said we’d keep him as treasurer and he says, ‘I think I’ll have to be given up,’ he says, ‘I’m getting old.’ He says, ‘You know, I’m 85 now.’ I just had to laugh. I says, ‘Well I’m 86!’ LB]] Do you remember… I’m kind of interested as well in what it would have been like for whaling families when their husbands or fathers had gone out. Do you know what your wife would have been up to? AH]] She worked when I was away. She worked in Kiellers factory in Dundee. She was lonely because you were away at Christmas and New Year. I was lonely as well because we didn’t get much mail between each other. I had been at home for a month when some of her letters had come back to me at home. They’d never got on board the ship. You’re a good bit away and you had to wait on transporters bringing things down and the transporter missed the mail at South America. If they missed it that mail didn’t go aboard the ship so it went back to the U.K. Well no, it was lonely, I’d say more for the friends at home than it was for me. Because we played, cribbage was the biggest thing we played aboard the ship. We used to go there at nights, not during the whaling because you didn’t have time, you just would have slept. It was hard work, everything had to be done going from the U.K. down to South Georgia, you had to clean all the parts, making water. We made our own 50 water you see, we made our water from the seawater. That’s how I lost all my teeth. I’ve rotted them all. Didn’t do it to everyone but it did it to me. LB]] Would your last season have been 56? AH]] Yes. No. I got married in 1953, and I was three full trips on the ship, so that would be 57. LB]] Around that time were you hearing things about the stocks being lower than? AH]] Oh yes, they were definitely getting lower all the time. Mind you, we still had 12, 15, 1700 whales caught in a season. Which is a lot of whales. And I always said, when they stopped it, I said they’ll have to start it again because… although I think there was a nine year period for the foetuses to be born. I mean we’ve seen some whales that were brought on board the ship with five foetus on side. So that was five youngsters that were killed at the time and if they were all getting born the seas would be full of whales. But they’re not killing them yet. Not the big ones. LB]] What do you remember people saying about the number of whales? AH]] We were only allowed to catch so many. When I was there we had the whaling board aboard ship saying how many whales you could catch. When you caught that many you’d stop catching. They always said that they needed to get to the whales because there was far too many. That was the reason for killing whales. That’s the reason they put factory ships, because it used to always be the island… catchers shot the whales and the corvettes brought them back to the island. But then they had to go further afield and they were getting too many whales so they put factory ships out as they go further afield. You probably know we’ve been in the Ross Sea and the Weddell Sea, which not many ships have been there… I don’t know what else I can tell you unless you ask. LB]] I’m interested in hearing what your perceptions were of even how the company was operating at that time in terms of how many whales there were. Were you hearing from them about quotas? AH]] Well we got told the quotas nearly every time we went away. That was about all. As far as I’m concerned, of course the mates and things like that might have known more than I did. We were always told that between 12 and 1500 whales was the quota for the year. That was the reason that the Japanese bought our ships. Not for our ships, for the quotas… LB]] What did you think when you were on the Harvester, what was your perceptions of whaling at the time? AH]] Yes, I was just doing my job. But I watched a lot, seeing how the whales were flensed and things like that. I’ve watched people dancing in the mouth of a blue whale. I was on board the ship when they caught the biggest blue whale at that particular time. It was 120 feet long and it weighed 120 tons. The stern of the ship went down when it came on board. As I say, I never took a lot of pictures, I have got some pictures but they’re all getting a bit dark now. I had a big piece of baleen and I’ve now got about that much left because the kids were taking it to school. I made lamps out of whales teeth. LB]] Did you feel connected to the industry? AH]] No, not really. I didn’t feel connected because I was only there for a specific reason. Once that was over, I was away. I didn’t stay, like some people who were on it 10-12 years at the time. I just wanted to get back home and work in the garage. My father had a garage you see, and work with him. When he died I took over the garage, he actually moved to a petrol filling station, but that service station isn’t there anymore it’s all houses on it. What else… LB]] Did you have any… did you ever think that whaling would come to an end? AH]] Well I was more or less told when I went first of all that there was only about another 5-6 years. They were speaking about closing it, but they didn’t say at that time definitely. But I had a funny feeling it was going to close. It hasn’t fully closed, I mean the Japanese and the Russians are still whaling but they can’t whale for the big ones. Just the smaller ones. But I’ve watched pictures of the old Dundee whalers where they used to harpoon them by hand… and I discovered the Ross Sea and the Weddell Sea were named after British whalers that sailed through there. I didn’t know at all. 51
LB]] I think you said something interesting about when you would hear about activists or people saying that you were murderers, but really there was a need for the whale products. Did you have any conception of what people were doing with the oil that you… AH]] No. It was just a job as far as I was concerned. It was a job. LB]] What did you think in later years, when whaling became this huge environmental issue. What were your thoughts? AH]] I didn’t really think about it, to be honest. I didn’t really think about that at all. LB]] What did you think when people were being called murderers? AH]] I thought it was very, I would say rude, for people to say that. Because you were actually doing something that was needed at the time. Of course that was a lot of years after so they maybe didn’t know about what the whale oil and everything did when actually the whaling was on. I don’t know who actually said it, I know it was some of the church congregation but it may have been the young ones going on about it, not the older ones. Because people came and asked me as well why didn’t it continue? Because they were interested as well. But we stopped it [the church magazine] because of that, being called murders and killers. Of course again all we said, they said they thought it was the way was actually killed, the harpoon went into the whale and the explosive head blew up inside. Which I thought really was cruel, because you saw sometimes when a whale was shot the blood coming out the blowhole. Of course we weren’t really thinking about that at the time, it was the job and it was the money. We did make good money, we did make good money. But it was hard work, long hours, and away from your family at 7 months at the time. LB]] What was it like to be in Antarctica? AH]] Very cold. But dry cold. If you went outside… in the engine room all I wore was a pair of underpants and a boiler suit. If you went up to the deck dressed like that, if you were to stand for five minutes you would have just frozen. So you always made sure you put some jackets and something on. LB]] Did you bring your own gear from home or were you provided with that? AH]] No, we had to buy it on board the ship. My first trip, I went away the day the ship was sailing and I was told I could get all that in the slop chest. So I went away with this little bag with some underwear in it and clothes that I was standing in. And when I got to the slop chest there were no boots. I had a pair of brown shoes and I wore those brown shoes for 7 months. When I got home to Liverpool, my wife who was my girlfriend then, my mother was there as well, they had no soles in the shoes because they burnt right through with the hot plates in the engine room and I went into the shop and asked for a pair of shoes. She comes out to put the shoes on. I said, ‘Excuse the shoes I’ve been wearing them for 7 months.’ I didn’t tell her where. I bought a pair of shoes anyway and she says, ‘Would you like these wrapped sir?’ I said no, toss them. That was my first trip, I wasn’t prepared. And the slop chest on board wasn’t prepared for me either. They would supply you with boiler suits and things like that, because they had to be white boiler suits in the engine room. LB]] What was it like getting off in Liverpool? AH]] Nice. Although the first time I came home my wife and my mother came on board the ship and they said it was very smelly, I didn’t smell it of course because you get used to it. But I went and got my gear, called a taxi, the taxi came right to the bottom of the gangway to pick you up and they got in the car and I got in the car. This taxi driver says, ‘Do you got your pass out?’ I said yes, and he said to put a fiver in it for the policeman to let me pass. I said, ‘Fair enough.’ I didn’t know what happened in ports. I put this fiver in the pass and handed it to the policeman and he opens it up and takes the fiver, he says, ‘There you are son,’ he says, ‘Give that to your family and cut your hair mate.’ Taxi driver says, ‘I’m awfully sorry about that, that wasn’t the same man as when I came in.’ [laughs] But he let me pass and I didn’t have to show any of my gear. Because they used to take cigarettes out. One chap that I know, he was boasting about… of course maybe that’s how he got caught, I don’t know, but he was boasting about his cigarettes he had in his sack and he got in the 52 train and they were waiting on him in Edinburgh. And he got caught there and fined for all his cigarettes. LB]] Would you stay in Liverpool or would you head right back up to Scotland from there? AH]] Oh no, come right back to Scotland. But of course I was going back to the ship again, I was only home for a fortnight. The ship sailed from there to South Shields and then I went to South Shields and I went to Norway. My first two seasons I was in Norway alone and it was the third one that my wife went with me. We were just married a couple of days, we got married two days after the Coronation. But as I say I made a lot of friends, my best man up there he was one of them. LB]] Were you ever… were there any scary moments? AH]] Yes. I had one very scary moment. I cannae remember what was wrong with me and I went to the doctor and the doctor gave me penicillin. And the doctor’s surgery was right at the top of the ladder. And I came out the surgery and went down the ladder right to the poop deck and there was a big rope they used to put on the whales when they came on board and I was standing on this rope because I felt a bit dizzy. I was just standing on this rope and I began to feel a bit better, so I thought I had better go. So I just stepped off the rope when the rope got caught with a whale which it shouldn’t have been and unwound. If I had been standing on it I would have been right over the side. That was a scary moment. And then I got back nearly to my cabin and I collapsed. [[Talks about penicillin allergy.]] [[LB gives description of project.]] LB]] With whaling as in oil and gas, the debate around it is so big that you can kind of forget why people work in it, what they want out of it... AH]] As I say, I didn’t have very much to do with the whales. The only thing was we were in the engine rooms and the engine room boys had to keep everything spic and span, copper pipes were polished and shining, it was beautiful. Except they discovered a whale that had maybe been lying for a fortnight and brought it on board the ship and oh the smell was terrible. But I’ve actually saw this, we had big vents coming from the deck down to the engine room to keep the cool air in and of course the gases of the rotten whale used to come down there as well and they were situated above all the gauges of the engines which were always well polished. I’ve actually seen the copper pipes turning green. And you think, I’m breathing that in… The saltwater being made to freshwater went to my teeth, we did that on evaporators because we used a lot of water and a lot of steam and a lot of electricity. We used as much electricity aboard that ship as to power a small town. Of course people in the factory didn’t think about that, they just kept switching on machines, of course generators wouldn’t take it and you saw them going up and sometimes you’d go start another generator to go and control it but sometimes you didn’t think of that before someone put something on of course all the lights went out. That was our job. LB]] What was it like working with other people on the ship? AH]] Fine. I got on well with everyone and working with them was fine. Never saw any trouble, never any trouble at all. You’d see arguments but I wouldn’t call it trouble. That’s the reason there was no drink on board the ship, because they… you wouldn’t have lived through it. Except on New Year you got one glass on rum on the new year. I was reading something yesterday that said some chap said on New Year you got four hours off but I can’t remember that, I can’t remember getting any time off on New Year… of course he was a whaler, so maybe they did get four hours off I don’t know. LB]] Do you have any memory of how your… I know you had a few instances where you had short notice when you had to go. But otherwise did you have enough time with your contracts to start? AH]] Yes. Well your contract was only for seven months and when you went to Norway you had another contract. It was only for the season. They wanted me to do an overwinter which I wouldn’t do. I just didn’t want to leave home for so long. I mean it was good money and since I’ve been going to the meetings I discovered that they really enjoyed themselves over the winter, they skied and that. 53
Then someone said you should have done it, but I didn’t. They asked me two or three times, I think you should be doing an overwinter this season, and I said no I wouldn’t be doing an overwinter. I just didn’t want to leave home. I was never whaling when I had family, no children, they weren’t born until I left the whaling. That’s the reason I left the whaling and that’s the reason I got called to the army. LB]] Right. But then did you not go back? AH]] I went back to sea, but not to the whaling. I still worked with Salvesen, I did a trip on a ship called the Colrain which was an iron moor and then I did coasting from Grangemouth to Norway and Sweden. LB]] Did you like being at sea? AH]] Yes, I enjoyed being at sea. I missed my family, I missed my wife and the children. There were two children when I left, you see. And I eventually ended up with five. LB]] What did you do after you left whaling? AH]] After the whaling I started at my father’s garage and then I took over at the filling station in Dundee and then I took a garage in the Cowgate in Dundee and it was burnt to the ground and I bought the garage in Leuchars and then I retired. Just out at the top of the road where these houses are. Just at the top of that road. It’s not a garage now, it’s a cycle shop. And my son had the garage at Guardbridge. [[Talks about employees at son’s and his garage. Family history. Travel plans.]] AH]] Well, as I say I’m not a whaler. LB]] Well that’s interesting. So you don’t think that just being there and being in the industry makes you a whaler? AH]] Yes, I’m termed a whaler as far as the whaling club is concerned. I still am a whaler. And there’s very few of them that were whalers, they were nearly all catcher men. LB]] So what do you think is a whaler then? AH]] I don’t know, for the simple reason that we’re all just human beings. I mean I don’t go about saying I’m a whaler and things like that. LB]] Why not? AH]] I don’t know. I do sometimes, people ask me what I’ve done and I tell them I was in the whaling and they’re always very interested. My family never talks about me being in whaling but they see the pictures and the baleen and teeth and I’ve lost them all because they took them to school. I didn’t know about the whaling club until maybe 20 years ago and I called them up and asked if I could join. They said yes, I’m welcome. There’s more in the whaling club now than when I started, and yet there’s been a lot of deaths of whalers. LB]] What is it that’s so nice about the whaling club? AH]] So nice? Just to get together with all the whalers and talk about things. Again, I think I’m the only one off the Harvester, the rest are all off the Venturer. LB]] Is there a difference of experience there? AH]] Yes, I would say so. Because the Venturer actually went whaling in the summertime after the whaling season in South Georgia, which we never did. You just learn these things, and you learn about the people now, what they’ve been doing since they’ve left the whaling. Some of them have boats. I was never a boat person… LB]] But you liked working on the sea. AH]] Yeah. When Hell Below Zero was made I was on a lifeboat because I got the job of looking after the engines and there are 22 lifeboats with engines, and I got that job. And I was actually doing the engines the day that they came and took pictures of me. When I saw the film I said maybe they took the pictures because they got off the boat and onto the ice and I thought maybe they were going to take the boat. But they never used that, so I’m not in the picture. LB]] Do you have any pictures of you in Antarctica? 54
AH]] Yes, aye. I don’t have an awful lot. That’s one of the Venturer… There was a big piece in the paper about me and my wife being in Norway.
55
Norman Jamieson 8 July 2017 Lerwick, Shetland
NJ]] That’s all whaling books. LB]] Yes, I’ve seen this one. NJ]] You’ve probably seen them… and that’s our last book. You can get these books on Amazon. But that one, there’s a lot of photos. NJ]] We never thought… the Antarctic is a beautiful place. I’ve been fortunate enough to go back and see it all after 30 years, because I had to go there on supply when the conflict was on in the Falklands. Touring a fuel barge. And we lost it in what you call the Roaring Forties, it rolled adrift. We didn’t secure it, it was people ashore that secured it and the captain said, “Do ya think it’ll hold?” Well I says, “It depends on da weather.” But it was nice to go back and see the place again, then we had to go to South Georgia and overhaul the mooring systems. It was the Royal Navy that did it and the Royal Navy and the Merchant Navy didn’t… it was a hell of a job to get sorted out. I was there for nine years after that. So I got the boys… the first time back in South Georgia, I did two winters down there and I got them to take a photo of me kissing the beach. They said why do you want to do this? I says, “The Pope can do it, I can.” There were nobody been at da whaling on the ship I was on, and I coulda told them anything. Sometimes I did, just for a laugh. LB]] What was it like to go back? How did it feel? NJ]] It felt strange, I went up to the barracks we stayed in and I was in there first, the room, there were four of us mess boys in the catering. And the four of us were still on the wall, all the actors and actresses. But it was a bit sad because we made good friends and we’re all still good friends. And then there was the Norwegians, there was a mixture of half and half. Whale catchers was mostly Norwegians, but I was fortunate to be with the first British gunner and the last. LB]] Who’s that? NJ]] That was Joe Ferguson. He could speak fluent Norwegian, a lot of them could. After awhile it was not much different from Shetland. And he didn’t succeed as a gunner because he wouldn’t do as he was told. But he was a nice man to be with. Then I moved on to other whale catchers. I was on everything that floated down there. A great experience, but it was a cruel game. LB]] How come? NJ]] Well, the shooting of the whales sometimes wasn’t very accurate, you can imagine a boat going up and down, you’ve a moving target and you’re having to fire from that and sometimes you didn’t see much whale to fire at. But then came the asdics, then the whale would run when it had asdic, they had very sensitive hearing. It was goin’ fast. Then you had to chase them and you only had a few seconds, three seconds to aim your gun and fire. Okay everybody says it’s a huge animal it’s 70-80- 90 feet but that was tricky. I woulda liked to be a gunner, he was the captain too, and some of them had no tickets, if you could shoot da gun you were alright. You got the ticket. I woulda liked it to been just to handle the boat, not shoot da whale. But if you got second mate or mate that woulda been alright but when I went in 53 it was starting to… my brother was there four years before me and he was in the factory. LB]] Had he told you about it? NJ]] Oh aye. My father went down to [indecipherable] because Hamish, he had bad asthma and as soon as he went to the whaling, it disappeared. And especially when they did the winters in South Georgia, soon as he came home and he cut da hay, that was it. So I could understand, he did four winters, not all in one line, different… and then he was drowned off a yacht up in Yell. Fell over the side, couldn’t swim. He never was very healthy in the summer you see, with asthma, and he never learned to swim. One of these accidents and I couldn’t believe it. I had passed Shetland the day before on a trip, we were taking cargoes from Norway to Manchester. We were coming up and I got 56 the telegram saying he had been drowned, and the young brother’s with him too, he was 14, Hamish was 29. I couldn’t believe it. It was just one of these accidents. But anyway, there are… I did a fairly good interview with BBC One, you maybe seen it? LB]] I think I’m going to hear it, I think they have it archived at the museum here. NJ]] Yes, well there were two Shetland women that were in South Georgia, and they were in the museum, and one of them said to the other, ‘That’s a Shetlander that’s talkin’ in dat tape’. But there were four of us that day in Edinburgh, one guy was writing a book so he wouldn’t let them use it, and the two other guys, they cunna understand them and I says it’s funny that you can understand me and I’m da one out here because I’m a Shetlander! LB]] Can you tell me a little bit about how you entered whaling? NJ]] Well, my brother’s down there and it was either go to the Dolphin in Leith, that’s the training ship, or just go on your own. And my brother says, he gave me the money to get me to Leith, I says how about if I don’t get a job, do I get the money to go back? [laughs] But ‘Aye,’ he says, ‘You’ll get a job alright.’ Because him and my father had both been down there. LB]] When they were down there, what was your experience of that? NJ]] It was lonely for me, but I was the man of the house then. We were five miles from the nearest shop and I either had to go by boat or cycle. So I liked that kind of work because I could do it, the school work was terrible. I hated school. We were at the secondary then and I only got the year and a half at secondary. And we were goin’ a bit wild. And the headmaster didn’t like it, he didn’t like me for some reason or another. But I thought, ‘If I can get over this bit, I can get over anything.’ But certainly the whale catcher was a different story. And that’s the way the education man from the school, he came up and he says ‘You got best marks for navigation, seamanship, all dat stuff. So I think you’re material for the Dolphin.’ My father had been out to Leith and he said, ‘Well it’s up to him, he’s the man who’s goin’.’ He says, ‘I’ve told him not to go on a whale catcher, to go on the factory ship.’ LB]] Why? NJ]] Because it was much bigger and you were t a 12-hour day, and a whale catcher you went on and stayed there. But this was you usually had the night off but there was no darkness. They were shooting whales 24 hours a day, and it wasn’t all sunshine and roses. There were bad weather and I was sick for about seven days but I got over that and then I says, well this is it. There’s no way back. So where do you even go here? You could go in the factory if you were too sick, which we sometimes had three or four boys before the could stick it. So I kind of got to like it once I went out on deck, then I was happy. LB]] Was it kind of common for boys or men whose brothers or dads had worked in whaling, to also… NJ]] It was, yeah. LB]] Yeah. How come? NJ]] I think it was just the stories they told and actually on my mother’s side her father and her uncles they were all at the Greenland whaling so I suppose it was… I loved the sea, I loved to watch the… the worse the weather the better. Because there was action. And even when we’re being brought up my brother went into the Far East, younger brother, and he said they we’re having to go get tickets for this ferry to get sea time. I says, ‘You can get sea time standing at the gable of the house in Shetland’ but that’s the way it was but any trawlers that came into the harbour we’d go and run their messages with a wee boat. So the sea was in your system. But dad thought that would be enough and the whale catchers, they were tiny, they were about 150 feet long. LB]] Did you remember when you were growing up was it kind of a good family thing that your brother and dad would be going to Antarctica? NJ]] Well dad was never really a whaler because he went into the passenger liners running from the UK to Australia and cargo boats, they were passenger and cargo. And I did see a lot of photos that he 57 came home with, bits and pieces, one especially was a photo he took of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, it was one of these long photos that would come in bits, at night. And I thought to myself, ‘Well wouldn’t that be beautiful to see that.’ And I did, and I saw it from the air. We were working on a seismic research boat and we did the West African coast and then we went to Brazil. The first time we flew we did two months there and then two months home. And we came back in a lightning storm and the pilot said he was going to land until this was over. So he just circled Rio. LB]] Wow. NJ]] It was a great sight. But I’d love to do it all over again. The whaling, lots of folks said ‘Didn’t you think it was cruel’, and I’d say that I didn’t when I was young. LB]] You didn’t when you were young. NJ]] No. LB]] Do you remember when that would have changed? NJ]] I think it changed after I saw different parts of the world and met more people. But having said that, lots of people kind of frowned on you and I said maybe if we hadn’t gone whaling we’d have been in Hitler’s hands because the whale oil was good for explosives and Hitler had warships down in the Antarctic looking for it and they just took anything they could see. So that maybe helped to cushion the bad bit. They didn’t suffer too much. If you got dem in bad weather, which you didn’t try and do because it was dangerous for everybody. First thing time I went in the barrel to look for whales was a bit scary. Safety went out the window, out of the porthole. It was, you were hanging in one minute, then you had to run the rigging, then you had to climb into this barrel and the boys told me about when he went up first he was that scared when he got up to the top that he got in headfirst! [laughs] And there he was, he was stuck ‘till he got turned around. It was a frightening experience. LB]] How did you deal with that? NJ]] It became the norm, you know. Excitement. When you’re crossing the deck there was sea coming in everywhere and you’re thinking how the hell am I going to get to the galley in this weather? To lie in your bunk the bunk would have needed to be like a coffin; tight fit. So what I did, we all had sea bags about this size [makes hand gesture] so I left mine unpacked and used it as a stopper. But they weren’t all bad days, der was good weather too and the scenery, icebergs and that was breathtaking. LB]] So what were your jobs? NJ]] The first job was catering. You’re in the saloon the first year. That meant you were in the officer’s men, cleaning their cabins. And you could go on deck and get stuck into anything they tell you to do. Mostly you tried to get on the whaling deck, the steering, use the compass and the gyro. But the following year, the next season, you were a deck boy, that’s just the same thing but looking after the sailors. It wasn’t a hard job but it was trying to clean the place when she was heaving and pitching, you got a bucket and a scrub brush and a mop. You slipped the bucket, the bucket was off. They’d tell you ‘Go on and bugger off, don’t do dis today.’ And der was no showers, two buckets and you went in and the rope and the hole, that’s where they kept the whale lines and you’s to go out with the whale gun and you went down der and you had a wash when you were lying by and iceberg, you didn’t do it when they were all action and goin’. But once I got on deck I was more happier. LB]] What year was that? NJ]] That was 1955. Getting to know all the wee jobs you had to do and it wasn’t difficult but there was wee things that if you didn’t do them right you either went over the side or cut your legg off or somethin’. The mess boys’ job, it was really long hours. You got up at half-past six in the morning and you never got away until about 10 pm at night. And then if you were bunkin’ at the factory that’s taking stores of oil, you went alongside there in the middle of the night because you didn’t want to stop the whaling. So it was a long day for a 16 year old and the first time I went down I did 23 months. LB]] Really? You did a winter the first time? 58
NJ]] Yeah. LB]] Wow. NJ]] So it was a long time and I think I had one meal off in that time. But I had good money, well. LB]] What was good money? NJ]] Good money, well. After that time away I had 808 pounds clear. I have some pay slips that I can give you. LB]] I would love to see those. NJ]] You can take them away with you, because… LB]] I can just take photos. NJ]] You could do… The originals. Have you been recording? LB]] Yes. NJ]] Okay… You can take that with you. They’re copies, and these are the originals. LB]] Wow. Then I’ll just take these copies then. Thank you so much! NJ]] It’ll give you an idea of how little we were getting and also it’ll also give you an idea. Here’s a photo, that’s one of the Salvesen ladies. That’s a special thing, it’s something about sailors. I got it from New Zealand, someone said… Now this lady, when she died. She left 6 million. Or the tax man got his hand on 6 million. LB]] So she donated… What was it like to work for Salvesen? NJ]] They were pretty good. As shipping companies go, they were not… they didn’t give you any more or less than most companies. LB]] Did you feel that that was your only option? NJ]] Well I could’ve taken my dad’s route. Was passenger liners or cargo-passenger liners. And he was QM, quarter master on them, it was all-hands steering in those days, you did two hours at the wheel instead of one. But we were fortunate enough that when automatic steering came in on ships to get automatic steering then we didn’t need to stand on the wheel and concentrate all the time. It was a case of, automatic steering could steer the boat but couldn’t do the maintenance. So it was a bit of a shame that they cut two men off the deck right away soon as they got automatic steering. As the mate said, ‘Who’s going to paint and do the maintaining’s for it?’ But that’s progress. And also it wasn’t really safe. That seismic surveyin’ in the North Sea, when we went over, safety was over the wall. You didn’t know what safety was. If it was on-force 9, 10 and the rig needed some container off the deck you went in. There was no will we do it, will we not. Throw caution to the wind and take your life in your hands. There were people that would come, captains and mates, off big ships, and there was no comparison. I knew what small ships was and I had been on Salvesen’s for 15 year and then I was in [oil industry] for another 10 year crossin’ the North Sea every fortnight with big cargoes. Of course the Americans thought we were [indecipherable] in the North Sea, but there wasn’t a [indecipherable]. Britain wasn’t really ready for the oil. We had no preparation, the supply was there but it was rubbish. LB]] Why do you think that was? NJ]] It was just the way [indecipherable]. We were on our knees after the war. And they knew the oil was there but they knew the Americans was there. If the American’s hadn’t of come in to take oil out half the oil would still be in the North Sea. And then they were employin’ every nationality under the sun and der boats. And the Norwegians, Danes, Dutch, Germans, they all had far better boats than we had. LB]] Because of the war… NJ]] Because of that. I mean, they ran down our merchant Navy was just starting to come on stream. I was on the control board for the Forties, the very first platform in 74 was it. And the gear we had to work with was a damned disgrace. You could wash your hands over the side of the boat at the stern and you were going out on the North Sea in bad weather. And then there was only two of you on deck and what they call the lean hand. I’ve got a walkie talkie and earmuffs on and after awhile we 59 did get reasonable gear but I couldn’t cope wae, you came into harbour in Lerwick and Aberdeen and all the other ports and there’s four dockers and the ship’s like this. They’re getting double the money we’re getting. We got no learning about supply boats, we were merchant seamen. The dockers they said they were going to build warehouses five miles inland, we’ll be in that too the docker says. But I says, ‘What you didn’t want was to come 120 miles offshore, that’s not our job, that’s your job that’s a docker’s job.’ They didn’t want to come there, so there were a few of those. And even dockers in Britain for years they were eight in a gang. And they’re wondering why they’re getting such good money in… Rotterdam and all that places, Denmark, Sweden. I says because half the men are employed, half you buggers is up in the pub. I hope you’re recording that too. LB]] Yeah… NJ]] Yeah! It’s all truth! So no I didn’t like that bit of it, and I let them know. But we were very lucky, some of the skippers and mates and that was very understanding and all days we had to moor up to the rig and that was a tricky job. The rig wasn’t moving, but the boat was moving all the time. It was horrendous what they asked us to do in the beginning. LB]] Do you see any similarities between whaling and working in the North Sea like that? NJ]] No. No, in the whaling we took calculated risks if you could call it that. But I never seen any real, I just seen one guy getting a finger off at the whaling in the nine years I was there, 10 years. But I saw some funny ones in the North Sea. LB]] What do you think draws people to those types of jobs? NJ]] I can’t really explain that one. The love of the sea. LB]] Do you think that for Shetlanders in particular it would be that? Because I have interviewed some whalers who were in Dundee or in Edinburgh, and they just said money. NJ]] There wasn’t all that big money at the whaling, it was what you could save down there. There was nothing to spend it on, you weren’t going into port. In the merchant Navy you were in the port every three to four weeks, less than that. But no, I think it’s the excitement of it. Even yet, I’ll read a book about the sea over a book about the shore. I have a sign that I put in my door sometimes, ‘Gone ashore.’ What does that mean? LB]] What does it mean? NJ]] Well if you’ve gone off the ship you’ve gone ashore. Some folk twig it. No, I would think it’s the excitement and of course the stories I had from before I went to sea. I knew a lot about Leith and the docks and all the ships that went out and in. LB]] Was that because so many people in your community had… NJ]] Yeah. Told us about it. My mother’s three brothers were at sea, in the Russian convoys. And dad and his brothers, there were three brothers, one cleared out to Australia they didn’t know where he’d gone. In fact he’d gone on a sailing ship and she went to South Georgia first, and then on to Cape Horn. But that was his last trip to sea. He stayed in Australia. And the other one was like dad. Dad was in Australia for some time and he liked Tasmania but he came back eventually. LB]] What was going on at home when you were at sea? Were you married? NJ]] Yes. Not at the whaling. I married when I was 22. My wife came away and met me and we stayed in Edinburgh for a week, and another time we stayed in Aberdeen just before we married. I said to her, ‘Which place do you like?’ because I knew the whaling was going to pack in. LB]] You did? NJ]] Oh yeah. LB]] How did you know? NJ]] Well, you could see it, it was starting… they were starting to make noises that some of the factory ships weren’t fishing as well as the others and before the Southern Harvester that I was on working from they had one of the biggest seasons… by the time I was going to make a good go of it to try and study something for my ticket. And the gunner says, ‘Son get out of this,’ when I was a mess boy. So I was kinda disappointed when I packed in because when I came into the merchant 60
Navy there was not what we call bullshit. At the whaling you did your job, you knew your job, and that’s how it was. You didn’t have to sell anybody. So it was a more free and easy system. And after, I wouldn’t have minded if the safety that came after, when I came in to merchant Navy, there were no sense in it. And after I had been in the boat, they thought I was material for a [indecipherable], I’ll relieve the [indecipherable] and not takin’ the job. Then I was in the position of either you take the job or you leave this boat. And that was the one runnin’ to Denmark. So I says ‘Okay, I’ll give it a go.’ And I really enjoyed it because I policed myself and more to the point I policed the crew and they were the men I was having to work with and tell what to do and I was very lucky that I had some good crews. So from then on I really enjoyed it. Maybe my wife wouldn’t have, but I was never away very long. And we were running to Denmark with my family, I had a boy and a girl, they just loved to come down to the ship. And they were allowed to do anything. Paint, hose the boat, drop the anchors, I didn’t send them up the mast but I had them on a supply boat down in the Tyne once and the captain was in London and we got an order to go and move a ship. So we pulled our anchors out, it’s one of these support ships, and the mate was new and he came on the boat and he says, ‘What can we do? We can’t do the job.’ I says, ‘Well if you can handle the bridge, I can handle the deck.’ But he says, ‘How many men have you got?’ I says, ‘I’ve not gone any, they’re all at the pub somewhere I don’t know where.’ He says, ‘Who’s going to tie the two winches?’ And you’ll have to be hooking on and pulling that string down the deck. I put the boy on one winch and the girl on the other, and they did the other. We pulled the anchor out and the mate got the pilot on board and they wanted to see how far the anchor was going to come before they had to pull them up, and that. It was easy. And he says, ‘Well, I’ve seen it all now.’ LB]] But I mean, it’s interesting. Sometimes when people talk about Shetland they say that this fishermen identity is within you. Do you think that’s… NJ]] Oh yeah, there’s no doubt about that. They call us the North Sea Chinamen. And “chinamen” are known to be good at all jobs. And I must say that the Polish sailors that was with us were pretty good at, and that was the reason I got the … job, because I shouldn’t have got that job, it should have been a Polish guy. He was a lot older than me and been on real big ships. But him and the mate didn’t hit it off. In the wartime they had a boarding house and I’m not going to that, he tells me, there were too many Polish guys in his life before he came to sea. He says, there’s no way. I said, ‘I bloody had to!’ But the bairns loved the boat. I got into trouble at the parents’ night once. They had gone to secondary and the teacher was complaining about Hamish who was good at technical drawing, she says if he gets math with that he’s all the way. But she says, ‘He’s got a mind of his own and we can’t seem to break him. I wonder where he gets that from.’ Oh, I says, ‘It’ll come.’ She says, ‘I see this is where it comes from. You’ll have to keep on him in maths.’ I says, ‘How can I do that?’ His mother, he was sick here in Lerwick and Norma was third in her class in Leith Academy in Leith. Which was pretty high, with Hamish no, it was a disaster. But it’s not always the one that’s the clever one that makes the money. Hamish retired at full before he was 50, he served his time at a machinist and then he started fiddling with motorbikes. Well I like motorbikes, but he tried to race them but I would have needed to have a lot of money to put that through. He started a mechanic and he ended up wae three world champions with a Grand Prix. And he never looked back. LB]] Did you feel… how did you feel when that teacher said that? NJ]] No, I told her, I said I went to secondary when I was too old to appreciate it. We had been, not that their teachers wasn’t… in primary school I got to stop every second day. But I didn’t hold that against the teacher because we were wee devils, if there were a trick to be up to we’re at it. I just liked to see people laugh. But his teacher says, ‘There’s more to this world than cargo ships.’ But none of the two of them went to sea, Norma went into the bank and never had any money, she spent it. With Hamish, he’s… I don’t know how many houses he had at one time. He had a girl up here in Shetland for 19 years, but he was never home. That was a fierce trade, but they liked it. When he parted from that one he had a beautiful house in Phillip Island in Australia, two in Shetland here, one 61 in East Grimstead, one in Cornwall. So that’s where his money went. I don’t know where it goes now but he went to Africa after he retired and was mechanicin’ for horse pedals and wee mopeds for nothin’. And he met a girl in the Gambia, I think maybe it could be his daughter… she looks very young anyway, and he got married and he joined the muslim faith. But she’s got, he’s had her here and they bought a house in Scallaway. We fell out. But that’s a long time ago. No, he’s done well I must admit. And of course the daughter went the same way. After, well I divorced and then my wife died, it was something that she coulda cured herself. I’ve done my drinking, it was an overrated past- time. LB]] Was that hard on ship? NJ]] Well, there was a lot of drinking on ships. I wouldn’t have gone on a ship with a bar on. I drew the line there. But the companies they didn’t like it, but I says that’s the way I am. And then the drugs came and when guys came to sea, that was one of the reasons I just got fed up. It’s wasn’t only the crew, it was the officers. And when they couldn’t get the wacky stuff they were on the drink and that was the worse they could do because the two didn’t mix… I got three unfavourable reports, which wasn’t worth the paper they were written on. I had an alcoholic skipper, mate and my best pal here in Shetland had died of it. And my wife, too. So I says, ‘I’m getting out of this.’ LB]] Is it part of the lifestyle? NJ]] A lot of it was at sea. They put bars on the ships but when you were working with heavy material, you’re dancing with death. LB]] What about being back here? What was it like, do you think, to be… the family of someone who had gone to the whaling? NJ]] I can’t really tell you because they’re not here to ask the questions, now. Norma’s here in Unst and Hamish is got the house and his girlfriend… he’s had the place rented out. They’re in the Gambia in the moment, I think. Uh… no. There’s no real answer there, for what they thought. I know that we were called Antarctic butchers, but I explained this one night I was invited to a bank do and my daughter was in the bank and my wife was in the bank. And this guy at the bar says I hear you were an Antarctic butcher. So I just told him a few truths. I don’t think he was feeling very good by the time I left him at the bar. LB]] What were those truths? That we needed whale oil…? NJ]] The thing was that in the old days it was used for practically everything, including lighting the streets and hundreds of jobs, but as the years went on, they didn’t really need that after the war. After the war they didn’t need it, but that’s when they started to call a halt to it, it wasn’t viable. There’s margarine was made from whale oil and a huge Bovril plant. And you know if it had of been controlled properly we could have still be whaling yet and using the meat. We in Britain, you probably heard that the Russians and the Japanese are the ones that plumbed up the whales. But I’d say that’s rubbish. Because we had whaling inspectors down there in 1937, the year I was born, and these people were just figurines. When we were shootin’ de whales we had whaling inspectors on board but were dey doin’ de right job? LB]] What do you mean? NJ]] I’ll tell you… well the Japanese and the Russian factory ships would maybe shoot 50 whales in a day and call it a day. Because they’re takin’ de whale meat dat has to be fresh. A whale decays very quickly when it’s cold outside and heat inside. Now we were blastin’ away at de whales just for oil, pure oil. And Bovril and meat meal and dat. You can subsidize that very quickly, so who was the guys dat was buggerin’ up de whales? LB]] That’s an interesting point of view. Because… NJ]] We weren’t supposed to take a milk [indecipherable] dey could tell if dey took it up on the de plan and she had milk. And we never took unless an occasional accident and I was only up in the plan once and dere was a mother shot and de guy, de gunner, he was a nice man, she took alongside and took it to de factory. So, dey weren’t all like dat. And den the measurin’ of de whale is another 62 thing. You had a certain size they had to come under. Now dese whaling inspectors, gunners are gods dey got dere own [[indecipherable]] comin’ and goin’ all de time from de whaling. And dey’re talkin’ to de whaling inspector, it’s profitable for everybody, me too. When dey measured de whale the boy took de tape to the tail or the head and de inspector would be at de… see at de correct measurement and say it was right. Dis fellow gives me plenty of drink on de way down and plenty on de way back… I hope you won’t get into trouble wit’ dat but dat’s my point of view, that’s how I see it, and dat’s the truth. So as you hear dem runnin’ down de Russians, I’m not a Communist or anything like dat. We won’t speak about Donald Trump. LB]] No. There’s no need. He wasn’t involved in the whaling was he? NJ]] No. But… dis is what dey tell you. You didn’t need to bother about a fresh whale, we just got ‘em to get more oil. And we got a bonus on de oil, de gunner got 9 pound for shootin’ de whale, just shootin’ it, nine pound a tail, we got ten bob. That was like 50 p. Salvesens will be shootin’ me after dis one, but dere’s not many of dem left. But we’ve got an understandin’. They must know that too. LB]] Did you think at the time… what did you think of Salvesen at the time? NJ]] I met Christian Salvesen. He was on de whale catcher for a trip with the British gunner... [[this is likely Harold Salvesen, as Christian died in 1911]] He was a very thrifty man, he still had his old army coat, he was a major or somethin’ in the army. But I couldnae fault de man and I’m very friendly with Sir Gerald Elliot. And I tried to get him to bring his wife to Shetland but the powers that be up here didnae invite him, they invited Robin Salvesen. LB]] Who would have invited him? NJ]] Oh I’ll get shot for this. Our committee, I’m on the committee. I don’t know why that happened but Robin Salvesen I think he’s been here twice, he’s invited us down to his. It’s like the old joke when Robin Salvesen came and he was workin’ among de factory men and dey were sittin’ down havin’ a talk and one of de boys says, ‘What’s yer name?’ He says, ‘Robin Salvesen’ he says, ‘We’re all doin’ dat, what’s your name?’ [laughs] LB]] That’s a good. NJ]] But he’s got a big house down at de Borders and I’ve never been in it but I’ve spoke to the man. LB]] Did they communicate with you about the whale stock numbers or anything like that? NJ]] No, I think it was pretty obvious. De one thing too about Salvesen, he used old stuff. He built whale catchers and the factory ship, very modern, and it was well-run. I mean, I know. We played with the army and navy and air force in the Falklands and dey couldnae get things right down there how they be coming down for three month? We’re goin’ down dere and there’s no big repair ships or anything following us around. The factory was it, so it was well-organized. And de way dey picked the men was something else. LB]] How did they do it? NJ]] Well, you just walked into de office and if you were an older man they looked at you in de discharge book and de established seamen and de unestablished seamen. And dey seem to go for de unestablished ones. LB]] Why? NJ]] I don’t know, well you see an unestablished seaman nearly can be guaranteed that he’s got a clean book. But the established ones, it’s a bit dodgy. And den of course dey stopped that, there were no unestablished sailors allowed. You had to join it. To me dat was a form of nationalizing the shipping industry. LB]] What did you think about that? NJ]] I didn’t like it. LB]] Why not? NJ]] Well, it put me in a position that I couldn’t go to any shipping office I wanted and get asked for a job because I had a clean book. But it was when I realized that they had me over de barrel when we signin’ on dat column in Leith and before you got posted you should have an AVs ticket, well I 63 didn’t have the AVs ticket and de shipping master says to de captain, we’re in de shore office, he says ‘I’m entitled not to sign dis man on.’ Captain, ‘Oh yes,’ he says, ‘I know dat.’ Well he says, ‘If you don’t sign him on here I’ll just take him to de ship and sign him on. And there’s nothin’ much you can do about it.’ Dat man was comin’ down to the ship every trip and gettin’ his wee handout from de captain, you know how it’ll be, and he knew what it would be so he wasn’t going to cut off his nose to spite his face really. That’s how it’s done. So the captain came after a few days he says, ‘Norman, I’ll give you a fortnight off and you go and get your AVs ticket. I don’t like to do dis…’ I says, ‘Well you know what dat is, captain,’ I says, ‘Dat’s de Labour government nationalizing the shipping industry.’ And he didnae like that. He says, ‘You behave yourself, I’m still de captain.’ But, oh it’s a devil. But I knew how far I could go with ‘em. So there’s crooks in every corner. I’m not saying I wasn’t a crook but we had our moments. LB]] I wondered, so I guess near the end, were people talking about that? Would they be talking about the stock numbers or the catch numbers or quotas or anything? NJ]] It was governin’ itself, I mean if it’s not viable there’s no point goin’ to it. And dey say it’s not, it’s not comin’ back as it should. But when you realize that dey’re takin’ de feed dat de whale live on and everything in de Antarctic lives on, krill, there’s masses of it but they’re hooverin’ it up just to get protein. De whole world’s getting’ unbalanced. Dey’re talkin’ about birds, one bird is eatin’ another and dere are things on de land here dat should have never been in Shetland, like polcats, weasels, and all dat stuff. I was in Iceland for some time, spent a long time up dere, and they weed out de bad birds and de bad animals, dey have to or dere will be nothin’ left… and I think we gave up whalin’ at de right time. LB]] When you said that that fellow at a party had said or called you an Antarctic butcher, what did he mean? NJ]] Well he meant dat we were killin’ de whales. LB]] And he was clearly not in favour of dat? NJ]] And he was clearly doin’ somethin’ that I frowned on. [[mimes smoking a joint]] I says you don’t give a shit about de human bein’ but you want to protect de whale? He says, what did I mean. I says obviously you don’t know what you’re doin’. At dat time, it’s like de wee seals now. If you touch a baby seal, de mother will reject it. And years ago my daughter and I was goin’ along Princes St. and dey were sprayin’ de baby seals in Orkney. And de mothers were leavin’ them. And she wanted to give de Greenpeace people dat we met dere, but I said wait until I tell you a story. I think she put her money back in her purse. So I says, and I was asked to go with Greenpeace, there’s a captain that asked me to come and I says I couldn’t do dat. LB]] Why not? NJ]] I says, if you’d gone down to the Antarctic and seen what I seen and I would be goin’ down dere and takin’ the livelihood of many, many people. I says if you controlled dis lot at de beginning, we wouldn’t be talkin’ about dis. LB]] Why does this kind of keep happening, with natural resources? Like overfishing, or taking too many whales, or going into the North Sea and being irresponsible. Why do we do that? NJ]] Why do we do it? Greed for money. That’s all it is. I think. They’re certainly tryin’ to control it but nobody is payin’ any attention. I’ve told you the grim side of de whaling and also the greed for pieces of paper but dey try and fail in my book to cover up the real problem. LB]] What’s that? NJ]] Greed for money. It’s a huge ocean and they’re only touchin’… I met a guy over from America, he had a big yacht, went to a couple of parties with him, I says ‘What’s your job here?’ He says ‘I’ve been sent over by the United States…’ foreign office or whatever you call it, ‘to count de whales in de North Atlantic.’ I says, ‘You haven’t a hope in hell. And you must know that.’ He was gettin’ good money for it. I says ‘We were at Antarctic whaling in de peak days, 14 whale catchers goin’, two days and dey haven’t seen a whale. And you think you’re going to count de whales in…’ If 64 you’re going to do de job, do it right, don’t try and say dat we’re de goody-goody guys and all this. Now. LB]] Do you remember, was there activism like in the days that you were there? Would people talk about it like it was wrong? NJ]] No. And very few people in Norway will even admit it’s wrong yet. I had a girlfriend for 10 year who worked in de Foreign Office, she was de British ambassador’s PA, so I saw a little bit of what happens inside that a lot of people don’t know about what’s goin’ on with this Donald and all dem now… Everybody has to have their say. Dere’s no magic wand, but in Iceland dey take 70 fin whales a season for scientific reasons. LB]] I mean it’s interesting because the Discovery Committee was kind of going down to Antarctica at the same time as the whalers and that was also for scientific reasons. Sponsored by the government. Were you aware of that at the time? NJ]] Yeah. On the factory ship dey were even, I knew a guy who was cuttin’ up de head of de whale in the factory. My brother was doin’ de flensing and dat. Dey found something in de whale’s brain, it looked like a rabbit’s kidney and once you got a hundred, you got a bottle of whisky because dey thought there was some cure for cancer in it. But that didn’t come. But I’m not sayin’ they had to kill all that whales to find that. LB]] But it’s interesting that they kind of hitched a ride with the merchant crew. For the government to kind of go down there on the backs of whaling. In the name of science. NJ]] And, well the thing is, do we need this, the biggest bugbear now is nuclear power… There’s another sayin’, ‘Do you know what de biggest room in de world is?’ LB]] What? NJ]] You’ll never forget this one. ‘The room for improvement.’ And there’s another one]] ‘There’s room in the world for man’s need but not their greed.’ I mean what do we need millions for to live on? You hear it every day, wee bairns dat’s never had a life. And there’s so much dat could be done wit’ da National Health, but will dey do it? Dere’s a huge waste of money. LB]] Did you think that it could have been… you kind of said that you could still be whaling now if it had been done… NJ]] I think so. I mean, we kill cows, we kill lovely wee lambs. I could never have been a farmer. But I was a whaler. The only thing in the world now that doesn’t have… no I think it could have been controlled much better dan it was. I mean, we just touched the tip of the iceberg, and that’s how I see it. I say I would like to do it all over again, but I think I would… I didn’t see it as a cruel business. I was in de oil in many shapes and forms and de oil seismic research board was an education. You did four years on Shetland and we did four years in Brazil. And that’s another thing that could be unbalanced in de world, I mean something has to come outta all dese cars in the de world… LB]] Part of what I’m interested in, with whaling, and especially coming to Shetland is this idea of… I’m from this place in Canada where we do a lot of oil and gas extraction. Not fracking, but oil sands. And I’m interested because there’s a lot of very active, or very vocal activism against it, but then because of that you also deal with people that become very defensive about it and they say they’re trying to do their best to do it properly for the environment. I’m interested in how people make that moral leap in what they do. How do whalers do that? How did they do that? NJ]] Well, I’d say it’s just, it was the, I wouldn’t say it was the norm, but in the old days, you were only takin’ three and four whales on de ships and if it had been, all our whales would have been left, what type of world would it be? I had a French lady that came to me after accommodation until she found better, she had her masters in English, and after 15 years she was still here with me, and she had boyfriends. She was a great one for these nuclear power stations and then she started to turn when she saw Chernobyl. And this is another one I could tell you about, I hope you’re still recording. I had a friend, a captain on this fridge ship, a South African company, and dey were sent to Poland to 65 pick up 10,000 tons of beef to take to Brazil. He says, ‘What do you think of that?’ I says, ‘Good god, Brazil is producing more beef than the whole of Europe put together.’ He says it was polluted beef from Chernobyl. 10,000 tonnes of it. This is just warnin’ you about what dey can be up to. Now that guy was a nice guy, he was in the textile factories in the Midlands and he went to sea, wanted a change of life, and in no time he was chief engineer. And I says, ‘Why didn’t you say somethin’ about it?’ ‘They more or less told us, you say somethin’ you’re out. We can get some other body.’ LB]] I think that you and I both know this, that governmental decisions or big business decisions can be unethical. But how does that affect you when you’re doing the job itself? NJ]] I think my schooling affected me more than anything else I’ve done in my… But I’m not paintin’ a rosy picture of the whaling. But the fishes comin’ outta de sea now, de fishermen’s been sayin’ you don’t go to the spawning ground, keep outta that certain times a year, but it’s all these scientists says different, but what do they know? Okay, the fishermen it’s dere livelihood. The pelagic boats, they’re restricted but they’re restricted with de big boats here, what is it, they can lift 1 million quid in one night. Who need all dat? LB]] You mentioned earlier you were talking about the production of oil and helping the war effort and all this kind of stuff. Something that I didn’t know about whaling before but which I’m coming around to now is that it’s actually really tied to the end of the war. I wonder if that’s something you would agree with? NJ]] Well it obviously did in a way, but dey were comin’ to a more modern way of whaling, the harpoon gun was one. It’s the same wae everything, dere’s more sophisticated fishing boats now. LB]] So the technology had shifted after that… NJ]] Yeah. LB]] Do you think that people’s ideas of violence changed? NJ]] There’s somethin’ that put de balance off. How could people blow themselves off de way it’s happenin’ now? But I can see there’s a problem with de western world, goin’ and blastin’ the bad ones out. Well Hitler was up to that. [[talks about international terrorism]] I saw de war planes comin’ over Shetland, droppin’ bombs and machine gunnin’, I coulda told ‘im I’da known ‘im I coulda told him I was getting my boots on to go to the school and he was so close to the rooftop that the cabbage in de garden went like that… LB]] How old would you have been? NJ]] I’d been about 7 or 8 year old. LB]] That was scary. NJ]] We thought it was excitin’. If I’d had a gun I woulda shot at ‘em but I didn’t have a gun. And de bombs, dey missed dere target and dey were bombin’ the trawlers and fishin’ boats in Lerwick Harbour, dey had nothin’ to defend themselves. They even shot up da lighthouse. LB]] For what? NJ]] For what, yeah. LB]] It was a different time, I think, where there was so much kind of… if I’m thinking now about mid-50s, early-60s, you have the end of this whaling industry and you’re coming out of a violent war where lots of people have died, and in Britain you’ve had it flying over your cabbage patch, it seems to me that it’s a concentrated period of fear. Maybe not obviously, but violence in your way. NJ]] Yeah. De bombin’ of the big battleship in Norway, dey were goin’ over Shetland from, the Lancaster bombers, and we used to go out dere at night me and my brother and watch dem silhouette against de sky and den dey would come back to Sullomvoe dere and watch for de searchlights comin’ on five minutes and then off. And still to this day when I hear a plane, a twin engine, my mind goes right back. But no, it’s a cruel world we live in, but it’s such a beautiful place. 66
LB]] Is that something that you would have, I think that you would get that entirely from going to Antarctica. Because it’s so beautiful and then you know maybe at the time how sad it is for some of these whales, or painful. But at the time did you think that? NJ]] No. But dere was some others that did, who said, ‘Norman did you not think it was cruel?’ Well, not really. But when you see an animal like dat being shot and it dives, and goes down down as far as it goes until the pressure of de water becomes more and his lungs bust, and it comes back up again, you’re heavin’ it in, it’s dead by then. And dat’s the quickest death it could get. And de first blast was just pure blood. Dat was a bit gruesome. I was a bit of a camera buff and I thought to get all dat but I have four spool and dey were ruined comin’ home. And den again, the season, if I hadn’t done the winter season I couldn’t have bought what I wanted to buy, I needed the full outfit and dat was about 50 pounds at least. And I rode a motorbike. LB]] What was happening with your money at home? Was it going into a bank account? NJ]] Aye, it went into the bank. LB]] Would your mom or wife use it? NJ]] Well, you left an allotment, yeah. My brother and I both left allotments to the old folks, dad went down to a bad heart at 52, so we left this. It wasn’t very much. But it tided them over. And when we came home we had de summers, which was good. LB]] What would you do? NJ]] Well, we had to cut de peats and fuelling for the next year. I remember there were a navigation teacher he had a big yacht and he came up to our house, he was in Yell, he says ‘I’m lookin’ for two for a crew going to Norway to cruise for de summer.’ We were sittin’ havin’ our dinner at de table and I looked at Hamish and he looked at me and I thought, ooh this would be good. We didn’t have a boat den, just a small one. And mother says, ‘You just come home and you’ve been away nearly two years.’ Forget it, so we didn’t do it. And don’t drink too much, you may as well talk to do moon. I sometimes wonder, with Hamish dyin’ and he had quite a bit of money, dey didn’t want to know about it. I acted as his executor, and I was married den and bought a house in Leith. So I had to stay home for a bit to get that sorted out and I just wonder if… we always had drams around. We both smoked then, I knocked it off 40 year ago. I didnae smoke very much but everybody smoke den.
[[Tells me about his children and their professions.]]
LB]] In your personal life were you coming up against people like your kids, family members? NJ]] No, nobody every said that, just that one at the bank. Oh they did ask, it was a cruel game for both. Men and beast down there. And there’s another book wrote by one of the first ships to go down and set up the ice stations, and I had a nephew down there, he did the winter down, I would’ve loved to done that. He said they were just, again money, dey could get someone to go down cheaper once you’d been a season your pay went up, dey didn’t really want you. Again, it was money. LB]] Do you remember when you decided not to go anymore? NJ]] Well I got married, and that was 60. I said no, dere were lots of jobs in de merchant navy den, so I went into dat. And I was only away, I says when my wife came away that if she stay in Shetland I’ll stay in the merchant navy, it’ll be once a year when I’ll be home, so she decided to come to Leith and I was home every fortnight. Never longer dan dat, there were always jobs down at Leith. So I don’t know. No, I would do it all over again, provindin’ they control de whaling. LB]] Did you think the IWC was of any help for that? The commission that set the quotas? NJ]] Yes yes, dey had a lot, I was all for dat, it woulda meant dat our job woulda gone on and on. But dere was just some excitement and de fact dat you were gettin’ summers home, other people at home was workin’ every hour dat god sent. And den of course de oil hit here and most of the Shetlanders have done through de oil, no doubt about that. LB]] How come? 67
NJ]] Well, you see de houses they’ve built. As I say, how much do you need? But dey’ve made good use of it. LB]] Do you have anything else that you think I should talk about that we haven’t talked about yet? Those are all my questions. NJ]] I have not told anybody really, it’s not gone down as official what I think of de way we butchered more than any other country. You might get a contradiction. You can ask that question as you go around and see what the answer is. I don’t need to bait de Salvesen… I did my job, I had good reports. LB]] Do you think that companies like that can truly care about the stock continuing on? NJ]] Well, Salvesen used old whaling stuff, some of the whale catchers was corvettes dat was used in de war. And also de material and all dere asdics, he used all dat. It’s not the American way, just to throw it away and bang out a new one. And eventually we ran outta material like dat. I think it’s comin’. Donald Trump’s alright. I’ll have a parting shot and say Donald’s alright. LB]] You think he’s alright? NJ]] [Begins talking about Donald Trump and Brexit.] We all know that Brussels couldn’t organize a piss-up in a brewery. [More about Brexit and the European Union.] LB]] Well that’s great, thank you…
68
Captain David Polson 8 July 2017 Lerwick
LB]] I thought at first you could give me an introduction to yourself – where you grew up, that kind of thing. DP]] I was born in Edinburgh, or Leith as that bit of Edinburgh. My parents were from the island of Walls in Shetland, and my father was at sea so they set up home in Leith. I lived three years in Walls at the beginning of the war and then we went back to Leith. I left school at 15 and went to the nautical college at Leith for a year on a cadet course. Then I joined Christian Salvesen and that was the company that my father sailed with as well. I was cadet on them on their cargo ships for 3.5 years then I was sailing third mate, I had been promoted third mate. I paid off that ship, I had enough sea time but I was too young to sit my second mate’s ticket so two days after my 20th birthday I started sitting the exam and I was successful and the whaling ships always left from August ‘til October and this was November so there was no way I could get on any of them. But it turned out the Suez Crisis was on in 56 and the transports Southern Opal she was running commercial cargoes after she delivered the whalers and the stores and that to Leith Harbour. And they needed a new third mate, so I flew out to Dakar and I guess it was French West Africa then, I guess Senegal now, and I joined a ship there. We finished the season in the Antarctic and we came back to Leith Harbour. The Southern Garden was short of a third mate and seein’ as how I was new on the other ship I got transferred there to the Southern Garden and we had a four months I think before we got home because we went back down to Leith Harbour and then back up the commercial cargo to Norway. I was… the captain on the Southern Opal asked me to come back there, so I joined the ship at the beginning of August in maybe 1957 and did that season down on the Southern Opal. That was my time down south. Salvesen was buildin’ some small ships there to take from the UK ports to Norway that had it long before even the whaling started. They were buildin’ a couple of ships for that so I went second mate on some of them new ship and it was a couple of month there and I got paid off to go for my mate’s ticket. When we say ticket that’s certificate. So then I was on what we called the small ships, the Norwegian line ships, I was on them for a number of years and had my master’s ticket, sat it in 1961. So I was 24 when I got my master’s certificate and der were… yeah that was ’61, I was back on the small ships for a bit and den the whalin’ had finished, dey were buildin’ a few thirteen-thousand tonne ships in Sweden and I went…
[[Interrupted by wife serving lunch]]
DP]] So I went mate on the South Georgia and I was there for about 11.5 month so that’s that. Then I was on a Norwegian trade again for just a couple of month and then back on the Salvena. LB]] So this was a lot of back and forth… DP]] She, with her we were trading up the St. Lawrence Seaway and the Great Lakes. I had been there before, very interestin’ and I came off her in November… November ’64, I was first officer on that, first mate-chief officer, I came off then and I’d only been home for three days when the office phoned sayin’ that Captain Ross, who had been master on the Southern Garden, I’d sailed with him then, he’d taken ill and I was to go master on the [indecipherable]. LB]] What did you think about that? DP]] I thought, oh he’s maybe got the flu or somethin’ and he’ll be off for one trip and I’ll be back home for Christmas. But it was a bit more serious so I was there I think until about March. LB]] Wow. What was that like? DP]] It was okay, it was… LB]] Were you married by then? 69
DP]] Yeah and our son had just been born that year. Yeah, so I was master at Salvesens until I came to work at Lerwick Harbour in 1970. LB]] And what made you do that? DP]] Well, it was… with a young family, there was Michael and Mary, there was, things were changing and it would have been fine to get shore jobs so I got one in Lerwick and I was there for 27 years, 18 years with Salvesen and 27 at the harbour. I’ve been retired 20 [laughs] LB]] What was the move like, up here? DP]] To shift up here? Well… LB]] It’s a different way of life… DP]] Yeah, but this was before oil came and Shetland wasn’t as prosperous as it is now. So it was interestin’ but that’s nearly 50 years ago, 47 years ago. LB]] Were there any whalers around when you got here? DP]] Well, I knew a lot you see because the likes of Norman, we sailed together on one of the Norwegian line ships. Jimmy Smith, I sailed with him on Sou’ Juror yeah. And quite a few, we sailed, a lot of the whalers came into the cargo ships after the whaling, that’s maybe why they built the big 13,000 tonners just to create employment for… plus they were probably wanting to make a profit. LB]] So what was it like to work for Salvesen? DP]] Well, I knew them fairly well bein’ a senior in the company but I found them to be very friendly and dey were businessmen but they were very loyal to their employees. I reckon. They didn’t pay us exorbitant wages but dey paid the going rate and that was it. LB]] How did they arrange your… did you get bonuses? DP]] The whaling ships did, that was dependent on what the catch was, but the transports was on a different agreement, we were on National Maritime Board agreement. I believe way back they had been on the bonuses as well and that was stopped, but… so we were on a different agreement to the whaling agreement, but I think our basic wage was slightly higher and then it went up every year. But when the whaling was gettin’… the whales were gettin’ less and less I don’t think there was just such a big increase in the wage or the bonuses to the whalers. LB]] When you were doing it, can you give me a sense of what your job was? In relation to going to Antarctica? DP]] Well I was third mate on the Southern Opal, so I was the watch-keeping officer from 8 to 12. And both times, 8-12. And also at 5:00 I relieved the man on watch so he could go and get his meal. Then in port you were workin’ cargo and that, loadin’ oil and pumping oil ashore and that. So you were on watch then. LB]] What kind of work was that? DP]] Well the pump was doin’ it but you had, just had to, especially loading you had to watch it didn’t overflow. Some people got annoyed den. But it wasn’t much different to an ordinary merchant ship should we say, and we ran commercial cargoes as well. When we got South Georgia we put the oil out dere then, oil and the stores and that, there was Leith Harbour and Stromness the two, we’d shift from put some ashore there as well. Then we’d go back up to Carapito in Venezuela, get another cargo of oil, come back down and we kept some of it on board this time and we’d go to the factory ships to give them and take whale oil from them back. And we’d pump that ashore in Leith Harbour and maybe go, it’d maybe be three times we might be backwards and forwards. When you were at da factory ships you went alongside, they put fenders, they used 3 or 4 whales as fenders along the sides and you lay alongside that and pumped over the oil. LB]] What was it like, what were your observations at that time, about whaling? DP]] Well, 1955-56 it had been a very big fishing for the Southern Harvester but it was obvious it was declining. LB]] How was it obvious to you? 70
DP]] Well, just the times they were taking the catchers and the type of whales, I mean blue whales were hardly ever caught then, it was usually fin or sei or that. So… LB]] Can you elaborate a little bit about what you said about the times they were taking the catch? DP]] They catch… they weren’t catching, they were taking a longer to catch, the boys that was on the whale catchers could explain it better to you but they were havin’ to look further and further afield to get the whales. So there were less and less obviously there. How I think the 55-56 season had been so good for Salvesen the Bellinghausen Sea, to the west of the Antarctic peninsula, other people call it Graham Land, both correct, that had been a sanctuary and then it was opened up. People said they had never seen whales when they made a passage through there but Salvesen put the Harvester there and they had a good season. So she went there the next season and wasn’t just so successful. I remember us going alongside in 56-57 and they had a full cook going, the catchers had stopped fishing and were working on the whales, so maybe that’s the last time they had a full cook. LB]] What year was that? DP]] This was 56-57, it woulda been into the early months of 57. But it was gettin’ less and less and the shore station at South Georgia, every season seemed to be less and the catchers were going further away. So it had to come to an end and it’s 54 years. LB]] What do you remember, or do you remember what you were thinking about the end of the season? DP]] The end of whaling altogether? LB]] Yes. DP]] Well. I suppose that everybody hoped that it would keep going but it was obvious that it couldn’t. LB]] Did you have an idea of what you would be able to do after? DP]] Well I was workin’ with Salvesen so I was fairly sure of a job as long as they were in the shipping but the whalers was different. You could get one of the salmon boats and about half the crew would be ex-whalers on it. Just company men, you know. So… it was a way of life but you couldn’t keep killin’ the whales to extinction and mercifully it was stopped before… well, I don’t know if it was ever really stopped but… LB]] Well, on paper in Britain it was. Right? DP]] Yeah, the Southern Harvester was the last one, that was 1962-63, I think. They didn’t have a big season. They’d sold the Southern Venturer to Japan and you would’ve gotten all that in the book and de other British factory ship, the Balaena, I think she went before or at the same time as the Venturer. That was real… from my last season there was 1957-58 and from then on it decreased dramatically every season. LB]] In your mind, why do you think that is? DP]] Oh, it was overfishing. Yeah. People said, some of the old timers they said that it was gettin’ overfished before the war, but maybe the war, five years let the stocks build up, or I don’t know. LB]] It’s interesting because a lot of people have mentioned the impact of the war on whaling. Is it simply that for four-five years no one touched the whales? DP]] Well, very few would be touchin’ the whales. I think Grytviken station in South Georgia, that was the Argentinians, I believe they fished. But the other two stations, they closed before the war, so they must have thought it was gettin’ too difficult to make a profit. LB]] How would that have affected your life, when you were there? DP]] Well I never really worried too much about it because I wasn’t directly whaling, I was on the ships and then they were building up quite a fleet. Of course they’re all gone now, but… yeah it must have been very worrying for the men that had maybe just started going. There’s quite a few younger than me that went the last two or three years, so they weren’t very old when it, maybe just early-20s when it packed up. LB]] What was it like to live here when the whaling ended? 71
DP]] I was in the south, I was living in Edinburgh. We only came here in 1970. Salvesen set up a trust fund, the likes of Willie Tait or Gibbie Fraser, they could explain it better to you. But there was this chance that they could get a loan from it to maybe buy a tractor for the croft or new engine for their boat or somethin’ like that. LB]] Maybe you can kind of confirm or deny this for me, as someone who lives here but is connected to Edinburgh too, is that whaling here is not just a job, is it? DP]] It was a close-knit community, the whalers and the way we still can have a get-together at the end of September every year, there’s less and less every year but Jimmy Smith could tell you how many members we had but I think last time we had 50-odd. One of them’s in Australia, one of them’s in the Falklands, and I think there’s a couple in Newcastle area. LB]] What is it about the community that makes it so tight-knit? DP]] What, the whaling community? I don’t know, it’s just a friendship that built up… Maybe… I suppose you were in such a small. In the Southern Opal going up or down, that last season we came north with her, I think there were two spare bunks on the ship, so it was in the middle of the 500s of people on board. Plus she was a tanker and we used to load, some of the tanks would load the bags of meat meal and bone meal and whale oil and that year comin’ north we weren’t fully loaded so we went into Dakar and loaded a lot of fuel oil. This would, I don’t know whether it was cheaper there than the UK but it was ready for the next season, or maybe it was transferred to the factory ships because they all lay up in Norway. But there’s a photograph somewhere of comin’ into Dakar and just about 500 people standing on the deck. LB]] Was it exciting? DP]] Yeah I suppose when you’re 20 or 21 it was an experience. LB]] What kept you going back? DP]] Well, I suppose, I don’t know if I was really on contract to the company but I mean, I suppose I was but I can’t remember ever signing a contract. LB]] I wondered about that. What type of notice would they give you when you’d have to leave? DP]] To go and join the ship? Oh the crew superintendent was very good, he would give you as much warning as he could. When I come off the Southern Garden I was told then that there was a job on the Southern Opal for me, but that was in 3 weeks time. So… maybe it was just under 3 weeks, but you couldn’t have given me much more notice! LB]] I see. DP]] Whalers, some of them overwintered of course. LB]] Would you have to do that? DP]] No, but on a ship like that the Southern Garden we came back down there in the winter with cargo, I think we came back down with cargo I think with the thinking being that British shipyards kept going on strike and the bosses in Leith were worried that the ships might get held up. So seein’ we had no whale oil to bring home, put us back down with cargo fuel oil and that would save a bit of rush in the other direction. LB]] Why were they on strike? DP]] The shipyards were forever on strike. British shipyards. That’s why there’s none now. That was the thinkin’, that we could go down… she was an old ship, the Southern Garden. She’d been built at the end of the First World War in Germany and had a checkered history and she was past her best when I was in her, but she sailed a few more years after that. I think Salvesen just got her after the war, she’d been captured during the war and she had some very good points about her, but other ones it was just a nightmare. The cargo tanks was very old fashioned, the way modern tankers were in the next world war, the tankers built then were entirely different to that. LB]] What kind of memories have you come away from that time with? What do you remember most? 72
DP]] It’s funny, a lot of it sticks in your memory. I remember one night, the night before we got to South Georgia on the way down and we’re taking the whalers down and that, we got work from, she was the old, she used to be the Dutch whale factory ship, but she was now called the Bloomendaal [sp?] and she was takin’ whalers to I think Grytviken. And she was way out to the east of us. Well I assume she maybe come from South Africa. They had a man, I don’t know what was wrong with him, but they were needin’ blood plasma. They didn’t have any and we did, so we rendezvous’ed with them but the weather was atrocious and I was in the wheelhouse with the captain and the idea was to fire rocketlines across and try to transfer it that way. If that failed, we were going to try the lifeboat which would have been a disaster. In fact we had two crews for different lifeboats standin’ by. But just as we were gettin’ close the wireless operator came up and the captain from the wireless room. And he was a wee while gettin’ closer and closer then the wireless operator was shoutin’ to me that the captain was wantin’ to see me and I nipped to the wireless room and he said to go full ahead and pull away, the man had just died. So… we would have got those rocket lines across but it would be dangerous gettin’ the lifeboat launched in those conditions. But that was I suppose none of the men down below never even knew that happened. LB]] What do you think the difference of your experience is compared to a whaler? DP]] Well, they had a very tough life especially on the catchers. The catchers, like Norman and Gibbie Fraser, they had it very rough, wading around in water and it was hard going for them. LB]] Why do you think they did it? DP]] Well. It was the… there was nowhere to spend the money. Maybe the wages weren’t that great but there’s nowhere to spend them so when they came home they had… some would waste it and others would handle it very sensibly. I would think the majority of them handled it very sensibly. That was basically… some of dem went year after… Willie Tait was I think 10 seasons down there. I don’t know if they were one after another out there, he maybe had the odd season that he stayed home, but I think Willie told me he’d been 10. But that was the way of life, the croft and there wasn’t much here, the fishing was poor, and the croft was very hard to make a livin’ on a croft. LB]] And so whaling was kind of related, I suppose, to fishing. Or was it? DP]] Yes. Some of them came home and got fishing boats or shareholders in fishing boats and the fishing picked up here in I suppose the late-1960s. Depends… now it’s fairly good fishing but… LB]] But that follows a certain amount of overfishing… DP]] Yeah… Jimmy Smith would be able to tell you all about the fishing and that. Because he was the boss of the firm that did the wireless work on all the fishing boats here. He just… he knew all the fishing boats. LB]] I guess I wondered why you did it? DP]] Well, I was quite happy to go there, I’d heard so much about it. I had an uncle who was there for years, and my father used to go down with the [indecipherable] he’d take a lot of the equipment down when they were rebuildin’ the station. Between that and later on, they’d come home and go out to the St. Lawrence and do a 6-7 month long run of coal around the St. Lawrence. So, it was just somethin’ I always heard and any of the Shetland boys and my relations that was goin’ when I was young, they always came along our house when they went through Leith you see, come along, and you heard so much about it. Then I went to sea at 16. LB]] What was that like, to be so young? DP]] I was just a standard age to go, you had to be 16. Yeah, it was fine. Lot of Shetlanders on that ship. LB]] Why? DP]] It was just Salvesen employed a lot. I would say because they’re more reliable… better not quote me on this… more reliable than some other ones… although it was good to have a mixture on your crew. But usually the Shetlanders were very reliable. So I think that’s probably why Salvesen employed them. 73
LB]] Part of me thought that… I guess this is probably a romantic view… but part of me thought that in some ways Shetlanders worked in whaling because historically here they’ve been whaling… DP]] Well, yeah. There was that, when the whaling stations there was a lot of, not the same quantity that went south, but there was local men there that did… yeah there was that tie up a way back. LB]] Maybe it’s just a job… DP]] Yeah, you see there was no other income so they went there. LB]] Did you feel a connection to the sea? DP]] Oh yeah, I was always wantin’ to go to sea, either that or be a footballer and I was no use at that. So, no I always planned to go to sea, since I was that high. But the whaling here, of course way back when they were fishing in the Arctic and that, they used to pick up crews here, ships from Hull or Dundee, Peterhead, they would come here on dock to pick up crews so there was a lot of men went to the Greenland whaling. My grandfather, my mother’s father, he was one or two seasons to the Greenland whaling. But there was some people year after year at it. But it was entirely different whaling to the big… you know, once the harpoon gun had been invented, the big harpoon gun and various things, explosive head on it and that, it was bound to be bigger whales they was going for. LB]] I think that, I mean that’s partly what’s interesting about whaling is that you can kind of see all these broader social changes through it. So you can see technology advancing and a post-war economy… DP]] I was joking with Norman, I mean now 50 years on, when they’d been shootin’ whales then they’d have to go and collect dem, it was very difficult in blizzards to try and find it. So nowadays you could GPS it. So it’d be a lot simpler that way, but there’d be less whales. LB]] Do you think there’s a correlation between technology and taking more? DP]] … LB]] What did you think at the time of… did you hear anything about activism at the time? About people thinking we should stop whaling? DP]] There was nobody like that. When was Greenpeace formed? LB]] 70… something… DP]] Yeah. 10 years after we stopped whaling, they decided, and Sea Shepherd. LB]] Well I’m interested in your perspective of when that started happening what you thought. DP]] Well they came in here that ships and their ships don’t come under any regulations because they claim to be yachts. I have crossed swords with them, at the harbour here. LB]] What did you say? DP]] I would say I usually won the argument. LB]] I’d like to hear what you think… DP]] I can see the need for it, but some of them want to use violence and I don’t think there’s any need of that. And uh… I forget his name now, he was in Greenpeace and then he formed Sea Shepherd because they threw him out… LB]] Paul… Watkinson? DP]] Watson. LB]] That’s it. DP]] I’ve met him. Yeah. But he had a, one of his ships was in here and at the water line he had a gurder welded on sticking out the front of it and this was so he could ram the ship under the water line so she would sink. Now that could be humans losing their lives through that. And just ordinary crew, they maybe were just there to make a living. I didn’t approve of that. LB]] What were your experiences of how… how you experienced that? DP]] Well you see, for us in the whalin’ there was just an acceptance that I suppose it’s maybe 10 years on and Greenpeace starting and that has changed it. The Duke of Edinburgh with the royal yacht, he sailed around the Antarctic in 56-57, now he’s the head of the World Wildlife Foundation and he was aboard the factory ship, he was in Leith Harbour, he had a shot with a harpoon gun but it 74 was at an apple box or something. He didn’t preach anything against it then. You must remember, the world was starving after the war, this was an edible oil, not the sperm oil that was not, but that was edible and whale meat never caught on in our country. One of the reasons I believe is somebody reckoned it had to be marketed in fishmongers and not in butchers. Some civil servant which… But that was really the main reason for the whaling, the meat meal and bone meal went for animal feed, bone meal went to fertilizer, and then there was the solubles, that was what was left when everything had been produced, it was a gooey liquid and we used to bring this home and I believe it was dried to make fertilizer or maybe it was mixed in with animal feed, I’m not entirely sure. But we’d carry a few thousand tons of that. LB]] I think it’s interesting what you said, about remembering that people were hungry after the war and it’s interesting to me also in thinking about that, that 20 years later there’s a retrospective activism about something that’s already done. I wonder what the point of that is… DP]] We don’t hear so much about Greenpeace here now, they have their good and bad points. But I had to laugh at Norman sayin’ in Iceland he was at the whale station. LB]] Yeah, right! He showed me a photo of himself as a young man and I could see why they might think that… really shaggy… DP]] Yeah, he’s always had the beard. Yeah I’m trying to think, it would be about 50 years since we sailed together. He’s very talented putting ships into bottles. LB]] Quite. And he likes rope. DP]] But the whalers were always workin’ with their rope, in their spare time they were never idle, not that they ever had much because they’d be workin’, well on whale catchers they’d be havin’ no spare time, but the factory ships it was 12 hour shifts, so they didn’t have much time for anything other than on passage up and down. But they used to make various things. LB]] What else is important do you think, for me to think about. That we haven’t talked about yet. I think you have an interesting perspective because you’re kind of at a distance. DP]] Yeah, I saw it from a different… but I sailed with so many whalers that I… Captain on the Southern Opal and Captain Ross on the Garden, they’d been going up and down for years well they came on the Opal and he’d been on the factory ships in the 1930s so he would stand some nights and speak maybe for an hour reminiscing about… so it was a fascinating… LB]] I bet. Were you too far away from the whaling itself? DP]] Well I always hoped it would keep going but it was obvious it couldn’t. LB]] Norman seemed to think that was because people can be greedy and they want to take… DP]] That was the international quotas. If you read Gerald Elliot’s book, Harold Salvesen was wanting restrictions in the 30s but he was overruled. Of course he had a habit of upsetting people because he said opposite of what they wanted to hear. But he was no fool. He was going to sell the Southern Venturer in 1956 to the Japanese and then he didn’t. He decided to put her south again, that was maybe after the Harvester having such a good season. LB]] I see. Because of the Bellinghausen. DP]] But it was obvious then that it was comin’, it was just that odd season that, the Venturer had a good year as well, he decided to keep it but he would have got a good price to sell her and her license. LB]] And that would have been the end… DP]] The Harvester would have kept going but it was going to be 400 men lost their jobs. LB]] The men that identify, in a way, with a job and a company. DP]] Yeah. See they wouldn’t have needed so many transports either, so it was going to be a knock- on effect. LB]] What would people be talking about on the ships at that time? Would anyone talk about that? DP]] Nah. They used to… there wasn’t much to talk about, there was, you used to hear news bulletins on some overseas broadcast. Merchant navy programme used to come on and tell you news 75 usually if the unions was wanting us to get a rise and what was happening with the shipowners, what their opinion was and that. But it’s… I remember on the Southern Gardener he’d read all about Elvis Presley and it was so funny, you see the ship had been out eight month when I turned it in South Georgia and as I’m watchin’ I heard this music going and then I looked at the wireless room and he was going like this [dances]. [laughs] The thing was Captain Ross came up from his accommodation and he looked at this and he come into the wheelhouse just shaking his head and he wondered what this was, he had never heard of Elvis. So that was my first experience of what Elvis did. LB]] What else do you think is important? DP]] Well, we see a few whales around here, so they must be coming back. Most of them are the orca, the killer whale.
76
Jimmy Smith 10 July 2017 Cunningsburgh
[[JS01]]
LB]] I thought I would start with getting you to kind of introduce yourself to me and your background in whaling. JS]] Well. I was born in 1943 and went to school here in 1948. I finished school in Lerwick in 1958, but when I was growin’ up I was basically growin’ up in a family who worked de land, kept sheep but de male members of de family were all seamen or fishermen or whalers, so you grew up realizin’ dat to make a livin’ when you left school you were probably going to have to go away to sea in some form or other. LB]] Did you want to do that? JS]] Yes, I knew I suppose very small, I was into fishin’ and as I went through school my eyesight deteriorated and I realized I wasn’t going to be able to go on deck and I had formed de idea of, de fishin’ here was very, very poor and everybody sort of said to me, ‘Oh forget about de fishin’ boy it’s goin’ downhill, get out into de merchant navy.” And some of my cousins and relations had gone to sea as cadets, cadet officers, and I had sailed a fishin’ boat, and den I did very well in science in high school and I decided… I left school in 1958 and I went to Leith College and studied radio and went through de school there, I ended up wae a first class certificate and a second class ticket. And problem was dese were only good for a year, and I was a bit concerned it was gonna go on with Marconi company because in dose days you signed two-year articles and you might easily be away for more dan a year in which case I lost my writtens and I wasn’t feelin’ like goin’ through dat lot again, so I formed de idea of tryin’ my luck down… I had a lot of relations in de fishin’ industry, I’d been a regular reader of Fishing News, which most of de fishin’ news was from Humberside dere, inshore and isolated sort of fisheries around de UK so I went down to Humberside and I landed a job in Hull who hired out radio operators to trawlers, to trawlin’ companies in the de same way dat Marconi, who did it in trawlers and de deep sea fishery. And I spent de next year workin’ out of Hull and in Hull de radio operator also looked after de cod livers, dat was part of your job, you spent quite a bit of time on deck, but I’d all grown up with all sorts of sea boots and in fact I was quite happy, it was good exercise and fresh air. And I took a particular interest in de process and I always turned out very good oil, you have a bonus each trip and I always turned in good oil and got a very good bonus. De whole crew were in on de bonus and de crew were quite delighted when dey saw de oil money along with dere payoff. LB]] How much would it be, do you remember? JS]] It varied. I think the poorest we ever got was about 10 pound, that was a poor trip, and de best we got was 18 pound. Dat was quite good, so at dat time in 1961, I was probably earnin’ about maybe 7 or 8 pound a week so if you got anything fae 10 to 20 pound extra in your pay pack at de end of a three week trip dat was a lot of money. And den comin’ towards de end of de year I went back to Leith to take, finish off de first class exam and it was just de time of year de whalers were goin’ away well I’d been in Leith den for two previous seasons so I’d seen Salvesen’s whalers goin’ away and comin’ home and I was in de accommodation in de Leith Sailors Home so dey all stayed dere, a lot of dem I knew and were my age. So I became quite acquainted from de whaling and apart from havin’ relations who were whalers. So I went up to Salvesen’s office and asked if dere were jobs goin’ on de whale catchers, that I was finishin’ off a ticket but I’d been sailin’ in Hull dis past year on trawlers. Dey said it was similar and dat I had my sealegs so they checked the vacancies. I trotted along and dey said dere was a job on de whale catcher Southern Harper. LB]] What was the job? 77
JS]] Radio operator. But you got a page of notes and hints on what it was going to be like and one of de things mentioned that you would be expected to do whatever work de gunner put you to. Dis was if you were workin’ on deck as part of your duties which again didn’t phase me at all, and dey said it would be advisable to learn and speak some Norwegian. I was quite happy to try. I already had a bit of a background from bein’ brought up as a dialect speaker. So no problem. LB]] Did you find that it was similar? JS]] Dere’s a lot of words were de same, but de grammar was different. But I didn’t take long to get a handle on it. LB]] So you spoke Shetland at home? JS]] Oh yeah, in fact I didn’t speak English before I went to school. I was a dialect speaker right up until I was five, dere was no TV at dat time and de radio wasn’t on very much because you had to conserve de batteries. And dat was de old fashioned battery radios where a wet accumulator filled a valve with filaments and den a dry high tension… so de wet accumulator lasted a week, you had to have two, you send one away to get charged and you got de other one back. So batteries, battery life was conservative, you didn’t use it all dat much. And so I had to catch on when I was five. So anyway, went down to Shields and joined de Southern Venturer in Shields for transport down to South Georgia. Went across to Norway and anchored up and brought in all sorts of supplies all came alongside by small cargo boats and dey were maybe three days when you’d anchor along de shore at night along Tonsberg. And den we set off down de English Channel and across de Atlantic to de Dutch West Indies, Aruba, Curaco, takin’ fuel for de bunkers. On to South Georgia. Now, have you seen Gibbie and Laurena Fraser? LB]] Not yet. But I’m going to. JS]] Well I wrote my experiences, it was condensed… I gave dem de notes of de season on a whale catcher, so we went on down to South Georgia, I think it would have been six weeks from we left Norway. We left about October, maybe 2.5 weeks across to Aruba and we were only dere a little over 24 hours and den probably about 3.5 weeks fae Aruba out around de corner to South Georgia and into Leith Harbour. LB]] Do you remember what it was like to arrive? JS]] Yes. The weather was getting’ colder and you started to see a few icebergs. And den you saw de peaks of de snowy mountains comin’ in sight and drove into Leith Harbour and dere’s a couple of catchers, an old catcher dey used as a message boat, and I think another one helped us get alongside and den we had to disembark with all our gear back and in fact dere was two AVs on de Southern Harbour and dey spotted one of de motorboats, small message boats, it would be about maybe 30-35 ft. long, and one of dem was bein’ run by a whistleman and he came alongside and he gave us a lift around to our catchers on de boat, rather than having to go down de gangway and hump it around de Harbour. Got aboard. Two or three of de Norwegian crew members came along with us as a group, and de mate was already aboard, he’d done de winter in Leith Harbour so he was already aboard and got us mustered right away to get dose anchors up, she’d been very securely moored for de winter. And den de engineers would steam up, de gunner was aboard, we went around and went alongside de factory ship and took supplies and loaded de harpoons on deck and took… grenades and explosives on deck, dat was still down below in de magazine and that was out of de way, got various supplies aboard and I think we were de first catcher away… LB]] What was the name of the catcher, again? JS]] Southern Harper. She was named after Max Harper Gow, he was one of de senior directors of de company, a nephew of Salvesen’s. Dere were two of dem, de last two catchers built for Salvesens in Middlesburgh, de Southern Hunter. De Southern Hunter was run aground in de South Shetlands, but de Southern Harper she carried on for many years. Eventually finished up whalin’ and was converted and she fished very successfully for another 30 years, I think she was about 12 or 13 years as a whale catcher and den another 20-30 years at de fishing. In fact I was aboard her a couple of times in 78
Lerwick, she visited here twice… Anyway, I can’t remember how many days but after a few days at sea we sighted whales, sperm whales. Up to that point I hadn’t realised dat sperm whales move quite slowly. De blue and sei swim fast, so when you’re chasin’ blue or fin or sei whales you’re goin’ flat out, almost always flat out all de time. Whereas chasin’ sperm it was really a case of sneakin’ up on dem quite slow and it was a very… bad day. It was a gale and big swell, but we creeped up on dem and we actually, it was a gang of six and we got five of dem. It was quite amazin’. Dere was a Norwegian factory ship close by and he’d spotted dem but his catchers were about 60-100 miles away and some of dem were hurryin’ back and dem we appeared and we got five. In fact, one time we circled dis Norwegian factory and dey were shakin’ dere fist at us while we were all cheerin’, it was quite funny really. But for me at dis time I was quite happy on de deck but everything was new, so it was quite an experience gettin’ dese whales alongside, flaggin’ dem and radar reflector and so on and lettin’ em go. Dey normally dive 20-25 minutes and you have to wait for dem to come up. Each time dey come up dere’s one less because… so we got de five and I had to report each flag into de factory and dey had to take it in with distance measuring equipment. So we took a radio bearing and also did de distance. And den de factory, night was comin’ down and de factory told us to pick dem up and tow dem back. It was gettin’ on about midnight and it was de first time I’d been droppin’ whales, and when you’re droppin’ whales to de factory ship you go right under de stern, pick up heavin’ line and pull de messenger across with a tail of wire, you unhook de wire off de messenger and shackle it onto de whale and den you drop dat one and den you slack de messenger and pull it back wae another tail of wire and on… so we did five, three off one side and two off de other, right off de factory stern wae a heavy swell so it was kind of baptism by fire, it’s all new to me… LB]] Were you afraid? JS]] No, no I cannae remember bein’ afraid but things were a bit apprehensive when you’re goin’ tight under de stern and one minute you were literally seein’ de top of de rudder and de next de ramp filled up with water and it was all totally new and quite excitin’. But our gunner was a master at shiphandlin’ under de stern an he never put a foot wrong. He could creep right up and sometimes you were heavin’ line right across and it ended up bein’ my job to go on de gun platform wae a long- handled hook and catch de heavin’ line and pull it in and sometimes you were so close you… de ABs on de stern could almost have handed you de line and other times you were at full stretch. If you’d hit it, you really would have done damage, but no he was very cool and… thing was he couldn’t go astern, you could only go ahead, de fact dat he was goin’ ahead dat slow just steerin’ to it, and you could only go ahead because wae a catcher de whales alongside, if you went astern de whales would swing out and you’d break de tails. And a whale wae a broken tail was a horrible job to try and put up de ramp. [indecipherable] Because they would try and put ropes on men and slack dem down de ramp and try and get de strap around de… and den pull dem up and den try and pull dem up with dis wire strap so it’s a very dangerous job and so anybody who broke tails was mighty unpopular. I never saw one broken but I heard of it happenin’. So anyway, so dat was dat, I got my baptism by fire on what to do and what not to do. LB]] And how long did you come back? How long was… JS]] That would have been early December and we fished December, January, February, up to almost end of March. Four months. And den we went away, we followed de Antarctic coastline aways to Queen Maudeland, almost to Enderby Land and den we came back to do west again, back to South Georgia and den we went across to Graham Land and from Graham Land we went across to de South Shetlands and de we went up and down, right up to de north and west into de great passage off Elephant Island and dat’s where Shackleton was, made a temporary base. LB]] What year was it again? JS]] Would have been 1962. LB]] So you’re right at the very end of the industry? 79
JS]] Yes, well de last season was 1962/63 and I was at Newfoundland. But anyway, we ended up dere and we set off for near Elephant Island to steam to South Georgia and we more or less retraced Shackleton’s voyage but with a much bigger vessel driven with steam and comfort and we had quite good weather. Back to South Georgia and we spent several days in Leith Harbour and in fact we loaded, dey were closin’ down de whalin’ station in Leith Harbour so we loaded quite a lot of stores, paint, a huge amount of paint, vast stocks of paint at Leith Harbour for paintin’ catchers every winter, huge amounts of grey paint and we loaded each of dat and den we, dey sent us off to fish with handlines to catch fish because de factory ship was takin’ home a consignment of penguins for Edinburgh Zoo. Edinburgh Zoo had a big penguin house, dey probably bred in de zoo… Salvesens being based in Leith, were very helpful and generous towards Edinburgh Zoo, so that tapered off in de 1960s. So we spent a couple of days fishin’ outside Leith Harbour and den dere was a storm and it ended up we couldn’t fish and we came in and went to Stromness and we fished in de bay. I forget how much fish we got, a number of boxes, but de factory ship had wooden boxes aboard. LB]] What kind of fish would it be? JS]] It was like de red fish you get in Newfoundland, ocean perch, a lot of bones and spines all over de place. But we ate dem, in fact we fished regularly durin’ de season off de catcher if you were driftin’ and stopped for de fog. In foggy weather you couldn’t really chase whales or find whales, and if you did it was difficult to chase dem because if dey danced around you, you lost them. So we often just knocked off an lay driftin’. And den eventually we left and I was actin’ AB on de way home because there’s a lot of old catchers, spare catchers lyin’ in Leith Harbour for a number of years and dey sent ‘em home and sold ‘em either for conversion or for scrap. So what dey did each catcher had four ABs, dey took two ABs off each catcher and de ASDIC man and de radio operator went home as ABs. Which was fine… LB]] So you didn’t do the ASDIC? JS]] No, dey were separate ASDIC men. I woulda liked to have tried de ASDIC but we had an ASDIC man he was ex-Navy man. So… LB]] What did you think, at the time, of the ASDIC? JS]] Well, it had been runnin’… dose were actually wartime ASDICS, and I think at the end of de war dey bought an awful lot of dem off of de Navy and rebranded as Calvin Hughes Whalin’ ASDIC and sold dem to whaling companies. So we had, it was pretty old technology by dat time, what you would call de tubes, what we call de valves, radio valves, well dey were about de size of big whisky bottles, de 40 ouncers at de back of de bar, dey were about dat size, dey glow like searchlights. De technology was pretty old and slow. LB]] Some critics of the ASDIC say that it was bad for the whales and wrong to use it… JS]] Well, you could say de sound was bad for fish. It’s just technology, it grows, you can’t stop it. Dere’s people tell you de motor car was a bad idea and dat we shoulda never have done it. But dere you go… In our case, ASDIC was not as effective as it should have been because de ship was 110 V DC mains and de chief engineer believed in savin’ steam, and he had de idea dat if he turned de generators to 100 V he would save steam. I suppose he was savin’ a fraction but all dat he saved by runnin’ de thing at 100 V was de fact dat you spent much longer chasin’ whales, pourin’ into de boilers to give you maximum speed. So all dat he saved for de generators went to de propeller, dere was no savin’ it was a loss, but it was awhile before we discovered dat. ASDIC men always complained dat de thing wasn’t really what it should be and den one day I went down to de radio room to test out de test meter and hooked it onto de mains and dey were readin’ low. And I went to de ASDIC room and hooked it onto de mains for de ASDIC and it was at 100 V so I complained to de gunner and said “Dere’s no way dat dis can run properly at 97 V, you need 110 or more” so he didn’t say anything, he went out and spoke with de chief engineer with de look of thunder on his face. So dat was fine, de ASDIC would work for a couple of days and den it started to deteriorate again and I checked it again and it was down below 100 V and dis time I went down to de engine 80 room and funniy enough de meter on de generator was readin’ 110. De chief had gone and taken de screw out and twiddled de meter so de meter was really high. You couldn’t win. It was a constant battle after dat, but de ASDIC did work better. But anyway at de end of de season de radio operator and ASDIC man on each catcher went on watch. And it suited me fine because we were workin’ four-on, four-off, so you got, workin’ a 12 hour day so you got overtime and den you got overtime for your mid-day on Saturday so you got… I forget… I had it worked out once upon a time, and den you got overtime on Sundays. LB]] Was that your motivation in a way, to enter whaling? JS]] Yeah, I would say money was quite a part of it, plus just de experience somethin’ that had been in de family for generations. See most of de, my grandfather and great-grandfather, and great-great- grandfather, dey were all Arctic whalers, Greenland and de north ice. Dey’d all gone dere. I think my grandfather was just one season, I don’t know for sure. Great-grandfather, most of his workin’ life was spent on Hull and Dundee and Peterhead whalers. And his father before him was de same, he was a long-time Arctic man. My father was the Antarctic, but my older brother was in the Antarctic. LB]] What would he tell you about it? JS]] Well he spoke quite well about it. Not extensively, but he certainly enjoyed his time dere. And did quite well, financially. And so I decided that this is probably the only chance I’ll get to see Antarctica. So I went to Salvesens, got de job, and spend de season down south. LB]] Did you know at the time, or did you suspect that it was kind of the end? JS]] Oh yeah, yeah yeah. Speakin’ to any of de whalers passin’ through Leith, they were all sayin’ whales gettin’ scarce and the whale oil isn’t fetching the price that it used to fetch. And some of de older hands sayin’ it’s de byproducts dat’s keepin’ dis thing going because whale oil prices was down. But dere are still some… dey called it Bovril, de Bovril drums and liver extract and all dat sort of thing was… plus of course meat meal, dat was de thing that was keepin’ de thing goin’. And dey said it’s only a matter of time of course de Japanese had dis huge market for frozen whale meat and dere factories turned out a huge quantity of dat which sold in Japan. So de Japanese eventually took de whole lot because dey had de whole market dat was basically insatiable. LB]] What did you think of that? JS]] Well, dese older guys were all sayin’ basically de same thing so dere was obviously a lot of truth in it. This can’t go on forever. So I thought, well here’s my chance. And we we came home I was, I didn’t think dere would be, we knew dere’d been, we heard on de way home I think at de time we crossed de line dat de Southern Venturer had been sold to Japan. Leith Harbour had closed down in 1960, no 61… and den in 1962 de Venturer was sold to Japan. And all de Norwegians, most of de fellas aboard dis, dere were some fae de east side, but most of dem were round about Tonsberg and dat area, Lerwick and so on, and a lot of dem were sayin’ we won’t be back here again. Esso were buildin’ a oil refinery just up de coast of Tonsberg and everybody was lookin’ towards dere for a job at de oil refinery and a big number of dem did. It was de same as Sullomvoe, here in de 1970s, a lot of fishermen went ashore, and awful lot of merchant seamen left de sea and went to Sullomvoe. LB]] But another cyclical industry... JS]] Yeah, I guess dey did, dey were seein’ at de end of de 50s and into de 60s dat whale numbers were gettin’ reduced, it was takin’ longer to catch de quota, and de quota was bein’ reduced and it was obvious dat it was windin’ down and it because quite obvious especially to de older hands, dat de Japanese with this huge market for whale meat dey would eventually dominate. So anyway, de Norwegians were all spaekin’ about jobs at de oil and I decided, well, dere are a number of radio men, dere’s been 22 catchers out here and next season there’ll only be 11, cut in half, and even wae some of dose folks goin’ to oil, that would be radio operators, probably more radio men, so I probably wouldn’t stand a chance at a job, den when we came to Leith dey, somebody said ‘Willie wants to see you.’ I didn’t know him fae anybody, but anyway I went along and he said ‘Well you’ve done a season in de Antarctic and prior to dat I believe you were in trawlers…’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ ‘How 81 do you fancy a job in one of our trawlers?’ Salvesens had built three factory trawlers back in the late- 50s, early-60s, dey copied de whale factory ship and scaled it down and made a freezer trawler. De first one was built in Aberdeen and den dey built two [indecipherable]. And dey were lookin’ for a radio operator for Fair Try 1, so I said dis would be heaven, because I wasn’t expectin’ a whalin’ job, and so dat summer dey put me for a month to Hull on a radar course, which was fine I had a month in Hull and den I went across and joined and off we went to Newfoundland. Well we actually went to Greenland, den went right down to Newfoundland. We were at Newfoundland, I got a radio telegram askin’ if I wanted to go on one of de catchers for de Southern Harvester expedition. And I thought, ‘I’ll sleep on this.’ So I slept on it and I decided no, well de chances are dis is goin’ to be just de one season and maybe I’d burn a bridge, so I thought no, I’ll stay where I am. So I radioed dem back and said I was perfectly happy where I was and I would stay. And I think dey actually probably hired a radio man from Marconi for de season. He probably couldn’t tell a kettle from a catcher ship, but nevermind. And when we attended and we came home, I said to them, I was in Newfoundland and de Southern Harvester was settin’ off for… how were you goin’ to get me back? They said, ‘It’s quite simple we’d take de ship into St. Johns and bunker, and we’d fly you St. Johns to Halifax, and Halifax on to South America. And you’d join de Harvester in Aruba.’ Which, yeah dey had it all thought out, but I decided not to go. And stayed where I was. LB]] Were you married at the time? JS]] No no, no no. I was completely footloose and fancy-free. So it made no odds where I went. But as it was, de way de fishin’ went at Newfoundland and Greenland in dose years, when I started dere in 1962, de trips were runnin’ about 14 weeks dock to dock. And de time I ended up in 1964, de last trip I was was nearly 21 weeks. That’s a long time for a trawler and after dat some of de trips were six months. LB]] Do you remember what was happening with your money, at the time? JS]] Well, I was… In all de time dat I was at Salvesen’s, lookin’ back, in fact I was lookin’ back over old documents, all de time I was at Salvesen’s, 1961 up to 1965, I average about 100 pounds a month and dat was very good money for a teenager, early-20s in de 1960s. At dat time de Canadian dollar was three dollars to de pound. So that was 300 Canadian dollars a month. I remember I used to go ashore St. Johns with a five pound note. Nobody had any money but I found a fiver idethe inside pocket of a jacket and went ashore and changed it into 15 Canadian dollars! I got two or three of de boys and we went ashore and spent it, Newfoundland Blue Star beer. It’s the most horrible beer… LB]] Did you drink screech? JS]] I tasted screech but I never drank it. I did taste it, but it tasted real, like kerosene. Horrible stuff. So I stayed away… I never understood, dat Blue Star Beer was brewed in Newfoundland! Well wae all de grain dat’s in Canada… de bread basket of de world! Millions of tons of grain! How did dey manage to produce such horrible beer? LB]] Was it really strong, in alcohol percentage? JS]] It wasn’t, it was strong as beer, but you can get stronger beers in Scotland and in de north of England. But it didn’t really taste dat bad but it gave people terribly bad heads, certainly gave me a bad head, but de thing about it was, de people who’d really had a session on dat stuff woulda been horribly drunk on it, de smell seemed to go through de pores of de skin. And you met somebody in de alleyway a day or a couple of days later and he smelt of dis terrible Blue Star Beer smell, oooh it was terrible stuff. But I mean some of de Newfies seemed to swear by it. And you even see some of de Newfies in Alberta and Boston dey’d say dey wish dey were back on de Rock drinkin’ Blue Star Beer. [laughs] LB]] Maybe it’s that Newfoundlanders are very… hearty. JS]] So anyway dat was my experience we stayed at de catcher home from South Georgia, I think it took 44 days, we left and we were told to travel de most economical speed but de most economical speed is quite slow so we left Leith Harbour several days ahead of de factory and plodded north at 82 about 6 or 7 knots, and she left and we were in communication everyday and she left and caught us up round about de equator by which time our bunkers was very low and we went alongside and took bunkers, filled up de tanks, and den we set off and just kept pace with de factory. And den up off de Portugese, we did another bunker dere, and at dat point de UK crew members put dere baggage aboard de factory, heavy baggage, we were allowed a holdall each. And den we just had more or less what we stood up in and we carried on up to Norway, up de North Sea, crossing de Bay of Biscay, we came, de fellow I was on watch wae, he was an ex-fisherman from Norway and middle of de night we spotted dese big luminous batches in de water and knew dey had to be fish of some kind. We went up to see what it was, so we made for one, passed through it and he went down and lay on de gun platform and watched de bow. It was mackerel. And we were steamin’ through them all night through sun up. And den de followin’ night we saw dem again. Not maybe quite so many, but dey were dere. Anyway, across de Bay and up de Channel, solid fog in de Channel, and den up de North Sea and we got to Norway. Salvesens had hired, it had been de base for an old Norwegian whale factory and she had been scrapped and Salvesen rented her quay and base, and so we docked just outside Tonsberg, and dey bussed us into Tonsberg and put us into various hotels and den we flew home from a small airfield in de middle of a forest, thick forest in fact. De branches of de pines were brushin’ de side. It was used by de military, part-military and part-civilian. Next time I was dere was around about 1996 or 1997. So anyway, flew home and went down to Leith, paid off and was offered de job in de freezer trawlers and took it, did several years on de banks of Nova Scotia. De last trip we fished fae, I think we’d been about 150 mile at least north of de Davis Strait, north of de Arctic Circle. Dere were storms, blizzards, hurricanes… I decided de cold and de continual rollin’ and heavin’ was not doin’ my back any good, so when we paid off I said I wasn’t goin’ back to fishin’, but if you have any jobs goin’ in de merchant fleet I would appreciate a merchant ship, especially one dat’s in de tropics. And as luck would have it dey had a merchant ship needin’ an RO de followin’ month. So I did a spell there, and beautiful, beautiful weather all de time, in fact dere was only once dat dere was spray across deck in 9 months. LB]] It’s interesting that you were with Salvesen all that time, what was it like to work with them? JS]] Dey were very good to work for, you were well-paid, well-fed, and good solid ships. I was never in anything old, dey did have old tramps, of course everybody had old tramps during de 1950s, but de ships dat I was on, de cargo ships, were built in Sweden, modern motor ships, very good accommodation and good all around. We were on charter mostly to American companies and we were actually actin’ as cargo liners rather dan as tramps, dey would do trampin’ if dere wasn’t any liner work available, but mostly… we were on charter to South Africa on spell and de rest of de time we’re on chartered American companies. Dey expected a lot of you but dey were, everything had to be very precise. LB]] And did you work in the merchant navy for… JS]] No, I planned to stay in de merchant navy but I came home and I’d been allocated to another ship a month or so later. And I came home, came off de ferry fae Aberdeen and I met a chap I’d gone to high school with in Lerwick, and he was workin’ for the Deck and Navigator Company. Spoke to him and he said, ‘Well, we’re buildin’ a transmittin’ station down in Cunningsburgh for de oil industry, if you want a job.’ And I said, ‘I know nothin’ about deck and navigatin’ systems.’ I’d been on de receivin’ end, we had DNG in de trawlers to Newfoundland, but I know nothin’ about de transmitter side at all, it’s a black art to me. He says, ‘Oh, you’ll pick it up on de job. Come up to de station and get an application form.’ I thought I’d do it for a few days but Salvesen’s had been good to me and dere was another ship allocated for me. But den I thought, it’s a chance to stay home for a bit. My father was in very poor health and it was a chance to stay home for a bit wae old folks and I’ll get a chance to get a drivin’ test because I still couldn’t drive and I mean, I was goin’ on 22 years old and de only thing I’d ever driven was an old tractor. And dat was just in a field, I’d never actually been on de road with a car, it was all new to me. So anyway, I never had enough time, workin’ for 83
Salvesen’s you never got your full leave. Dey whipped you off to sea again and gave you extra money. So anyway, I decided to try for de job so I made de application and got a quick interview and dey took me on just on de spot and dey got started, it was on de hilltop at de back of de house here. Took a big drop in pay but I’d been earnin’ good money for a lot of years, so. And I bought a Lambretta scooter for gettin’ to work, passed dat test and den I bought a car and started takin’ drivin’ lessons and got dat. So here I am. I worked dere for four years and den I was up here for de first year, up on de hill for dis survey job and den dere was a vacancy dat came up in de main station, main navigation station up near Lerwick, so I got de chance of a job up dere, went up dere and dey did marine service boats and I was keen to get in on dat. I did a little, not a lot. I did a lot of travellin’ around, I was still single and footloose and I was a relief engineer for de whole area stations, so I travelled around quite a bit. And I was startin’ to get my hand in de door as far as marine services was concerned, which was really more interesting. And den company policy was to split de marine servicin’ away from de stations. Because some of de station people didn’t like marine servicin’ and some of dem did and wanted to do it full-time. So here in Shetland it was split up and marine service work was farmed out to a company in Scallway who were already doin’ dat kind of work for other companies. And I was farmed out for six month. And I ended up, at de end of de time I decided marine servicin’ was where I wanted to be, and I was dere de rest of my workin’ days. And havin’ learned to work along with Norwegians, I learned to speak a good deal of Norwegian at de whalin’, dere was a huge fleet of Norwegian and Danish and… it was good, it was a job made for me. Now, I’ll tell you what, we’re going to have a cup of tea.
[[JS02]]
LB]] Did you ever see the end of the industry in environmental terms, as other people did? JS]] I don’t think any of us really did see it very much in environmental terms. It was just a case that we all knew dat de whales had really been overhunted. Dey had been overhunted, de quota was set and due to political pressure. LB]] How had you heard about that? JS]] Well, yes you did, dere would be things in de news but you would hear it spoken about by de officers and some of de old hands and so on. It was always said, ‘Well, we’re takin’ too many whales, de resource can’t stand it.’ And de quota should be lower, but of course if you lowered de quota who was going to take de hit? And wae whale oil prices droppin’ if dey dropped de quota too much den things because unviable. But it was becomin’ quite obvious dat de Japanese had a market for huge volumes of frozen whale meat. And sellin’ at a big price whereas we were reducin’ it to meat meal which none of de two of dem were really makin’ de money so it was really quite obvious de thing was going to slow and stop. And I think everybody was generally prepared for it. Salvesen’s had in a way, Captain Harold Salvesen foresaw a lot of this happening way down de line and dey built de two new factory ships in 1945/46, Venturer and Harvester because all dere factories had been torpedoed during de war, you see. And in fact I think in 1944, Sir Winston Churchill decided dat Europe was goin’ to need a lot of animal fats and dere was… de cattle stock on de continent had been devastated and dere was going to be a need for animal fats and animal protein after de war. And he ordered ministry supplier to make available steel to build whale factory ships and der were two built for Salvesens and one built for Norway. And den dey were workin’ on an aircraft carrier in 1945 and it became obvious dat de navy didn’t need any more aircraft carriers but dere was a need for whale factory ships and de aircraft carrier was redrawn and converted into a whale factory ship called de Balaena. She started life as an aircraft carrier, and dey made a quick shuffle and made her… she was very successful. Hector Whaling in London. So really it made sense in de early-50s to have either converted de Venturer to diesel propulsion or in fact built diesel catchers but Harold Salvesen decided to stick with steam because he obviously foresaw dat dis whole thing is going to taper and 84 dese ships will last long enough to… see he was lookin’ 12-15 year ahead, and some of de Norwegian owners dey continued buildin’. Dey built diesel factory ships and catchers which were faster and more efficient in many ways. But… LB]] Part of my argument in this is that whaling and the Second World War are really intertwined… JS]] Yeah. Plus de fact dat de navy requisitioned a large number of whale catchers and after World War Two when dey saw de war close loomin’ dey went to Swiss Dock and dey built I think 10 or a dozen… what did dey call them… whaler patrol boats or somethin’ like dat and dey were modelled on a whale catcher. Of course dey requisitioned a huge number of de catchers, and den during de war again Smiths Dock and Middlesburgh designed and started buildin’ corvettes and it ended up half-a- dozen yards in de UK, probably half a dozen, built corvettes… Same design and dey were used as convoy escorts and anti-submarine patrols and some of dem escorted convoys and fought in de Arctic. And dere was not all dat many lost, sedere was some but not all dat many. And while dey were escotin’ convoys to Halifax and St Johns, Iceland and around de north… den after de war dere was Salvesen and some of de Norwegian bought dese secondhand corvettes, they had big horsepower, so dey bought dem for towin’ whales in and den some of de gunners wanted dem converted because dey were bigger and steadier and Salvesen got de docks in Leith to do some of dem, cut de bow off and put a new bow on and a gunner platform and made dem into whale catchers. They were very successful catchers because dey had de long hull and good speed, extra 800 horsepower, dey could chase and so dey were used right to de end. De war did very much, and of course de element of ASDIC durin’ de war which dey made a smart move and bought all dese ASDIC (Calvin Hughes) by the scrap and put a badge on dem sayin’ Calvin Hughes Whaling ASDIC. Stainless steel plate. Four screws on de front of de console and sold dem for a big sum of money. LB]] But after that there are political changes, too. In between 1946/47 season, there was one season with heavy whaling because the IWC hadn’t set quotas yet, so we had come out of the Second World War and it was a huge take that year. JS]] I would think probably a big factor would be dat de whales had been breedin’ undisturbed in de war and dere was a huge stock of whales, dey were easy to get at. Dey didn’t need a lot of chasin’, if you chase a group of whales and got one or two and de rest of dem scattered you could go about and find another group and start again, dere was loads of whales. LB]] Did you every experience anyone being against whaling? JS]] No. Not.. you did occasionally hear that it shouldn’t be allowed, dat it was terribly cruel, but dat was.. have you ever been in a slaughterhouse? An abbatoir? That was de answer. What’s it like in dere? Have you ever seen dem bein’ killed? Well before you start criticizin’ whalin’ go and visit an abbatoir or in dose days dey were called slaughterhouses. They’ve been sanitised now and they’re called abbatoirs but it’s basically de same thing. So in fact again de idea was very, dat dese people who’d grewn up in cities only knows what dey see on a butchers counter or de supermarket, dey’ve never seen animals in de wild and in de field. De other argument was dat you had better go and speak to de prime minister and ask what’re they doin’ wae grouse and what are dey doin’ wae stags in de Highlands? Same thing. So no, at dat time dere wasn’t very much. I guess it really only, the sorta environmental movement and animal welfare really only started in de 1970s, long after whaling was finished. LB]] Well I’m interested in that because, from your perspective, all of a sudden there was all this anti-whaling activism… JS]] Well, probably… a lot of it, it was just this whole movement blew up and people were lookin’ for somewhere to hang dere hat. And of course de Faroese, dey still drive whales to shore every year, a small nation, vulnerable. Iceland is dere and dey’ve got a whalin’ station and dey ship dere whale meat to Japan, again a small nation… again, small communities are vulnerable. The Inuit in Greenland, Alaska, north of Canada, they’re the same. They’ve no way of formin’ a pressure group 85 or a block of any kind, so for dese environmentalists and animal welfare people, it’s a no-brainer if you’re going to attack de weak you’ve a chance at winnin’. LB]] Well part of what interests me is how people that work in this type of resource extraction experience activism. But it seems really… when I’ve read perspectives from Greenpeace, they saw it as they were attacking the IWC and a big conglomerate of governments. JS]] Well that’s the Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd, I think one of de main objective is to gain as much publicity, to get money in de bank to keep themselves in a job. A lot of dose people dere, are activists because it pays dem, I think. Paul Watson… I’d be very suspicious… Well. I never mind anybody, like in de industry protestin’ about it, de people who left whalin’ because dey couldn’t stand it. But I do remember one old one sayin’ dat we were takin’ far too many whales and it wasn’t goin’ to last, only a few more years and don’t think that you’re going to spend your life here. You’ve come and you’ll go again. LB]] What’s it like to work in an industry that’s like that? JS]] Well, you know I think when I think you look at it most industries tend to be quite transient. If you look over de length of a century, how many industries have sprung up, blossomed and den tapered off or maybe even crashed? Even de likes of de oil industry… dere were quite a few whalers even in de seismic stage when we were doin’ seismic work off de Dutch Coast down right in de end of the de south sea in shallow water. Dere’s quite a number of whalers in de off season doin seismic activity. Den came back to de Antarctic in de winter, dey were starvin’ both industries. And some of dem… when de oil came here in de 70s dere’s a whole host of merchant seamen, many of dem were ex-whalers, went to work at Sullomvoe and when de oil port got goin’ dey gravitated onto jetty’s, onto tugs, whole stack of ex-whalers, just de same thing that had happened with the Esso refinery in Norway 15-20 years earlier. LB]] Is that what you do, then…?
[[JS03]]
JS]] De Kosmos fleet, whale factories, and den it went into de oil industry, Salvesen did to a certain extent. Quite a lot of ex-whalers went from de Kosmos to de oil rigs, so it happened both sides of de North Sea. LB]] So you wanted to stay in sea work… JS]] Yeah, I wouldn’t have liked to work de land at all. Once I come a few months inland I don’t feel comfortable. Well I didn’t then, I might feel more comfortable now. One time, if I lost sight of some water I became uncomfortable.
86
Willie Tait 10 July 2017 Bigton, Shetland
WT]] [[talking about water going on guano bags]] They’d catch fire, sometimes. The guano shed burned down in Leith Harbour. LB]] What caused it? WT]] Just a fire. It started with the heat combustion with the meat bein’ hot, it burned de whole place down. LB]] Well I was wondering if you can just tell me a little bit about how you started whaling? WT]] It was a long time ago, 1946. I was working in Shetland at the gut factory, just after de war, and I got a letter from the union rep in Shetland, the sailor’s union, telling me dat Salvesen was wantin’ two boys to go down and work by the Southern Venturer, she was lyin’ in de Middle Dock in Shields. So me and another boy from Lerwick, we went on, we signed on in Leith, and den we got de train down dere and we worked by the ship for maybe six or eight weeks lookin’ after de men who were makin’ it ready for de next season. Den we came back to Leith in Scotland and we joined with an old ship called the Salutor, an old ex-German ship, she’d been used as, she was oil tanker but there was accommodation built up in her so she could carry about 250 men. De use of de U-boats and oiled de u-boats and den dey took de prisoners and dey put dem in dose cabins on de ship. We joined her in Leith and we left to go to South Georgia and we called at Tenerife on de way to pick up a cargo of fuel oil and that was under de… de dictator… what was they called ‘im… Franco. So it was a very poor place, not like Tenerife now. People were starvin’ and beggin’ in de streets, and I can remember us throwin’ potatoes and salt beef and salt pork out onto the key for de children and de were just pickin’ it up like scoreys here. So we left dere, and three days out dere were three boys who turned up in one of de lifeboats, dey must have been about my age, about seventeen. Dey thought they were goin’ to England but dey got a pick surprise when dey were goin’ de other direction. So they just carried on and dey put dem to work, I was a mess boy lookin’ after de whalers. LB]] Did they speak Spanish? WT]] Oh yeah, but dey couldn’t speak any English and we couldn’t speak any Spanish. LB]] Did they learn? WT]] Dey maybe learned a few words but they put… when we reached de island, den I was a mess boy in what dey called de “big mess”, dat was where all de whalers ate. It must have been a couple of hundred of eatin’ dere and dey were just put to work, dere were one in de cabin wi’ me, this little Spanish boy. But he got out and I think dey sent ‘em home eventually. Dat was de start, I worked dere for a year, I was in de big mess lookin’ after de whalers and den I got a job lookin’ after de Norwegian tradesmen, dere were about 30 of them and dere were two of us who looked dat, it was a separate mess room. So I was there all de season and then at the end of the season de Southern Venturer come in from bein’ down at de ice and dis notice went up dey were wantin’ some mess boys because dey were goin’ to Peru and de west coast of America to fish for sperm whales. So I volunteered and I got a job on dat so we went up and we went through the Magellan Straits, then we called at Cape Horn because we were needin’ to get some supplies at a place called Ponterenas just out on the south tip of America. So we got lots of mutton as well as sheep there, and then we continued up to the equator and we fished in the equator for I think it was six weeks for sperm. And den we came back through de Panama Canal and headed back to Liverpool. So dat was my first trip. LB]] How old were you? WT]] I was eighteen. LB]] Okay. What made you want to go? WT]] Oh well there’s no work here, it was just soon after de war and most of the whalers dat went from Shetland was men who had been in de war and been in de merchant navy. Some of dem had 87 seen horrendous things during de war and some of dem had been torpedoed two or three times, some of them. LB]] I hadn’t interviewed anyone yet who had been in the merchant navy… WT]] Oh? LB]] Yes, but that was a common thing was it, they would come back from the war and need work? WT]] Yeah they needed work, but see a lot of dem had been in de merchant navy before de war so you got a bigger… see the whaling bonus was very attractive, so that was my first out. Den de second time I missed a season and den I went doon and… LB]] What were you doing when you missed a season? WT]] I was workin’ here in Shetland. Den I went, I think dere was 14 of us went from Shetland to over-winter at South Georgia to work at de floatin’ dock, to do up de catchers, we had to scrape de bottoms of em and get em ready for de next season. So we left Shetland and went to Newcastle and we caught a ship dere and we went to Norway, to Oslo, and den we got de train to a place called Frederickstag on de west coast of Norway, and we joined an old Norwegian tanker. She was a very old ship and she was full of rats, that’s one thing I never forgot. S.S. Orwell. So dere was 14 of us and we put de workers as part of a deck crew workin’ on de ship and we had to clean and scrape tanks and some of it was horrible. Just somethin’ to keep us workin’, we chipped de decks, it was horrible. So we went to de West Indies, to Curaco, no it was Aruba. So we went dere, we got a cargo of oil dere and we proceeded down to South Georgia. I think it took us about 7 and a half weeks from Norway to South Georgia. And I got dere, dat was de next 18 months workin’ in de dock. LB]] Doing what? WT]] Well, just paintin’ de bottoms of de whale catchers. That was at Stromness, de station just around de corner from Leith Harbour. After dat I come home and I went back several seasons. I was in de tank gang for three or four seasons, we cleaned all de tanks when de fuel oil was… LB]] I heard that was a tough job. WT]] Yeah, it was a horrible job. You got very well paid, we were better paid for it, you got a higher group, we were Group 7. That was the same rate as an able-bodied seaman. LB]] Do you remember how much you would have been paid? WT]] I think there was one season, I remember de overtime dat I got in one season and dat was after workin’ de 12 hour day, I got 1440 hours of overtime for a season. So we worked all kinds of hours, we cleaned tanks and we put de guano, we loaded de guano onto barges and den put dem aboard de ships. We painted up de accommodation blocks, you had to be able to do everything. I was 10 seasons plus a winter at South Georgia. I worked on de plan where dey cut up de whales, I was what dey called a wire boy. LB]] What was that job? WT]] That was, see with the whale dey pulled de whale onto de plank and out of de water and den it was a big huge wire, twice as thick as dat bicycle… we had to pull dat down to de bottom of de plan and den dey hooked onto de tail of de whale and dey pulled it up and then after that we had to take de blubber off with two other smaller wires and we pulled de spic up to de top of de plan and den it was cut into strips and put it into a… ground it up. It was full of oil, dere was a tremendous amount of oil in de blubber. So I did dat one season, and another season I was on de bone loft. Dat was where dey cut up de bones, it was up maybe 20 feet because de kettles where dey put de bones in, de hole in de top of dis boiler, dey opened dem and den you put de bones in once you cutted dem up a certain size but dey’d be goin’ in a round hole maybe three feet wide. So I did dat one season. I did all kinds of jobs. LB]] What was it that made you keep going back? WT]] Well it was just, I don’t know, it was just de money. I got married in 1954 and I went straight away, three weeks after we got married I went away in October and I got back again in May and my first son was born in June. I never saw my wife for nine months. After dat season I stayed home a 88 year and we built dis house, me and one joiner we built dis house. And den I went back again another two seasons after dat. So I was dere until, near 11 years I was at de whaling. LB]] Did you enjoy it? WT]] I enjoyed it yeah, you were young and dere were no any problem den, you could do anything. You used to clean de tanks and de ships and you had to climb up de side of de ship right to de top of de tank to clean underneath de ledges in de ship. Dere was a chair dat you would sit in and dere was a hook and dey’d hook it into de ledge and den you would sit and work and you had a tin of paraffin and rags and you’d clean where de… they had what you’d call a butterworth, it was a machine with jets and water and steam comin’ outta de, but dere were places they couldn’t get to, so we had to clean dat. And den de mate would go down in a white boiler suit down and white gloves to see if it could pass because dey were putting whale oil in dem and it needed to be very very clean or den it would destroy de whale oil. LB]] How did you come to work with Christian Salvesen? WT]] De way I heard about it was through a man called Prophet Smith who was de union rep. LB]] Oh right, okay. WT]] Because before dat I’d tried to get a job just at de end of de war to go into de merchant navy and he got me a job on a collier that carried coal, as a fireman, but de trip, she was on her way to Shetland and she hit a mine and dey were nearly all lost and dat was de end of my trip dere. This was just a bit later, he knew dat I was wantin’ somethin’ to do and when he heard dat Salvesen was wantin’ two boys he asked me if I wanted to go and dat’s why I started. LB]] Did you like working for them? WT]] Yes dey were good. You signed de contract before you left and you couldn’t strike but de Norwegian seaman’s union was a lot stronger, I think dey did more good than the British seaman’s union because de British seaman’s union was targeted more for de merchant navies and de British ships. LB]] When you were there did you ever have a perception of the catch numbers and if they were increasing or decreasing? WT]] Well we knew, we weren’t gettin’ so many catch and we weren’t getting so big, de whales were smaller. You were hardly ever gettin’ any blue whales, it was mostly fin whales you would get. And den you got less and less and you were catchin’ another type dat dey call de sei whale, but dey were smaller and were not very prized. So you knew it was… But by de time I was finished dose 10 or 11 years I was fed up with it because we’d had another son den and I was never seein’ de baby, de bairns. So it was, I was wantin’ to get back home and be home. So dat was de end of my whaling. LB]] Do you remember what you were thinking at that time? Or what you were feeling? WT]] Finishing? LB]] Yeah. WT]] I was just fed up with it. I thought things were gettin’ slightly better dere in Shetland. LB]] I don’t know, it was just things were gettin’ better, de fishin’ was gettin’ a bit better. And de agriculture was a bit better. See I got into agriculture, I started… I got de croft here dat belonged to me father then I bought another three crofts, and den I got another two, and den I started work as an agricultural contractor, I bought tractors and started workin’ for everybody around here, doin’ all dere work. I pulled all dere land, sowed dere turnips and set dere tatties and cut dere hay and dere corn and fetched home all de peats from de peat house. I worked at dat for awhile and den I packed up de contractin’ and I got more cattle on me own and more sheep and den I sold off de cattle and just did sheep. And I joined de county council and I was a councillor for 29 years. LB]] Why were there so many whalers from Shetland, do you think? WT]] I don’t know, see de whaling started here from de North from de Arctic, dere were three whale stations in Shetland up in de North of Shetland and dey found de remains of one of dem you can see just south of Brae. You can go right down to de, where de jettys dere, because de whalers would rip 89 out de jetty and he used to break up boats dere and do all sorts of things. Georgie Manson, dey called ‘em. He died a few years ago. I think that’s why Salvesen both his operation from Shetland to the Falklands, dere wasn’t very big success I think dat’s why dey went to South Georgia and dey built de Leith Harbour station. But de first one was destroyed in an avalanche. LB]] Do you think that… is whaling a part of Shetland culture? WT]] I think it was, yeah. LB]] How did you grow up with it? WT]] I imagine I did… See whales has always been here, dey used to call whales, dey used to cull dem ashore on de beach and cut dem up, like how dey still do it in Faroe and Iceland. It’s not very popular now, it’s a very bad word. LB]] What do you think about that? WT]] I don’t know, it was time to stop but it was just wholesale slaughter what dey were doin’. LB]] Did you think that at the time? WT]] Oh no, no. I mean Britain was in poor shape when we went to de whaling, dey were needin’ all de oil dey could get because we’d just finished with de war and everything was in a very low ebb. I don’t know, somehow you never really thought about it den but it was really was a barbaric way of makin’ your livin’. I never were on de whale catchers, I probably should have tried dat as well. I don’t know if I can tell you anything more. LB]] I’m interested in hearing your experience. Did you hear anything official from Salvesen when it was near the end? WT]] So it went down I think in 1963… So I finished in 1959, so it was gettin’ a lot worse but I was still earnin’ good money because I was in a sort of specialized job. LB]] What job was that? WT]] It was the tank cleaning, I finished up with that. LB]] Okay. WT]] I mean, the year that I stayed home to build me house, just before I… one day I was on top of the gangway on the ships and the station foreman in South Georgia at that time was a man called Willie Spence, Captain Spence from Yell. And he met me at the top of the gangway and he said ‘I was about to offer you a cutter’s job next season.’ And I says, ‘Oh, Captain Spencer I’m sorry but I’m not comin’ back next season I’m goin’ to build a house.’ So that was the end of my cuttin’ and then I was going to get promoted, so I was very sorry about dat but I had already made de decision to take off a year. LB]] And you felt the money was worth it… WT]] Oh yeah. LB]] Do you remember what you would have been paid? WT]] Maybe 400-450 pounds I would think? LB]] After you were married, what was your wife’s life looking like? WT]] It was very horrible, she got an allotment, I left an allotment every month. But she was livin’ here with a young bairn and after I went away so it was really. I imagine she was pretty fed up. It was a way of life and the funny thing about it was there was very few break ups of marriages in Shetland, all de years de whaling went down, dere were several hundred men from Shetland at de whaling. I bet you could count on one hand de breakups of marriages dere were, dat’s just de difference from den to now. LB]] It’s interesting to think about what whaling culture is and why people do it. Why keep whaling when you know it’s a finite resource? WT]] I think it was necessity when we were goin’. LB]] And people at home accepted that? WT]] Yeah. I think dey did. It’s very… de Japanese are still whalin’ and it’s supposed to be for promotin’ science but I think that dere’s another word for it but I’m not sure… 90
LB]] Do you remember when your point of view kind of changed on that? WT]] Well, I think I maybe came to see it was a horrible business. LB]] When? WT]] After I’d finished bein’ dere and I’d heard it was finishin’ up. It finished because of lack of whales, dat’s why it finished. But de whales are comin’ back again, a lot more whales around apparently in de Antarctic now. I don’t think public opinion… would be completely against it. LB]] Why do you think the public turned against this kind of resource that was in all their products? WT]] Well, they thought it was… dere’s been a lot of whalers now dat think it was a pretty horrendous way to make a livin’ but I mean dey’re killing fish everyday, what’s de difference? It’s just a bit smaller. Nobody ever turns a hair because of dey kill fish and cattle… LB]] So what is the difference? WT]] I really don’t think dere is a big difference it’s just the same as killing seals. Dere are far too many seals in de ocean just now, dey are eatin’ a colossal amount of fish for what? LB]] I wonder with the whales that it’s the idea that, more than cattles taking whales felt like hunting, whereas we raise cattle. WT]] I suppose. It’s just dat whaling’s, you’re huntin’ fish. I don’t know. LB]] What did you think when activism around whaling really got started? WT]] There weren’t much Greenpeace, but I don’t remember. Dere were no Greenpeace around South Georgia. LB]] No, I mean they went to Antarctica eventually but already most countries had stopped whaling. WT]] I think the Russians were still, dey were probably Greenpeace boats dats terrorized de Russian fleets. LB]] It seems like activism when the British were whaling… there didn’t seem to be much around. WT]] No. And Norway, I don’t think dere were much activism… I think a lot of Norwegians still would be whalin’. LB]] Why? WT]] It’s just a culture thing with them. See I dinnae think Shetland, we never killed de small whales for eatin’ as far as I know, dey never ate it, dey just used it, dey boiled de blubber for producin’ oil when dey drove from shore on de beaches. But dey never ate de whale meat. De whale meat’s very nice to eat. LB]] You’ve had it? WT]] Heavens, we used to delight when we got de whale meat. It was fresh and whale steaks was super when dey would cook it properly, it was kind of a delicacy for us to get whale steaks. I bought some in Norway and took it home. LB]] In the 50s there was a push from the government to see if they could get the British public to eat whale as they would beef, and it didn’t happen. WT]] That’s when de… what was the name of the ship, the ship that, the refrigerated ship. Southern Raven. She came doon but it wasn’t a success. LB]] Why do you think people wouldn’t want to eat it? WT]] I don’t know, dey didn’t’ fancy it. It never took on at all. LB]] It’s like you said, why eat cow and not eat whale? WT]] I don’t know why. I don’t think they ever came to Shetland to try and sell, as far as I know. But it was a complete failure. I never was on dat ship. I think it was only one season and dat was the end. LB]] What do you remember about coming home? WT]] I can always remember, when I came back to Shetland I took the taxi through to Bigton in the mornin’ when de boat come in. When it came in over de top of de hill dere and I looked out at St. Ninian’s Isle and what dey call de Louse Head, de bit that sticks out at de end, I nearly crying. Dat was after being away for nearly two years. Comin’ into Lerwick was amazing to see de ligthouses as you were comin’ in. It was pretty sad when you were goin’ away, especially when I was married it 91 was bloody awful. To trot off to the whalin’ for nine months. But it was just somethin’ you had to do. I saved enough money to build dis house and it cost me 1300 pounds plus 600 pounds, I got a grant from the agricultural board to help me. But I had to pay for the stuff and I got a loan from me father- in-law, he gave me 600 pounds in loan and when I got de grant money den I gave him dat back. But when we started it we had virtually no money at all. You just built it up as time went by. [[Talks about his wife playing the organ and his family photos on the wall.]] LB]] Were you relieved when you got to stay home and not go in October to the whaling? WT]] Yeah. LB]] What did your kids think of whaling? WT]] I don’t know, it was just somethin’ that I did. I don’t know what they think of it now. They’re still interested in it. LB]] How much of that is because people are interested in Antarctica? WT]] I don’t know. I don’t think it’s Antarctica that’s the attraction. Maybe it’s Shackleton and that sort of thing. Have you been? LB]] No I wish. WT]] I have stood at Shackleton’s grave, I made a point of that. LB]] Some people have said that they felt that many people returned to the whaling because it was exciting. WT]] It was exciting, yeah, it was a hard life. You were virtually sleeping and working, that was more or less what you were doin’. But there was a great camaraderies among de whaling men. All de men dat I worked with, hardly any of em left. They’re now nearly all gone. [[Asks me about my degree programme, tells me more about his kids.]] LB]] Would you like to show me some photos? WT]] Oh, yeah. [[moving furniture]] WT]] That’s us catching penguins for de zoos… That’s me. LB]] You look happy. WT]] Yep. That’s me steering de catcher, we were goin’ around to de other side of de island so I… We were goin’ round to de other station, dere were a couple of old whale catchers dat dey used for goin’ around to de stores and different things. That’s the Middle Dock, that’s where I took up de whale boats. That man’s name is Gunner Colstad and that’s Ole… that’s the two… dis is dem flensing de whales, I worked dere for a season. LB]] What was it like to see a whale being flensed? WT]] Oh it was fine, I never thought anything about it… that’s Leith Harbour. LB]] Who’s this fellow? WT]] That’s me. With two of my pals. They’re both dead… Now that’s when de Duke of Edinburgh came, he came down to visit us… It’s not very exciting… LB]] No, it’s great… Was it bloody, the flensing? WT]] Oh, yeah. LB]] What was the best part about Leith Harbour? WT]] Oh, I don’t know… the cinema. We had a beautiful cinema. We had to contribute towards it. It wasn’t very much, maybe a few pounds. LB]] Was it as cold as you might think it was? WT]] Oh yeah, it was pretty miserable in the winter time. It wasn’t too bad in the summer, but it was cold. But very, very cold in de winter. The sea used to freeze… This is the Southern Opal arriving at Dakar. You see all de men around it? 500! Plus de crew. She could carry 500 in the accommodation. She was a tanker and dey built her up and the tween decks, de lower part of de tanker dey built on accommodation. Dat was Captain Polson. LB]] What else do you think I should know about British whaling that we didn’t talk about? 92
WT]] I don’t know. I haven’t a clue. LB]] Okay, well thank you!
93
Tammie Thomson and Alister Thomason 11 July 2017 Yell
LB]] At first I thought I would ask you to introduce yourself, and tell me how you started whaling. TT]] When you didn’t have any trainin’ for any particular job, that was sorta dat because if you had been to sea or something before den you were more or less qualified dat you will claim you had done so in-shore fishing which you had done and if de office people needed somebody dey would probably accept dat which is de way dat I did. And I went down on de factory ship first and den you were transferred to de island, so I did de first three season on de island. And den at de end of three years de factory ship was a slightly shorter season and if anything it paid better so you switched across. So I had no regrets wae any of it. De three years I was at Leith Harbour, de whaling board always had a quota and dey would agree would be a good level for de fishery and my three year there we were over dat level each time, so I couldn’t complain. LB]] What year would that have been? TT]] Well I went down in ’53, you know de island went early, it was August-September and den factories generally it was late-October. LB]] And what type of job was it? TT]] Well when I went ashore first of all dere you really went here or dere, wherever dey needed you, and den dere were a fellow who was actually from Lerwick got fairly badly injured when dey were loadin’ a ship and I was takin’ his place and he unfortunately never got back so I did dat job dat year, den I was home for de summer and went back and did a season, winter season. Dat was workni’ on de whale plan. So you were… you were workin’ on de blubber, you would, the cutter would cut it up in strips and you would drag de strips along and put dem in de big mincer. So your job was puttin’ it in dere. LB]] Do you remember how old you were? TT]] I was about 22 when I went. Well, a lot came down as mess boys which I don’t know if it did dem any good but it got dem a wage. Most of dem were very good. You could go over and work on de factory ship on de deck you were on and it was usually takin’ up de work so you really stayed in your room most of it. But dey did have [indecipherable], and dere would be – I don’t remember, was it once a week or twice a week? AT]] Yeah, usually twice a week, and den by de end of de season you’d see ‘em two or three times. TT]] Dey tried to swap wae other places, but den the boats weren’t always together. In de factory, I think I started off haulin’ for de wenders, you went, de meat of de whale, de back meat, it went into dat and you used a wench to push it in. And dey also put down blubber as well. That was I think… I worked on dem for awhile but it was just a labourer. But I think I’d say de best job dat I did have was on de claw winches, you had to go down aft and you hauled dis big crab claw down and it would go down de shoot and dey would bring de tail of de whale into de chute with another winch and when de plan foreman said it was right you would drop de claw on de whale and de fish winch would release and de whale would go back down and de claw would grab him. Occassionally it went wrong and den dere were bad words said. But anyway, on de average it went good. But in dat job you had three winches to run between… Den we had to go up and put on de flensin’ wires for the de flensers. And also put on de wires for turnin’ de whale and drive de winches for dat. And den dey had to take out de baleen, and dat was a good one because you had de derrick up for it and de whale was in de middle of de deck and you had to get, when de flensers cut it off it swung like a pendulum and you were on de winch and you had to drop it because if it come inside dey had to push it. So you got a bad word if you missed it! LB]] Did you like that job? 94
TT]] That was the best job dere was, you had a lot to do, dere was a lot of running around to do, but you were never fed up. LB]] What was it like to be that close to a whale? TT]] In some ways de big whale was better because everything was slower. It was de small undersized ones dat wasn’t very easy to work and dere was not many of dem. So a good sized whale for de most people was really de best, den you had de best results for de oil. And den of course we had de sperm whale, and dey were hard and awkward, dey were very hard for de flenser… LB]] Like their skin was? AT]] Yes, de blubber was very tough. TT]] Very tough, and of course dere was less oil on dem as well. And den dey had de job and dey’d very often have to take dere teeth out but usually dat was something dat was done in spare time, not when you were busy. De company was to keep de whale teeth, dey were fairly valuable I think, dey were ivory. And I think we would… I don’t know if dere were any market for dat whale teeth. AT]] I don’t know. Everybody seemed to take one or two but dey were never something said much about dem if dey went missin’, dey’re just lyin’ about and if you took one or two dere was nothin’ much ever said. TT]] De one night, one of de crew dat I worked wae he was wantin’ some whale teeth and de flenser said to him, dey took one… de whale had de baleen in it’s mouth dat, whale bone, and de flenser said to ‘im take de saw and just de jaw off but leave enough for de flensers. So when de whale was done, dere was none! But dat kinda thing went on, but it was only occasional, and I don’t think de company lost any big sums of money on it. But you would have thought dat de, if dere’d been much money in it dey’d be more careful… Spent a lot of hours, it took time to take dem out… AT]] It was just de one kind of whale that had teeth – sperm. LB]] What was… did you have a wife or family at home? TT]] No, I only married when I finished with de whaling. LB]] So you sent your money to your parents? TT]] Yes, you left instruction in de office so dere were very careful wae all dat, it all went well. LB]] Did you have family at whaling as well, or was it just you? TT]] No, my brother was a teacher so he stayed hom. LB]] And your father… TT]] He was like everybody else he went into de herring, and latterly he used to do buildin’ work and dat, and he was workin’ de croft. But, he was in de Navy in de First World War. LB]] What did you do before whaling? TT]] I worked on de croft and I did jobs around town, bits of buildin’ work because you were doin’ your own. And it was de way you used to do any of de things. The plumbing and de lights wasn’t dere den, you had paraffin lamps and stoves and all dat stuff. LB]] So you went to whaling for the money? TT]] De money was fairly good for dat day and age, and well I did two winters down dere, for a year and a half at a time, so you got a good pay off at dat. But compare the wages goin’ now, it was chicken feed. But den de cost of living was a lot easier. AT]] And you saved it up, dere was no way to spend it either. TT]] Well dere were little points and date, dere was a slopchest and you would buy your clothing and all dat in it. I think dat slopchest was pretty well stocked. But I cannae mind if you got oilskins, I think you had to buy your own… AT]] Yeah, buy your own, you got nothing at all. But de slopchest had de good Norwegian oilskins, dey were very good. I would have said dey were better and maybe still are, dan de British ones. But dey were certainly no worse anyway. But I think dat de weather on de factory ship was better dan on de island, you got dat wet snow and rain and all sorts dere but de factory, you did get snow maybe but maybe not all dat much. But den it wouldn’t lie long, you’d hose it off. 95
LB]] Do you remember what it was like when de whaling was coming to an end? AT]] Well, de writing was on de wall. I mean everybody was aware dat dat was approachin’ because de whales was gettin’ scarcer and gettin’ smaller. And dey were gettin’ more and more factories takin’ part in it. So what was… I was down de last two years, I came away for the ’62 and den was in de merchant navy up in Aberdeen. And dey offered us a job down in London and I finished up on a PNO liner. So we did a little cruise. Well you were on wages and possibly if you’d had a good season, but I dinnae think dat season was all dat great and we finished up down de Red Sea and down to Australia, all around Australia and up to Vancouver. And den back around again. So dat was a contrast. LB]] That’s a long time. TT]] Took a fair while. AT]] De actual wage at de whaling wasn’t dat great, but you got bonus on de oil and meat production and de overtime and stuff like dat and it usually added up to be more dan your actual wage. LB]] So did you notice near the end that that bonus was getting smaller? Less money? AT]] It would vary from season to season sometimes. Not just a huge lot, but I think we all knew it was comin’ to an end but I would say we certainly didn’t expect it den. TT]] Well, did de Salvesen not get an offer for de factories? AT]] One of de factories did, anyway, you see. TT]] And did de island work after de factory? AT]] De factories went after de island. TT]] Aye. AT]] And den you see de Japanese took over de island. Dey worked a couple of years and den dey packed it up too. TT]] But de end… regulations led down de number of whales and de size of de whales and all dat but I think de Japanese and Russians and dem, dey just fished anything. AT]] Anything at all, yes. LB]] And Onassis… TT]] Yeah, de attempt to kind of save fish was lost by dem, and well dey’re still doin’ dat. LB]] Were you thinking that at the time? TT]] No, I think we were all aware of it. Dey were just fishin’ away, and some of dem factory ships was bigger dan Salvesens was. AT]] Dere was some big ships among dem, yeah. LB]] What did you think at the time about that, was it something you were worried about or was it more just doing your job and coming home? TT]] It was just what was happenin’ and you had virtually no vote on it, it was just a case dat if you had a job dere and it was paid reasonably well, as dey say – better de devil you know dan de one you don’t. No, I think a lot of de whalers was very disappointed when it closed up. AT]] I believe if whaling’d been goin’ steady they’d have been at it yet, fishin’. TT]] I think so, yeah. LB]] If people had followed the… AT]] If whaling had been operated dat way. LB]] Why do you think it was so easy to over-fish? Or to over-hunt? AT]] Because dere were no rules or regulations. TT]] Well dey made rules and regulations but I imagine some of de boats were breakin’ dem all de way along. Same as de fishin’ and dat, you obey by dem when it suits you, so to speak. AT]] Some of dose countries had no control over dem, de Russians, Japanese, I believe de Dutch was bad for dat too. Dey had no way of controllin’ dem. 96
TT]] I think dat dey had a big factory ship. I think dat Salvesen, to give them their due, were as law- abidin’ as anybody. And dey’d been at it a long time I think, and it was more or less a family concern with Salvesen. AT]] I think de Norwegians on de whole was fairly good at stuff. TT]] Well yeah, dey abided I think by de rules. LB]] I think that part of why the Norwegians would have abided by it is that it’s a big part of their culture as a whole. It wasn’t just for a resource as much. I wondered if that might be the same here, to an extent? TT]] Well, dere wasn’t so many English people at the whaling. It was de Scottish people and your occasional Irish fellows in, but not many. LB]] How come, do you think? TT]] Well I think it, livin’ up here where lots of people were goin’ and you just kind of followed de crowd, you heard de stories from dem and decided it’s worth a try. For a little bit I thought it very good, you could do bits of homework in your cell, get sperm teeth and meet penguins and all de rest, and dere were plenty of hobbies. You made your own hats, I twice made a jacket from a piece of canvas. But a lof of de hats were a bit different, dey were just a bit rough. But you’d have to wash it at de time because you were gettin’ splattered with oil. No, it was a… I feel it was a very interestin’ business, you met a lot of people and you saw dem year after year. And so when you rejoined you were usually a day spent barely workin’, you did really no work for de first day or two until you sailed. AT]] Most of de foremen and dat, de bosses, dey were all pretty easy going and pretty good to work for. LB]] Someone mentioned that after the whaling they had gone into the merchant navy and something they noticed is that it wasn’t as fun, there wasn’t the same amount of camaraderie and that it wasn’t as laid back. Is that something you knew was different? TT]] Yes, there may be more formality. If you were on a liner or that, dey were a bit more formality in it. We were scrapin’ de lifeboat and de lifeboats were overhangin’ de ship’s side so when you were doin’ dat you had a safety belt on and lie out and dat, and your back got sore. We came in for a breather and somebody on de deck started wavin’ and pointin’ at you to get down to your work. And den it was one of de officer crew, and we were watchin’ some people playin’ tennis or somethin’ while we were havin’ a breather but dey didn’t approve. It was heavy-going workin’ so dey did encourage you to stargaze. But with the officer crew dere you never saw dem. We had a post and were given our work and so long as you worked… We got caught one night, we were out, I can’t remember what we were doin’. And Robin Salvesen was out readin’ his book, and dey didn’t want him to see dat. So you were never safe. He wasn’t threatened or nothin’, just went on with it. AT]] Even de Norwegian foreman was all right and dey never bothered you, and dey made no difference between you and de Norwegians, you were all treated alike. TT]] Yeah, dey were all very good. De Norwegians work wae, I never saw any difference. You learn enough of dere language and you can get by. AT]] Dey had no favourites in dere own men over de British, like. You were just all alike to dem and you did your job and dey didnae worry. [[asks about my dissertation project]]
LB]] What I’m really trying to understand is what factors led to the end of the whaling. What do you think? TT]] I think really, de factory ships dat followed most of de individual ships catchin’ whales. AT]] Dere are several whaling books around and some of dem are just fiction-like and some of dem it’s difficult to distinguish who knows what. TT]] Was Salvesen workin’ in Leith Harbour before de Second World War? 97
LB]] Yes. I think it was before the First World War that it opened and took a break during the Second World War. TT]] Yeah it’s been a big, widespread fishery. AT]] It seems to be dat de whales entirely disappeared here around Shetland for a long time but dere are a few being seen now. It appeared dat for awhile dere wasn’t such a thing to be seen. But dere are one or two around now. TT]] Well, de sperm I don’t think dere are many of dem up here. Are dey a tropical fish? AT]] Dey are very widespread. TT]] But sperm was a very hard whale. Dere was de fin and sei, and de sei whales was, dey would just bend in any shape in de ground dey was on. AT]] De sperms… dey used to eat a lot of octopus and dat. TT]] And den dey used to, de whale bone as dey called it, outta dere mouth and dat was a very unpopular job, you got de scrim and put dat down below and dry it and usually any day dat was done dere was great upheaval, nobody liked doin’ it and it was gross, but it never, I never really heard what… was dat not used for women’s… corsets? AT]] On de island dat never seemed to be kept separate, dat seemed to go with the rest of de stuff. TT]] But den you would hang it up on de wires down below in de factory, it was very warm down dere, if you were washin’ your wash you’d do it in a bucket yourself and hang it up and let it dry overnight. AT]] There couldnae been great value in it, I wouldnae think. TT]] Well I don’t think latterly, no. I seem to think dere was some talk or meltin’ it down and usin’ it for glue or somethin’? But anyway… LB]] Do you remember whalers around you talking about the end of the industry? Or noting it? TT]] When it was comin’ to de finish? Well I think that was more or less accepted for quite a while. But de sea here and de fisheries maybe four, five, six year ago, de fishery was supposed to be dyin’ outta de North Sea, and de water was warm and dey were goin’ North and now de fish was never ever, it’s hundreds of boxes and dose boats are goin’ off. I seem to think when de… when it was good, it was 300 for a week… I mean dat’s just chicken feed now. So where’s de, where’s de fish now? AT]] Dey have certainly come back, dere is no question about dat. But somethin’ that no one has much to take up on, you never hear much of, but all my time dere’s never been a lot of any kind of fish at one time. Dere’s a lot of one time for a few year, everywhere you went you got se same kind of fish and den dey would seem to disappear but den some other kind would appear and dere’d be a lot of dem for a few year and den somethin’ else would come along. It seemed to maybe go in cycles. You never got a lot everytime. LB]] From what I understand, whaling also went in a cycle until it really ended. And the cycle was kind of tied to demand through the wars. So you needed the oil, and there was demand for the products that oil made and then during the war you weren’t whaling anymore so there was a shortage, but then after there was demand. AT]] I suppose a lot of things with whaling, too was, the catchers got more modern and faster and more able to catch more whales and bigger whales. The first old catchers was pretty slow and dat. And dey got bigger and faster as time went on, but I heard dem sayin’ that the Japanese came with new diesel catchers and dey could actually take over British catchers when dey were steamin’ full speed. They were that much faster and sometimes dey would actually cut into de front of de British chasers and cut in front and shoot de whale in front of dem. More modern and faster catchers, dat was probably a help. TT]] And possibly it got more refined, de… I think de Japanese did factory ships, but dere were a lot of big new factories. AT]] A lot of dem were converted ships. 98
LB]] Did you ever think it was cruel? TT]] You never heard it on factory ships among de workers I don’t think. I think you appreciated, you were doin’ away with your big species or fish or animal but den you were gettin’ paid for it so you felt that you were earnin’ your bonus. No, I think that everybody appreciated you were doin’ away with a big animal. When you saw a whale up on de deck, it was a big, big animal. We had to throw de wire across it for turnin’ dem and you had a heavy wire and I think it was a 10 ton shackle, and you had to throw dis thing across de top of de whale. Well some of dem, dey would land on top of dem and one ran up it and pushed it across, so dere’s a big… when you’re on top of dem, under dem was a big area. AT]] Yes, dey were big animals. TT]] Yeah, se spigot was on ‘em when de tongue come off and de pieces where de tongue had went into de belly, and den comin’ down towards de tail it was a great big V like a keel on a boat and when de flenser was comin’ down with that he would put de cross cutter on it because otherwise dat end would go back. So he could put dat cut in. But dere were all kinds of bits and pieces like dat you had to watch for. When dey had dat tongue dat dey put, dey cut a hole and put a piece of wood on it and put de wire through and de winch onto dat and if dey were careless on de winch dey could pull dat out but usually it held well. LB]] So whales were kind of dangerous, even when they were dead? TT]] Oh yes, there were lots of pieces to keep in your memory. AT]] There were so much wires and steam and everything it’s a wonder dat dere weren’t a lot more men hurt dan what was. Wires goin’ everywhere. LB]] Did you ever know, at home, if you were ever using a whale oil product? Were you aware of what it was being put into? TT]] De claw, you had to lift de claw off, and den de claw used to come and lift off de whale and den dere were a big strap on de tail dat, dat de whale boats put on and you hooked into dat and you had to pull on dat strap to get em off and sometimes dey come off easily, and sometimes dey didn’t and sometimes you had to pull until de whale lifted and drop ‘em, lift ‘em and drop ‘em, and occasionally when you put it on and it come off easy, and when de people on de deck were havin’ to show everytime and some looked out and some didnae and it was your responsibility to see if dey were all clear. De same thing with a man goin’ over de side, you had to shout everytime. But I never saw anybody hurt by it. But dey would have given you… AT]] Yeah you wonder how dere weren’t a lot more accidents. TT]] One of de transporters alongside and dere was just a whale between de two ships, I think dey put in two whales or three whales to keep em separate but dere were some womenfolk, I don’t know where dey come from, with ‘em and I was on de one and I said to them dey’d need to keep well back because when de thing hit dat ship and all de blood spat out of it. Well dey didnae so I advised dem to stand back a bit so we passed on de word again and dey did move back a bit more, but I think when it came out and hit it dey got a bit of a jolt because even if it didn’t hit dem it coulda spat blood all over ‘em. But dose were de type of things you were havin’ a go against continually. So it was a relief sometimes to get it down and get your head down, sleep for 12 hours. LB]] Right, a different kind of work in that way. You go kind of full on and then rest. TT]] I think that everybody slept well. LB]] I bet. Do you have anything else that you’d like to add? Those are all my questions. TT]] Well everybody was down there then appreciated that you were doin’ away wae a big species of animal, whether a fish or a mammal, and dey realized dat you were doin’ away wae your own job. But no I think the crews dat was on de boats got on very well, de different nationalities seemed, and den dere were lots of other people comin’ on. And dey seemed to blend in as well. AT]] But that would never happen now, for health and safety, you’d never be allowed today. TT]] No, de safety side would take over. 99
AT]] I would say de whaling stopping as far as British and dat, before de whales were extinct, dey weren’t extinct. Dey were enough around dat dey will come back wae time. TT]] Yeah. AT]] Probably take a long time, but dey will come back. TT]] There are still boats workin’ and takin’ de big whales, but dey never get a chance to survive for long. LB]] Did you think that there was an understanding amongst people how whale was being used in their life? TT]] Well, I would think very possibly not. Some would have an idea but dere were really no papers or dat published in detail, was dere? AT]] No, it was somethin’ that nobody ever realized. De effect on de general public at all. TT]] Anybody getting seriously ill was another problem. Dey were one case dey were wantin’ to put somebody up to Cape Town I think it was and it didn’t happen and de person died. And de point was if dey sent a catcher, de boat couldnae carry enough to get her dere, and if dey sent two well den dere were two ships gone… De thing is, one boat was goin’ for de job and de other as an escort and she was boardin’ fuel as well. So I think dat was why dat person was lost. Dey couldnae send a boat up. And dere was another time a Norwegian boy and he was a big strapping fellow, and no great time after we got on he began to turn poorly. And finally, he was in de hospital and dey took up a list of all de people who was down and he died. A lot of us [gets choked up] wasn’t very happy but how could dey get de man saved? Unless dey broke up de whole expedition. AT]] And even dat, dere was no guarantee dey would live anyway. Dey did a lot of operations and all dere. TT]] Dere was one boy who fell off de mast at Christmas and de fellow and I… [gets choked up] de doctor we had dat time was very good, and dey stopped de engines and de whole lot while he operated. But dat fellow was back de following year, but it didn’t always go well. AT]] A lot of de doctors were excellent surgeons and dat, but an awful lot of dem had lost dere practice if someone had done wrong. But dey were very clever men, a lot of dem. LB]] It must have been different for them to work for a company and not a community. TT]] Den of course de stores, dey had to take with them what they needed. So if dey needed somethin’ they didn’t have, how could dey solve it. AT]] Dey could only do so much. As far as stores is concerned, you can imagine yourself you try to buy your week’s shopping, 9 times out of 10 there’s something forgot but you can mind expedition goin’ away. You’d have to bring everything you’d need for all dat men, you’d probably have about 500 men on each expedition, to supply all dat and everything it took a bit of organizin’ and dey never really seemed to run short of everything. TT]] De whale boats, dere were about 10-12 people on dem and so dere was a lot of people. AT]] So it took some organizin’! TT]] And dat, well dere were too many worked in de office in Leith, dat Jerry Smith and de other man, he smoked non-stop and we were gettin’ sent down on a bus to Shields to join de boat dere and he came along to check you off, he was checkin’ off everybody, de whole bus load. And dat was only one bus. Dat fellow didnae survive long after de whaling… Adams. But Jerry Smith was a skipper, he was skippin’ for ‘em all during de war, and he had a colossal memory for people and dere abilities, so dey had a good background ability. AT]] He seemed to know everybody really personally, knew who dey were. TT]] So dey had some notable people workin’. AT]] No doubt about dat. TT]] And den Robin… Salvesen… but he had a… he was in some of the Falklands. And he survived as well. AT]] And what’s his name, a son-in-law… 100
LB]] Yes, Gerald Elliot… well thank you very much for your time.
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Alister Thomason Dan Thompson 11 July 2017 Yell
LB]] So you were saying that some people think that whaling was a bad… AT]] Yeah that’s right. I would say nowadays like some people thinks that whaling is a bad word but dey didn’t realise how essential the whaling was at one time. LB]] Yeah. I’m kind of interested in those shifts a little bit because I think that happens for a lot of environmental… any sort of resource extraction where it starts off being an employer and a good force and then people kind of suddenly go against it and they think it’s wrong. It’s interesting to me how that happens. DT]] Well, things just changes over the years I think and it was very essential to have some whale products way back then but that’s been largely replaced by other means. The oil and all [indecipherable] and now you’ve all different things [indecipherable]. So da need for it over da years has changed. AT]] Yeah, de need for it has changed. LB]] And with that the public opinion? AT]] Yeah exactly. One ting it wad never wasted, da whole, all da whale was used like and during da war time it was very essential for dey needed da oil and da sperm whale the oil it had was different from da other whales and it’s not edible oil and it was used very much in explosives and dat and it was used for, had a very low freezing point. So it was used a lot during the war on tanks and guns and tings like dat and dey got quite a lot of glycerine of it, too. And things like dat people does not realize how essential it was at dat time. LB]] Maybe you can tell me a little bit about how you got into whaling, how you started? DT]] Well. My very first job was on a fishin’ boat cookin’ for eight or nine men and after dat I was in merchant Navy for a few year and the whaling seemed a bit more attractive than the merchant navy because there wad a bit more money and there wasn’t many jobs around here at dat time. You only went to sea, you went to da fishin’, or you went to the whaling. There weren’t any other options. And I think people thought it was a very hard life, a lot of hardship, but bein’ brought up in Shetland I think we were quite capable of dealing with hardships. Largely I suppose it was lack of odder jobs and better return I think than what you’re likely to get here. But you weren’t getting hardly any more… AT]] Der was no work at all, dere was just not’ing. Just could’nae get jobs at all. DT]] Either fishin’, merchant navy or whaling mostly, otherwise it wasn’t a very successful existence. AT]] And it worked in fine for da seasons as opposite fae here so it came that you were away all winter and den you come home in the spring of the year so you had summer home and dat if you only did da one season, like. DT]] Yeah, and home and helped your family as well. AT]] Workin’ on crofts or you’ll go fishin’ or whatever you want to do in tha summer. LB]] How old were you when you first went to Antarctica? AT]] I was 16 when I went, but it’s the only job dat I had when I left da school. I went to it when I was 16. DT]] I been on at 19-20, I did one summer fishin’ and then I was in the merchant navy for three years before I went, yeah I was 19 when I went. LB]] And how long did you work in the industry? DT]] I only worked four years, so I didn’t think I was much of a whaler, some of dem was maybe in the teens of years or more, some of da older ones. 102
AT]] Yeah some of dem was a long at it, yeah. DT]] So I can say I wasn’t really a seasoned whaler but Alister was longer. AT]] But den some of dem was only one season and dey wanted to go back. DT]] Ah yeah, quite a few only did one season, yeah. How many seasons you? AT]] Six seasons and two winters. LB]] And what years would that have been? AT]] Fae 54-60. DT]] I was from 57-61 it woulda been. I did one winter. When you did a winter you were away for 20 months or 21 months. AT]] So you had to do one season and den you did da winter up dere and den the following season before you get back home again. LB]] What was that like? DT]] It was okay as far as we were concerned. We didnae feel any great hardship. I think some did, some really couldn’t stand it, dere were occasions when dey had to go home… AT]] Couldnae handle it. I think dat a lot of Shetland men was fine down dere because of de isolation dat dey could put up with a lot better dan other people, very often dey got priority and jobs and dat. I would say Shetland men and probably Western Isles. LB]] Did anyone in your family… were they also at the whaling? Or were you both the first? DT]] No, my great-grandfather was in whaling. [Indecipherable] My father told me that his grandfather and his uncle could hardly move because of arthritis. That type of thing, their joints was completely gone, really really harsh conditions in Arctic whaling. No, Antarctic whaling was fun compared to that! LB]] Because you had Leith Harbour… DT]] Well my first season I was on one of the factory ships, and the other seasons and the winter I was in South Georgia. Alister… AT]] Was on South Georgia all de time. LB]] Doing what? AT]] Oh… you did all sorts of jobs dere. You started off as a boy workin’ in da mess like servin’ the tables and that and washin’ dishes and servin’ meals to da men and cleanin’ up after dem. Dat was your first job. Den you progressed from dere to other jobs. LB]] What were you doing? Can you remind me again? You were on the Venturer but what was your job? DT]] I was doin’ winches, did various jobs on de way goin’ down dere and comin’ back, but durin’ the season I was driving winches. The [indecipherable] winches dey were called, when the whale was caught up [indecipherable] dey was hung up and you controlled the… they cut off da ropes and you wheny you heaved dem up dey cut off the ropes and you’d just be holdin’ it up. Dat’s what I did dere. And on de way back you’re cleanin’ up da ship… AT]] Usually paintin’… Half of it’s just to fill up time I think, to keep da men occupied. It usually took up of six weeks to go doon so it was quite awhile. LB]] What was it like to work with Salvesen? DT]] I think Salvesen is considered to be a fairly good employer. AT]] Excellent, yeah. LB]] How did you operate with them? Would you see them at the end of the season and sign up for the next one then? AT]] No, you just usually got the letter sayin’ dat you were to report back again, and den you had to say yes or no. DT]] When you went dere first you just went to Leith and you went into da office and hopin’ you could get a job. Very often you knew people who had been at da whaling and dey would put in a good word for you and dat’s how you… 103
LB]] Word of mouth… DT]] Yeah. AT]] Yeah dat’s, [indecipherable] was goin’ down to Leith like and de Salvesen’s office was kind of along da street dere and de men would be queueing up along da street waitin’ on jobs and dey’d come oot da office and dey’d shout out a name and mostly all de Shetland men, they’d pick dem outta da queue [indecipherable] in Edinburgh dey was dere queueing along da street, pick out da Shetland men, dey knew dere names because somebody recommended to dem, dey would come and pick you outta… LB]] Do you think that… is whaling then a part of Shetland? AT]] Well it was very important to Shetland at one time, yeah. LB]] And did that play into why they might want to hire you guys? DT]] Yeah, Shetland has always been considered to be seamen. Familiar with the sea. AT]] Probably depend on [indecipherable] dere was never no trouble like dat. You got on pretty well wit da Norwegians and dat and dere was never no bother at all. DT]] I think generally de Shetlands got along wit da Norwegians. LB]] Why is that? DT]] Similar background and similar… seafarin’ nations. AT]] It was half British and half Norwegian dat was dere so sometimes we were workin’ wae Norwegians as your boss and workin’ alongside you. DT]] I think dat dey were want to take Shetlanders because you were… connected to da sea all da time and livin’ in more isolated situation very much different than somebody livin’ in a city. I think that’s a lot of it. LB]] I think that’s fair. I interviewed a whaler who was from Dundee and that must have been quite different for him, right? And he doesn’t really consider himself a whaler, it was more that he was an electrician at South Georgia as opposed to a whaler… That to me is interesting, how your identity gets formed in the industry. DT]] We’re all goin’ in the name of whalers and been at the whaling but yeah dey were electricians, carpenters… but dey were all whalers! AT]] But down dere, if you could do a job you got to do it you didn’t initially have to be a tradesman or have any qualifications, if you could do a job you got dat job. That just couldn’t happen nowadays wit health and safety and unions. DT]] Quite a lot of the Shetlanders was at the whale catchers. There were quite a lotta… [indecipherable] learn through the Norwegian. AT]] On da whale catchers, yeah. DT]] All the skippers or gunners in da whale catchers was Norwegian, but da crew was Norwegian so… the Shetland ones quite a lotta them learn a fair bit of Norwegian. AT]] See down at da shore station of South Georgia der were two factory ships, but dey sort of operated differently. South station was on six month season so de first whales was six month and dat was it, stop. But da factories on da quota for different species of whale so when dey got da quota den dey were finished dey were off for home. So most of da time dey only did about four month and den dey were off home again. Where on da island it was six month and den only come home again. But the whales got scarcer and dey had to go farther away, the factory season got longer too. LB]] Was that something you noticed at the time? AT]] Oh yeah. LB]] How would you see it when you were in South Georgia? How would that be apparent to you? AT]] Well just dat dere was a scarcity of whales they weren’t catchin’ so many as what dey used to. But dey were in no ways extinct, dere were still whales there like and dat. As time went on other things took the place of the whales and it wasn’t viable I don’t think just to carry on any longer. 104
DT]] Da whales got smaller at one time a blue whale, fin whales mostly, but latterly there were a lot more sei whales, smaller whales, dey weren’t as interested in dem as in de earlier years and latterly there were the smaller whales. But de whales was not extinct by any means. AT]] A lot got de impression dat it was finished because the whales was push to extinct and dey would never come back again, but dat wasn’t right. Dey did stop before it went too far like. DT]] De Japanese are still… theoretically it’s for scientific purposes whalin’… I think dey take more whales for scientific purposes… [indecipherable] at one time controllin’ the whaling [indecipherable] Norwegian, Britain pulled out.. AT]] I think dat even when all, dere were an awful lot of different countries whalin’, it wasn’t just Britain and Norway, but dey all didnae stick to da quotas dat dey were given. Some did, some didnae. Britain and Norway I would say they definitely stuck to it all de time, but de other ones didnae. DT]] The Britain and Norwegian whalers, dey were… dere were inspectors so you had to stick to de rules. [indecipherable] I dinnae know if dey [indecipherable] any rules yeah. AT]] I don’t think dey are. You could only take whales a certain type of whale certain size and dat and dey measured every whale dat came ashore to check and if a gunner shot a whale dat was too small or a young one den dey didnae get anything for it, dey didn’t get paid for it. So there was an incentive to stop them shootin’ whales that wasn’t de right type or size. LB]] Do you remember at the time thinking or noticing that maybe the industry was slowing down or coming to an end? DT]] Well we weren’t dere the last year, so I would imagine it influenced some. But I wadn’t there de last… it’s so long ago now to remember, but it became obvious. AT]] But I would say I definitely dinnae realize that it was going to finish that quickly. I thought it would come to an end eventually but not as quickly as it did you know. It was a huge operation, you see. DT]] We watched it slow down… AT]] Oh yeah, definitely slowing’ doon no question about that. DT]] So we were aware of dat. AT]] Dey were having to go far farther away to catch de whales and dat yeah, different areas and dat. LB]] How did that feel as a whaler? AT]] I don’t know… DT]] We were reasonably young then so we were chasin’ other things. I think it woulda been more difficult for some of the older ones. They’d been at it for a long while. LB]] So you think it was that this industry was ending but that you could move on? AT]] Yeah, that’s right. DT]] I went back to da merchant navy and also went fishin’. So we kinda moved on, but for the older ones it woulda been more difficult. AT]] Dere’s an awful lot of businesses in Shetland were started up wi’ money fae da whaling. And a lot of dem still going to dis day. De men dat went down dere was wantin’ to build a new house maybe or somethin’ like dat and dey went down dere to get money and maybe buy a fishin’ boat or maybe start up some sorta kinda business or… LB]] Through the heritage trust that they had set up? Is that what you mean? AT]] No, just their money. Doon dere you, maybe if you look back on it de wages wasn’t as bad as you really thought it was but you saved it, you couldnae spend it, you couldna spend a penny, money was no use to ya so you saved up everything you had. LB]] And what was going on at home? Were you married at the time? DT]] No, no. LB]] So your money was just in your bank account. Or maybe being allotted to your family. AT]] That’s right, yeah. 105
LB]] Partly what I’m interested in understanding, too, is your perspectives in terms of when anti- whaling activism started up which was really much later after whaling had ended. Do you remember what you thought about that? AT]] Didnae see too much about it all, more or less whaling finished. A lot of dose people just lookin’ for somethin’ to do, dey really don’t understand de industry at all and de reason for it, dey just don’t want to understand it. For dey used to go down dere and shoot seals and stuff to begin wi’ before whaling started, and dey said de seals was all extinct and dey would never come back again, dey were finished. Now dey’re back and dere’s thousands, far more than was dere before. So de whales will be de same thing, they’ll be back again dere’s no question about dat. LB]] Do you see any parallels, because you went into fishing after, are there any parallels with overfishing challenges? AT]] Probably in some ways, but de fishin’ is over-regulated, dere are too many rules and regulations and half of dem was doin’ no good at all and I always thought dat dey were a couple of more things dat dey coulda done and every fisherman woulda paid attention to it if dey thought dey was doin’ any good but dey are so many complicated rules and regulations it’s just nonsense. It’s not doin’ any good at all. LB]] I remember reading that in 50s many people thought that about the IWC, that there were these rules and quotas that they had set up but that they actually weren’t working at all in the first place. DT]] I think the rules woulda worked if everyone obeyed de rules. This was way before, no one obeyed da rules. [indecipherable] It didn’t seem possible to bring dem into line some of dem. AT]] No, dere didnae seem to be the will to do it, da governments were not ready to address it at dat time, it was not a big industry as far as dey were concerned, dey really weren’t worried. It was all when dis environmental people started to shout about it dey started paying attention den. DT]] You have to have regulation for everything, you have to have regulations on fishin’ or dere wouldn’t be any fish but… de regulations is made so remotely from where fishin’ is takin’ place dat people makin’ the regulations doesn’t seem to understand it. AT]] No, dey don’t. It’s the same wae a lot of dat sorta thing. I think personally dey seem to put off da balance with de things they are doin’. Dey’re protectin’ one species and den it’s affecting the next one. LB]] At the time there was this push by the Ministry of Food to try and see if Brits would maybe start eating whale, and the idea was that maybe whaling would be considered more ethical if we were using all the meat from it. I wondered, I know that whalers have often eaten whale when they were in South Georgia, and I wondered what you thought of that. AT]] It was splendid, excellent. Nothin’ wrong with it at all. LB]] What do you think of that idea of trying to get Brits to eat it? AT]] Well dey did try it for awhile but it didn’t seem to work. LB]] Why do you think? AT]] Well dere’s nothin’ wrong with dat. A lot of people say ‘Oh shootin’ whales and dat you shouldnae do it,’ but what I always say to dem is what’s the difference wi’ killin’ a whale and killin’ any other animal? You can kill a sheep or a cow or a pig or anything, people kills them and eats them so what’s the difference fae a whale? LB]] Well what is the difference, do you think? AT]] I don’t know… DT]] The meat, not so much now but at the time, we were quite regularly eatin’ meat, the Shetlanders. They drove the whales ashore on Shetland, same as dey do on Faroe yeah? Dey drove them ashore and they used the meat, they used the oil and the meat. AT]] It wasn’t bein’ wasted, it wasn’t... it wasn’t being dumped. DT]] It wadn’t [indecipherable] in Shetland eatin’ whale meat but… 106
AT]] I imagine it’s just marketin’. I think if it had been marketed in different ways. In Norway and dat you can buy it very regularly everywhere in shops and everything. DT]] Oh yeah. AT]] Faroe and Iceland and all dat. And dere’s no reason why it’s shouldna’ be, it’s not dat different from any other animal. LB]] Do you remember the first time you ate whale? AT]] We used to get it sometimes but not very often. LB]] How would it be cooked? AT]] Just like steak. DT]] Yeah. AT]] It looked very much the same. Maybe slightly darker but very little difference. DT]] It was hung up for awhile though, it was very oily, it was hung up for awhile and den all the black was cut off of it, dey hung it up for awhile to… AT]] Yeah de oil seemed to come to the outside and dey had to cut off de outside. DT]] But over de years dere were a lot of men from Yell in de whaling. AT]] Oh yeah… DT]] About a hundred… AT]] See, I think were more fae Yell in the population than any other where in Britain. LB]] Really? So you grew up on Yell? DT]] Yeah, yeah. LB]] So what was that like when you left for instance to go whaling? Were there lots of men just leaving the island? AT]] Oh yeah. DT]] Yeah, yeah. AT]] You’re seein’ lots of things you’d never seen before. LB]] Like what? AT]] Well you’d never seen a train before, no trains here. All the shops and the busy cities and dat, you’d never seen dat before. You’d just see it all as you went along. LB]] What do you think it was like back here? When the men had gone to whaling? AT]] There was certainly a big difference, it was a lot quieter and dat. DT]] All dese men was always going away from Shetland. AT]] Yeah, dey was always goin’ away. DT]] Always. Traditionally dey were seamen goin’ all the time. A lot of dem from Shetland and here in Yell was merchant seamen. Men was away for long periods. Probably not so long we started men would be away years, two or three years sometimes. Some come home and the kids are three years old and you’d never seen them before. AT]] It cost so much money and time before dey would get home here to Shetland and dat dey couldnae afford to do it dey just paid off one ship and signed on another one. But de whaling I would say was a good thing for Shetland and I’m pretty certain if it was still goin’ today there’d be a lot of men still goin’ tae it. DT]] Oh there would be. LB]] One thing I’m interested in hearing your opinion on is that there seems to be kind of some connections between whaling and the Second World War. Many people had gone to whaling because you could bypass your conscription that way and I wondered if that way anything you noticed other than about what the products were used for… AT]] Dere were not much whaling during the war, down dere for Salvesen. Fae Salvesen lost an awful lot of their ships and dat. So dey werenae a lot of whaling during the war like. But you could go to the merchant service, it was the same thing, and you were not called up. So it was the same thing. 107
DT]] I probably woulda went to sea anyway because there weren’t any other jobs here. But I would’ve gone anyhow to avoid going into the army. LB]] Why? AT]] It’s a different style of life and you were not used to it. It’s a different type of life. DT]] Wasn’t the same as whaling, dere were more rules. [laughs] AT]] It wasn’t a case of it was more dangerous for de merchants men lost during de war is what was… it was not only dat. Far more dangerous. DT]] In Shetland, far far far more men were lost in the merchant navy and den dat’s only become recognized in recent years, the contribution that Shetland made to war efforts. The merchant navy wasn’t really in high profile now, people was more aware of it and the contributions the merchant navy made. It was absolutely central. Dat’s who was bringin’ in all the supplies.
[[30:13]]
LB]] I suppose it’s interesting too to think that, I think one of you mentioned that many of the Salvesen ships were lost… AT]] An awful lot of them, yeah. Quite a lot. LB]] So I think there were some interesting technological parallels as well. Because the war brought asdic as well. And people seemed to think that asdic was quite unethical. I gather. DT]] There’s so many ships that were lost. But dere were no, I mean, it’s difficult to know now what’s so far, at that time dere were nothin’ [indecipherable]… AT]] Nothin’ at all. DT]] On the factory ships you couldnae process de gut and dat and in South Georgia everything was used, absolutely everything. Dere was no waste at all. LB]] Was that important do you think? AT]] Oh yeah, absolutely. LB]] How come? AT]] Well dere was nothin’ wasted, you don’t like to see waste of any kind with animals or whales or anything and half of them were being wasted and not bein’ used. DT]] What we used on de… what we called the shore station, dere was a lot of pollution, but everything was… the meat wasn’t being used as meat, because all processing was made into meat meal and all the bones was made into bone meal and the meat extraction plants, absolutely everything was… LB]] Of course that’s also kind of linked to post-war rationing, the idea that we needed to feed a lot of people and this might be one way we could do it because we’re… DT]] That was very essential at dat time. LB]] How did you experience the change from it being that essential to maybe not. Do you have any memories of that? DT]] When you’re in your teens and early 20s you weren’t too, you think about other things and you’re more realistic with what… you weren’t payin’ so much attention. AT]] But dere were an awful lot of plant and machinery down dere it was unbelievable, dey could do nearly any job it didnae matter what it was. Repair anything, make anything. LB]] What was it like to arrive there? AT]] Well, dere’s a lot of different opinions on dat I would say. The sight of it I thought it was the most beautiful place I had ever seen, the scenery and dat. DT]] Oh yeah. AT]] Unbelievable to me. Some thought it was terrible place to look at. DT]] I didn’t find it terrible at all, I thought it was fine. 108
AT]] But there was mighty changeable weather, you’d get some days just like this like and den the next day it could be snowin’ and dat. LB]] So again in Shetland, you’re used to that. AT]] The changing weather, yeah. DT]] Mountains were what you couldn’t see in Shetland. AT]] One time we’d be on the island, when you’re finished work and like you could go and have a wash and what you do, you’d go on a bit of a walk around and dat. You’re on the factory ships you couldnae get away from it, you’re on dere all de time. LB]] And you were working all the time, it sounds like, too. AT]] You worked long days on shift, you were 12, you were workin’ all de time. But a bit more freedom I would say on de island. DT]] Oh yeah. LB]] Did it feel at the time that you were working on a factory or did it feel as if you were working at sea? AT]] On de island no, it was a little village doon dere, you had a fairly big hospital dere, your laundry, bakeries, butcher shops. Everything was there. De last job that I had, what Dan was saying, was in dat meat extract plant, I worked two seasons in dat. It was just the water dey used to boil de meat and water fae da whales and stuff like dat it was turned into stuff like Bovril and a lot of it was used in soups and dat. LB]] Which, people then didn’t know that they’d be eating whale. AT]] They didnae know dat a whale… [laughs] LB]] Right? I read a document in the archives and it’s a letter from the Ministry of Food to the Discovery Committee people which I know had been on some of the boats down there. And it says that they’re interested in a proposal for opportunities for eating whale and for distributing it through Britain, of course at first we would not tell anyone that they were eating whale. And I thought that was kind of interesting because if that happened today, oh my goodness! But at the time they seemed to think that, yeah, we’ll just supply it and tell them later. DT]] [indecipherable] picking it all apart, saying… [indecipherable] regarding whaling [laughs] AT]] Nah, it all goes out to marketin’ I think. The whole thing was… LB]] What is the right way to market whale? Other than to ask what the difference is between a whale and a cow. AT]] They’d have to know how good it was for you and all dat. No fat. All the benefits of it. LB]] It’s interesting because it makes me think that we hold whales to a different esteem in our minds than a cow. AT]] Yeah. That’s what I ask dem and dey can’t answer, dey don’t know what to say. I mean what’s de difference? DT]] It’s just dat de, I don’t know, the attitudes change. I mean, whales are just an animal same as cow, sheep or anything, it’s just an animal and it’s quite acceptable to kill all of the domestic animals and dat’s okay so what’s the difference? LB]] What about the idea of extinction? I mean, you said that you don’t think that there was really much of a chance that they would go extinct… AT]] No, no. DT]] If they stopped whalin’ all together dey certainly. They’d bounce back, yeah. They take a lot more to grow so obviously it takes a whale a lot longer for it to completely replace what was dere before, but it never gone extinct. AT]] I tend to go on back far more than everybody ever realizes. [indecipherable] and dey don’t want to do, dey know it but dey don’t want to do much research into… de only one, I think the blue whale dey don’t have much research on it, dey know dey’re comin’ back dere, as compared to what dey were, but dey don’t do any research on it. Dey know dey’re comin’ back. 109
LB]] How did it feel to hear people talk about whaling as if it was this horrible thing after you had worked in it? DT]] I don’t know if dere was dat general feelin’… LB]] Not when you were there. I mean kind of later on. DT]] Not that I can remember anyway. AT]] No, dere wasn’t very much ever said about it at all. LB]] From what I found there were a few letters to the editor sometimes from the humane society and they were discussing the cruelty of the exploding harpoon and there were some people, Lillie, he was very interested in the electric harpoon. But again that didn’t take off because it didn’t seem that public pressure was that interested in it. But when it did turn, I wonder how that would have felt 30 years later and you’re hearing these people talk about how horrible whaling is. AT]] A lot of us as it went along were learnin’ different ways to do things and all dat as you go along and the people complainin’ about it dey weren’t prepared to put any money to research different ideas or better ideas, dey complained it wasn’t bein’ done right but didnae want to put any money… it’s da same today, dey sit back and complain about it but what do they do, they don’t put any money into it, dey don’t invest anything intae it to try and improve it. It was the same with whaling it was just the companies that was doin’ it that tried to do the best they could at the time like and den it just moved on. DT]] A lot of it had to do with demand. I mean, yeah, dere was big demand for whales so people was going to exploit dat. AT]] Of course dey were. Yeah. DT]] As far as de crew was concerned, I mean… it’s difficult to know at dat time any better method of killin’ de whale, I mean okay dere were harpoon fired at de whale and it exploded inside de whale, but if it didn’t kill de whale den dey fired in what dey called ‘killer harpoons’ to finish de whale off. It was done as humanely I think as was possible at dat time. Probably now dere’d be better methods of doin’ it but Salvesen and nobody says how it could be done better.
[[41:32]]
DT]] Svend Foyn and the exploding harpoon, I mean brilliant guy and the way he’s, I don’t know the word… AT]] Dere’s a big statue of him in Norway. DT]] He’s within my mind he’s the worst that ever happened. He’s maligned. LB]] Whereas at the time he had really improved the industry. AT]] But I’m pretty sure if you went to some of these slaughterhouses with sheep and cow, you’d get your eyes all… I don’t think anybody realizes how bad that really is, it’s really terrible. LB]] Right, and so also I think kind of an issue that feeds into this is an idea of what you can see vs. what you can’t see. AT]] Absolutely. DT]] I think, Alister’s sayin’ about the slaughterhouses, I think they fairly were controlled den… some of de stories dat we hear about some of de EU countries… AT]] Aye, it’s tough. DT]] So I don’t think whaling was all dat bad. AT]] Not really, no. DT]] We didnae consider it bad when we were dere anyway. I can understand people thinking that, it was gory… LB]] I think that’s an interesting word because something can be gory but what is the line between gory and wrong? AT]] Absolutely. 110
LB]] This is why I like this topic, I’m kind of always trying to find that… where I’m from there’s a lot of protests about oil and gas and what it does to the environment, to the land itself as opposed to an animal. And yeah I’m always trying to figure out where it becomes wrong. But there seems to be… at some point we get to a public shift where we’ve now all decided it’s wrong. DT]] I think that’s exactly what happened with whaling. AT]] That’s just time moves on. All the time dat’s gone on from de days of de Indians in America, dey were shootin’ and killin’ dem and dat was nowadays we think dat was terrible but at dat time dey look on it like dat at all. I mean it’s moved on fae humans to animals, just a different time. LB]] So in your opinion, what do you think led to the end of the whaling industry? DT]] I think they were two factors – the whales became scarcer, and it was much more costly to hunt them because of the scarcity and the distance we were havin’ to go. And dere wasn’t the need for da whale products. AT]] Yeah, it’s just got replaced, it was a lot cheaper den. DT]] Yeah, it cost more and I guess a poorer return. LB]] What were the other things that were replacing it, that you noticed? AT]] Oil. Was the main thing I would say. Dere was an awful lot of use for de whale and different things, dey were, a lot of it was used perfumes and things like dat, dey didn’t realize how valuable dat was at one time. Now they find somethin’ else to do it. LB]] Same as lipstick and lots of products that you just wouldn’t think had it in it… AT]] Dere was stuff called amber grease but it had no smell, but everything it came in contact with it retained dat smell of what dat was, dat was the main thing we had. It was very expensive stuff. LB]] What was it for, do you remember? AT]] Well dey used it mostly in perfumes. LB]] Oh I see, okay. AT]] But it was actually a growth dat grew inside de whale, dat’s what it was. It wasn’t actually part of de whale as such. LB]] So it wasn’t a body part… AT]] It wasn’t, no. And I don’t think dere were many that realized that dey probably wouldn’t have used certain scents if dey knew it was being used for dat. DT]] There’s something that’s formed in the stomach of the whale… [indecipherable] de beak of de octopus broke down in de stomach of de whale. Yeah. Things just changed every year, dere’s soya and rapeseed oil and at the time of the whaling it just gradually got blitzed… LB]] When you came home, is that when you entered the merchant navy? Oh no I’m sorry, can you remind me what you did again? You had a croft? DT]] I was in the merchant navy. LB]] Right and then [looks at Alister] you went to the fishing right? Did you just do that right away? AT]] Yeah, more or less. LB]] Was it family business? DT]] No. LB]] What were you fishing for? AT]] White fish. Haddock, cod and so on. DT]] I had various jobs after the merchant navy. I worked on a fishing boat part-time, finished up salmon farming, started my own business. You have to be adaptable, living in Shetland. AT]] To survive. LB]] It does seem like it, certainly. You have to be… But you worked the land? DT]] I never worked the land… LB]] Oh, I mean more that you rely off of natural resources. DT]] Oh right, yeah. I tell everybody that I retired from crofting when I was 15. I absolutely hated it.
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[[50:28]]
LB]] [[On migratory work]] It’s a different way of life, and I think it affects the way that people that are from there perceive their work. I think it’s a different way than thinking of work as a place where you go in everyday. It’s different to go in for a long period of time for the sake of earning money. AT]] Here too, when the whales had gone away and you’re going back to Yell, you’re spending it on the island. And everybody was getting the benefit of it in some ways, you’re spending your money in the shops or de village halls or the church or whatever. So it was really helping everybody, it was money dat was coming into de community that would never come any other way. So in a way it helped develop a lot of things. LB]] Was it a prosperous time here? AT]] Yeah. DT]] There was a lot less people, peoples moved. [indecipherable] people moved to the towns. AT]] Dere was no opportunity in the merchant side and dat was what used to be dere and it’d gone to sea. LB]] But is that similar to what it was like when you were whaling… is what I meant… AT]] No, dere are more opportunities now and definitely jobs. Salmon farming I would say is de big thing now in Shetland. That’s what saved de islands here is salmon farming. LB]] Oh, I had assumed it was North Sea oil and gas. AT]] No, I would say the salmon farming is more important as the oil. DT]] Salmon farming started here and dere are farms all over de place on small scale, some dem didn’t last very long at all. AT]] See, de oil, dere was an awful lot of people that’s come in from de outside, it’s not Shetland people dat’s workin’ in de oil, but nearly all de salmon dat’s nearly all Shetland people dat’s workin’ in de salmon and it’s in more outlying districts and islands. DT]] Dere’s not a lot of small operators, it’s all big operators. Big operators taking over de small ones. AT]] I know it’s… aren’t dere any independent ones? DT]] No, dere are three big companies now controllin’ de whole thing. AT]] De one here is Canadian, idn’t they? DT]] Yep, Canadian, yep. Cook. AT]] Dey own all de ones on de island here. DT]] Dey own the ones here in de North Isles now. Unst and Fetlar, Cook owns. LB]] Interesting to think, too, that… I mean there are parallels too with whaling in that where there’s one employer that’s kind of giving all these communities work, right? So what happens if that employer decides that they’re no longer going to whale? Or farm salmon? DT]] Well, we were in salmon farmin’ 17 years, we trawled up de [indecipherable] and dey were in it for 13 years and now dey been bought out by Cook. It’s just natural progression that you cannot keep on competing with da big boys because… AT]] I’d say a big thing too, Dan would know salmon better than I do, but the good years and bad years everything with fishin’. The smaller ones couldnae stand de bad years for the cost of feed and everything was so much. But de bigger companies can, they donae mind de bad year for the next year they can make it up again. But small individual ones couldnae do dat. DT]] Certainly in de 20s, maybe in de 30s, some of them thought it was easy money dey could do on a part-time basis [laughs] LB]] I guess I wonder, too, because whaling was also quite cyclical in that many people thought that by the end of the 1930s it was going to be done and then it kind of came back. So I suppose no one knows… AT]] No, it’ll never be back again. Never happen again. No. 112
LB]] Because people would be so against whaling? AT]] Yeah, exactly. DT]] And den, whale products wouldnae been… AT]] No, they wouldnae get de value for dem. DT]] Dey’d be competin’ against so many other products. I think. AT]] What I was sayin’ about de seamens, dere could easy be a cull on seals dere, dere are so many dere dey could easy do dat. And it wouldnae hurt de population at all. But I don’t think it will ever happen. LB]] Seal culls are very controversial… DT]] Same as whaling. AT]] Dere are plenty of dem now it would be easy to do dat. LB]] I mean it does make you wonder, them, if we just have romanticized part of the world. Or the ocean. AT]] If dere are any reason dat the whales and dat would be extinct now I think it’s what de big problem is dat dere’s krill fishing and dat’s what de whales eat. And some dese big boats now is fishin’ for krill and dere workin’ with big trawls now, big nets on de side of de boat and dere towing through the shoals of krill and fish’s going right into de mouth of de net and the net is right downside and in de stern and into de factory. So dey’re just trawlin’ through de shoal all de time and into de factory and processed, and dey’re cleanin’ up de whole shoal as soon as dey find it. DT]] That could have a more detrimental effect on de whales as the hunting. AT]] If anything is going to stop de whales from comin’ back again it’s dat, dere’s no feed, no whales. Nothin’ for dem to eat. DT]] It’ll no’ happen quickly. AT]] De Japanese and de Russians, dey have plenty of resources dey put into it, it must be all government owned it’s not private companies like. So if dey thought dere was money in it dey would invest heavily in it I’m sure. So I think if there’s anything in the future it’s going to damage de whales going back that’s what it’ll be. DT]] Lots of countries abide by de same rules… AT]] But when you’re down dere, everybody’s interested in de birds and de wildlife, and it wasn’t dat de whalers didn’t care about anything ever. I was very interested to know what was happenin’ dere. LB]] It makes me wonder if companies can even follow quotas. Or if they’re just kind of looking for as much as they can get. Did companies want to conserve the resource, in your opinion? AT]] I think money speaks, I think. To be honest. If dere was enough money in it dey’ll paint de rules for companies dat suit themselves. In general, like. DT]] We’re inclined to make de rules better dan some other countries that were whalin’. So I suppose at times there was a disadvantage dere. AT]] Dere was a lot of dat, which is dat dere was no experience needed to get into makin’ rules and regulations. Just down dere in South Georgia de big thing is no whaling, dat’s de wildlife dat dey’re interested… dere are thousands of tourists going dere every year now, all dose cruise ships, and one of de whaling stations dere is Grytviken, so the Norwegian station, and dey took what, all de environmental people and de experts of de day went doon dere and dey cleared it up and dey took away this and took away de next and now I spoke to a fellow dat’s runnin’ a lot of dat tours down dere and he says dey’ve ruined it. The thing dat people was interested to go and see is de whaling station and now you can’t recognize it. Dey’ve taken and dumped everything and buried it and you can… it’s a lot of old rusty iron and dat it’s not what people is lookin’ to see. DT]] Good big rats, dere. Nothin’ to see there now dat dey’ve been eradicated. Dey’re huge.
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DT]] De whaling will never return. AT]] No, it’ll never return. DT]] I can’t see it, there’d need to be radical changes to de world before whaling ever comes back. LB]] What else do you think is important for me to know about those kind of end years for Salvesen and for you? AT]] It’s surprisin’, I mean we say de whaling is finished and de emphasis down dere is wildlife and tourists and dat, but den again a lot of the people dat’s runnin’ that now are makin’ de rules and regulations so complicated dey can’t control it and can’t police it. If dey made it simpler, people would stop and paid attention tae it. But it’s just so ridiculous tryin’ to do everything dey say you’re supposed to do. Down dere, people go for walks, dey can’t step on de grass and dey can’t drop anything on de ground, dey have to pick it up. It’s just ridiculous. In de old whaling station and dat people are interested to go down and have a look at it to see what it was and how it was. But dey blame asbestos, dat’s what dey’re trying to say. Dat’s probably right in a way but I think there are only about two persons who I knew that was at whaling dat died of the asbestos. And dey had maybe gotten it before dey went doon dere. Asbestos, everything was steam-driven dere and everybody was rubbin’ against pipes, especially in the factory ships and dat. But nobody ever got… dat’s what dey’re usin’ I think as an excuse to stop de people from goin’ to de whaling station. But I think the whole truth of all dis is they’re frightened for de tourists steppin’ on a piece of old iron and cuttin’ dere leg or hand or something and suin’ de company. LB]] Well it’s quite a dangerous situation aside from asbestos risk. DT]] Dere was always suin’ and claimin’… AT]] De stuff dat was left dere was unbelievable, it was never really cleaned up. LB]] It’s almost a ghost town… DT]] ‘Tis, yeah… people’s not allowed in dere now. Plenty of wildlife will still be dere. Dere were seals in de winter, de seals when we were dere were lyin’ solid on de beaches. AT]] By de thousands. And for eradicatin’ de rats, I think it was gone, dey was only livin’ on de small outlyin’ islands, but now dey’re comin’ back on de mainland again. Yeah so dere are signs of dem recovering again. [[discussion of rats returning and their recovery over time.]] DT]] Whales will come back to, after dis krill fishin’. LB]] You think they’ll come back faster than recovery from overfishing, is that what you said? AT]] No, it takes a long time. Not short term, but wae time and no one disturbin’ dem. LB]] What else do you think I should know? AT]] Well how many do you have here? LB]] I’m interested in your insights into the final days so if you remember anything about that I’d be happy to hear it. AT]] I’d say we never really realized that it was just going to finish as quickly as it did, we always thought dere was going to be another season. DT]] We were aware it was runnin’ down and we wouldn’t be goin’ to it much longer. But it did finish quicker dan we expected. AT]] A lot doon dere on the island, when you’re doon dere if you stayed out of dis country every year den we paid income tax to the Falkland Island government, which was a lot less dan British tax. So dat encouraged you to stay dere… and a lot of de stuff dat dey took doon dere, they didnae pay anything tax to take it doon to South Georgia but it actually belongs to de Falkland Islands. And if dey took it away again dey had to pay so much to the Falkland Island government so it was all, a lot of stuff was left dere. But I would say we did notice a couple of seasons before a lot of de stuff dat we had in stock dere, the big stores and dat, like sheets of metal and pipes and all dat, dey started to take a lot of dat away, to reduce dat stock. But I mean you wondered why dey were doin’ it but 114 nowadays dat’s de way things are done, you don’t carry any stock, but doon dere dey had to have plenty and we did notice a lot of dat stuff dey were takin’ it away. LB]] So they weren’t giving you any official communications? AT]] No. Dey knew, I think a lot longer before dey ever said anything about it. Dey really knew themselves it was comin’ to an end very shortly. Dey were preparing for de best dey could. But dere is so much doon dere, dey had a bakery and equipment and dat was in it, everything was just left. And all dat workshops and dat huge big machines, lathes and things like dat, dat was worth a lot of money but everything was just left. Walked oot and left it. DT]] I mean, we were self-sufficient. Foundries and everything. LB]] So how did it then happen where it was just that no one… people were never called back? AT]] Yeah, dat’s right. I think the ones who’d been at de factory ship kept goin’ after dat. Dey on the island got works to go back with jobs on de factory ship if dey wanted. LB]] But there was never anything that said they were closing Leith Harbour? DT]] No. AT]] No. We left dere and we thought you’d be back again next year if you wanted. DT]] Yeah, two factory ships and one of dem did the last season, so it became very obvious dat it was finishin’. AT]] Dey tried to run it down slowly, but… I’d say de last year on the island dey never realized there’d never be anymore. AT]] I think it’d be very interesting now to go back and take a look at it. [[discusses production of the BBC miniseries]] LB]] Of course this is what I’ve been studying so I find it interesting, but to understand some of these jobs and how hard it was to be someone who cleaned a tank where sperm whale oil went, that’s crazy… DT]] Cleaning the tanks? Oh yeah, I did that. [indecipherable] AT]] See de oil was edible and had to, de tank had to be inspected with white suits and white gloves on. Dey had chemists down dere and dey were testin’ it all de time. DT]] And washin’ de ships and cleanin’ de ships….
DT]] 50 plus years is too much for an old brain. LB]] It’s a long time ago… [[on activism]] AT]] No effect at all, I would say. DT]] No, just a combination of different factors. AT]] Dat depends on who you speak to, everybody will have different ideas on dat. And some of de ones dat you speak to was never actually at whaling and dey’ll have a different idea of that. LB]] I haven’t interviewed anyone who wasn’t at de whaling, although I have interviewed… I’m interested in hearing wives’ perspectives or family members perspectives of being at home when your loved one is away and what it means when that industry ends. DT]] A lot of dem that you could interview, the men wouldn’t have been married at de time. Dat’s going to be difficult. LB]] You’re right, though I think I could more generally speak to community members. So maybe unmarried women whose fathers were whalers or people who lived in Shetland and their economy was run on this cycle. AT]] Even people in the merchant navy, it was some of de same idea, dey were away from home anyway. LB]] Right, so it doesn’t matter at that point if you’re in Antarctica or if you’re on a cargo liner. AT]] You’re just not at home, and dat’s it. But one thing, the communication was awful bad, six weeks was probably the newest letters you would get. Sometimes during de winter time, I don’t 115 know if you got more than two or three letters in six months in de winter, dere was nothin’ else. It was all old news before you got it. DT]] No mobile phones. AT]] You could send a telegram and you would get a telegram of somebody who had died, or a child was born, you just got a few lines on de telegram, dat was all you knew. DT]] It was difficult to be in line with things in Shetland here when we were young. Just to give you an example, when we were children the nearest phone was 2.5 miles away, and now it’s in your pocket. That’s a long period I know… AT]] I mean we had no electricity and no running water, none at all. LB]] So in that sense you go to Antarctica and it’s not the biggest deal, right? AT]] No. Not a big deal at all. DT]] People… going to the city was a different thing. LB]] Do your families now think that it’s exciting that you went? AT]] I don’t know what dey think! I think after all those years, there seems to be a bond among whalers, I don’t know why or how, you can still to this day… very much keep in contact with people. DT]] There’s a reunion every… But yes, there’s a bond far more than among merchant seamen. AT]] Yeah. I don’t know why, but… LB]] Do you think it might have something to do with the fact that you were at the other end of the world? Truly. AT]] You were very close together, you were very… DT]] Yeah, you’re completely as far away as you could be. And you had to get along. LB]] And you were never going into shore.
[[AT02]]
[[The slop chest]]
DT]] Dere was watches and all things. Some people, a few went crazy and bought all those things, den at the end of the season dey didn’t have a lot of money. You bought clothes and dat, and maybe a small transistor radio, you bought what you needed. Some people just went crazy. AT]] It felt like you didn’t have to be paying for it. And dere were even some dat would come home even after during de season doon dere with a fair bit of money and dey’d be sorry stupid wi’ it. Dey’d spend every penny at de end of the de season, dere was nothin’ left. Some of dem down dere would leave the ship and say dey’d never be back again, first ones you’d meet next year was goin’ back again, just broke, no money left. DT]] Latterly, you couldnae get all your money when you come home. Dey only give you what dey called the sub, because so many people had been so crazy and lost dere… LB]] And then you would get your bonus after that... AT]] But your sub, you only get so much money… when you paid off de shop dey’d give you so much money to buy presents and dat and get home and den you’d only get de money when you’d got home. DT]] Just to protect de idiots. AT]] To make sure you could… one fella down dere, he never sent any money home to da wife at all. And some of de boys down dere knew dat de wife was bloody poor, she had no money, and den dey concocted a story among demselves dat dere was tax you would save if dey sent de money home… so dey didnae say it directly to him but dey kept sayin’ it so he heard it, so after dat he went to de office and asked dem to send home his allotment! He thought to save all dis tax money! DT]] Yeah, dere were bad boys and good guys at de whalin’, we were probably in between! [laughs] LB]] I think that’s very self-aware to admit that. 116
AT]] Dere are quite a few stories dat you could not publish at all. LB]] There’s only so much trouble you can get up to on a ship though, right? DT]] When de whalers came to shore… AT]] One fellow was down dere who did de winter, I knew, he got a telegram home sayin’ congratulations the wife has had twins. He couldnae understand dat he’d been away 18 months. So den de boys say to him, ‘Well it was twins, one twin was nine months and de twins had to be 18 months!’ You met all kinds. AT]] Dere was very little reaction doon dere. LB]] Well there was a ski jump, a ski hill? AT]] Dat was only in de winter time. But it was mostly all de Norwegians dat did dat. You had to make your own entertainment. But you had all sorts of hobbies, things that you made. LB]] Well thank you for having us to your house, Dan.
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John Winchester 12 July 2017 Brae
LB]] What was your interest in whaling? JW]] Well, my grandfather, my father, my uncles and all were involved in some kind of whaling. [[interrupted by his daughter, who sits down]] JW]] This is my oldest daughter… So, I suppose… see dere used to be four whaling stations in Shetland. De last one closed down in 1929. Dere were two a bit further north of Burravoe and one at de North Roe and dis one down de road here at Ulna dat was… three of dem are Norwegian companies but de one here was a company in Scotland called Salvesen and dey were de operators and owners of it. And about 1909, Salvesen started gettin’ interested in de whaling in South Georgia down on Antarctic and people from dis whaling station at Ulna were recruited to go down dere and dat’s how it happened and it followed on. It finished in 1962-63. LB]] And from what I understand, you were there from 1947 on? What year did you start? JW]] 1948. LB]] And what was your job? JW]] Engine room. De ship was a floating factory and of course it needed power to process de whales so it needed electricity and it needed de steam and dat’s what came from de engine room. De engine room supplied de power on de ship and even de ship itself, de power was [indecipherable]. De ship was named de Southern Venturer and she was started to be built in 1944 under de instruction of Winston Churchill, de prime minister, because he knew dat after de war dere were going to be a great shortage of lubricants and margarine and oils of different kinds. So he knew dat dey needed dat, but by de 1960s de synthetic oils were takin’ over and de price was droppin’ of de real stuff. LB]] Was that something that you noticed at home, in your own life? Or was it something you only heard about? JW]] I suppose dat de only contact you really had was margarine, it could have been whale oil it and you don’t know, dey just sell it at de shop. And den as things got modernized, the most recent plant dat came was an Oxo plant and dey made Oxo, Bovril, meat extract dat was taken ashore and made into… de problem with it was they couldn’t sell it in the U.K., it didn’t have a license, but it had it in Europe, so all de Oxo went to Europe. LB]] I saw some documents from the Ministry of Food and it says they’re talking about how to convince British people to eat whale. JW]] See the thing was, de mistake dey made dere was, they sold de whale beef in a fish shop and dat didn’t, it didn’t taste anything like a fish. If dey had sold de whale meat in a butcher shop dey would probably have made something of it. LB]] Why do you think that is? JW]] Well de whale steak was good, it was very lean and had very little fat on it. And oh it was good, it was cooked in a nice and de gravy you know and de soup, dere was no doubt about dat. LB]] When you were there, what was your life at home. Were you married? Did you have kids? JW]] Towards de end of, 57 I think is… LB]] So right near the end? JW]] But den de Japanese were in and dey were trying to buy de outfits and almost sort of bought it and den dere was a lot of talk and all dat and eventually de Japs did get both ships, dere was two ships operating out of Scotland. De Southern Harvester and Southern Venturer, and so the maintenance boat here was in South Shields, Middle Dock. I think old Salvesen probably owned a bit of Middle Dock, and de other place was across in Norway and about seven miles from a town called Tonsberg. And one of dem would lie dere from part of the summer, de other one would be in de dry 118 dock in Middle Dock and den de changeover came in. So, it was busy. And down in… dat picture dere is Leith Harbour, de one dere in de black frame, dat’s Leith Harbour. LB]] What was it like to arrive there? JW]] It was alright. No, it was… well, it was busy, people were workin’ twelve hours a day, seven days a week. And den de other place around de corner from Leith Harbour was a place called Stromness, and dat was de maintenance base and dere were two floatin’ docks dere and people about de ship. Anything you needed. Dey built a floatin’ dock, de floatin’ dock was actually in Smiths Dockyard, and de plate work was all made and all de holes bored and all dat and it came down like a kit. And then on de beach in Stromness it was all puttin’ it together. And when dey came to launch it on de ramps it didn’t want to go. So they thought, ooh, we’ll need to grease de ramps to get ‘em to slide. But dey found out dey had used up most of dere engineering grease. But dey had plenty of margarine, and dey used de margarine on de boat and winched it up! But dey could make anything, they were mechanical and engineering people, dey could make anything. And de most odd thing that they made was an iron lung. LB]] For who? JW]] Dey had to get on to Cape Town and ask de medical people what an iron lung did, and dey got some and set to and dey made one! So dey could make anything. But dere were plenty stores, plenty equipment, dere was no shortage of anything. LB]] Someone told me that they had an idea that whaling was coming to an end because the stores weren’t being replaced. Do you remember that? JW]] No. Dere was never any shortage of anything, dere was plenty, but towards de end I suppose was painted black, she had a black hull and de Southern Venturer had a grey hull like a warship. And of course de Southern Venturer was sold off to de Japs first, and de next season out and operating it was grey, all de grey paint from de Southern Venturer had gone and painted de black ship grey. So dey didn’t buy any more black paint, dey used de paint dey had. LB]] How did you experience the end of the industry? Did you notice at the time that it was wrapping up? JW]] Oh yeah. Dey were no information comin’ about de buyin’ and sellin’ was… dat started about 1957 maybe, rumours started at de dock and dat. LB]] Is that how it would get passed around? JW]] Yeah, well it was somebody picked up something and dey added a bit, and on… And of course, when dey had everything dey wanted dey had de factories and Leith Harbour, dey had a hospital in Leith Harbour and it was two doctors and on de floating factory ship dere was one doctor in de hospital. And a boy, 16 or 17 years old, I suppose, runnin’ about de food and all dat. And so dere was no… den we got supply ships dat came to de floatin’ factory, Southern Opal and Southern Garden, Southern Satellite. Dere was a newer one, and took de fuel in, de stores in and fuel in, and took away whale oil because it could only hold so much. And de Southern Venturer she had 36 cargo tanks, dey were four across, two end tanks and two centre tanks. Dey would have been carryin’ outward-bound, carryin’ de fuel oil, but den once the operation started and de whales started comin’ de whale oil had to be stored in dese tanks. So dere was a lot of tank cleaning and when dey’d washed de tank and de tank was ready, den dey needed a chemist and de chemist would come down and inspect de tank to see if it was fit for storin’ whale oil, dere had to be no contamination. Each of dese tanks had about 500 tons. And den dere was meat meal from de meat, which was put in sacks and was stored in de central tanks. Dere was a wooden frame in de bottom and it was built up, and so… dere was a lot goin’ on. LB]] In that sense, I’m interested in what whalers did after whaling ended? Because so many people were employed by it. What did you do? JW]] Oh, I had a change of trade. I went into de hotel trade. LB]] What made you do that? 119
JW]] I don’t know. But I was in de hotel trade for… LB]] Here in Brae? JW]] No, in Lerwick. For five years. And den I changed dat and I became a reservant. And I was dere for 27 years. LB]] What did you like about the whaling? JW]] Well. Dere was never a dull moment and de whaling crew was a mixed company, dere were British and Norwegian and Irish and a few Danes and dat. And dey were a great crowd, dey all got on very well. Very well. And so it went but dere was one thing about Salvesen, he was always on de outlook for something dat could make de job go better. He was always dat. And some of de things that appeared, the ones involved in it would sort of look at it and shake their head and grumble… LB]] Like what? JW]] And den, de next year they couldn’t have enough of it. LB]] What’s an example? JW]] An example was British ropes. British ropes made of nylon rope, so de line dat was on the de harpoon was one of dese nylon ropes and for the first trip, first season of it, de British ropes was experimented and dey got one rope for one catcher. But de other ones, de gunners would look at dat and say no, no, no. But dey gave it to dis guy and dey certainly found out dat he was fishin’ better dan dem, he was havin’ no problem with ropes and all dat sort of stuff. So, den de next season, everybody had ‘em. LB]] What about… what about failed examples? Like the electric harpoon. JW]] Svend Foyn was de man dat made de explosive harpoon and it was developed from dere. Other people, de Japanese, tried electric harpoons, but dat killed more gunners dan… it wasn’t suitable, really. But after dis gunner wae shootin’ whales dey were a big difference, some of dem was no problem but other ones were… and dey were strugglin’ but dey got paid on dere catch. LB]] Some of the stuff I’ve read said that the end of whaling was quickened because of technology. Would you have seen that? JW]] Uh… I don’t know. LB]] What do you think caused the end of whaling? JW]] Synthetic oils movin’ and killin’ de price. Dere were plenty of synthetic, all kinds of new synthetic things. Out of de sperm whale dey got glycerine and dey used glycerine for makin’ shells. And… but one of de stations up at Burravoe, dere was a small German company dat came before de first war in 1912 or 1910 and dey were only interested in sperm whales, so dey were lookin’ for glycerine. But dere were all kinds of cookers, kettles, dat boiled de oil and some of dem, dere were horizontal containers being rotated and cook it much quicker with the steam and harpoon cookers were made in Germany and de prototypes for de cookers was tried at Burravoe. Dere’s one of dem down dere yet, down in de mud. And de other thing that came along was… which today every house uses… was washing up liquid. Fairy soap. But in dat days it was… LB]] And of course there was a monopoly on producing that stuff with Unilever. So if they change their product, there goes the whaling. JW]] But all the whale oil we took in only went to Unilever at Liverpool. We used to take home penguins to the zoos! LB]] And a seal once or twice, I heard. JW]] De penguins came maybe 20-30 penguins. LB]] How would they catch them? JW]] The whalers just grab ‘em… and dey had a… on de ship where dey were dey had a swimmin’ pool de penguins would swim in and de area around de swimmin’ pool because de man who fed dem knew how many penguins he had. So he’d feed dem wae fish, dey had to go and fish at South Georgia to get de fish for de penguins, and dis day he came wi’ his bucktets wi’ his fish in and he was feedin’ de penguins and den de fish was finished, but dey was still penguins standin’ so what he 120 did was put a wooden gate below de pool and as he fed a penguin he put em on de other side. And de penguin was flying, a few of dem were, they would hop into de swimmin’ pool, swim across and wait to see if dey could get another! LB]] Well I don’t blame them really. JW]] So… Edinburgh zoo is full of penguins dat we brought. LB]] How did it feel for you, being a whaler in an industry that might not always last? JW]] Well. People had been at it all their life. Dey took de younger ones as dey came on, but de time was limited. LB]] Was there an understanding of it as being cyclical? JW]] It may come back in de long… but it wouldnae come back on de grand scale it was on and after de war when dere were so many ships lookin’ for whales. So dey were lots of factory ships and one or two shore stations still workin’ but dey were only on a small scale. LB]] So it was just a particular moment in time that moved on. JW]] Oh yeah… dey knew by de late 1950s dat de writing was on de wall. De Japanese were still going to be at it. Dey are probably still at it today, because Greenpeace goes down… LB]] What did you think when Greenpeace started their activism? JW]] Greenpeace was never… I don’t think they were active when I was whaling. LB]] No, but I wondered about later on, what you thought… JW]] Well I think there are different units of that lot, doin’ different things, and some of the units were a bit kind of… some of the, who’s the man with the white hair? LB]] Paul Watson. JW]] He pulled up here. Old sherriff locked him up here… but dey tend to hang around Faroes where dey have dese small whale gatherings now. And dat did happen on Shetland too, many many many years ago, cullin’ whales, put dem on de beach. LB]] In that sense do you think that whaling is part of Shetland? JW]] Oh yeah, I do. Whaling and Shetland was… previous to the second war and after de second war dere were no employment. Employment was very sparse and de whaling, dere were a lot of people, some of dese people grew up on de land in a croft and dey were down dere de summer, winter here, and when dey came home it was summer and dey could get on with their fuel or potatoes or you know. So it suited a lot of people. LB]] But it’s a different rhythm to life, I think. JW]] De womenfolk, dey kept de homefires burnin’ all winter when dey were away earnin’ some money. Dere is one or two businesses in Shetland today dat started through whaling. LB]] Did that happen through the Trust that Salvesen set up? JW]] I would say more with people dat saved dere money and den dey bought something. One of dem was a big pelagic fishin’ boat for research, cost millions. Dat man was at de whaling and saved up his whaling until he could buy his first boat and den de boat always got bigger and bigger so de present-day research is as big as you’ll find in Scotland. Salvesen Trust, de money from de Salvesen Trust is still around but it was mainly for smaller things like a crofter could buy a tractor or something like that. Another thing they bought a lot of was knitting machines and dere was a big, still is, knitting going on here one way or another. In dem days dere were lots. Knitwear kept de household goin’. But den as things have progressed in de last 30-40 year, fishing has grown, shell- fishing has grown, and den we have de oil. And de gas plant which can supply de whole of Scotland if dey want. So a lot of people had… present day Shetland is prosperous. Maybe not as much as in 1980s, 1990s dere was a whole lot of work goin’ on… LB]] Do you see any parallels between that and whaling? JW]] Yeah, well a lot of de whalers went dere. De oil industry, and different forums. A boat, a ship. Or buildin’ something ashore. But de whaling in its day probably was a saviour of Shetland because a lot of more people in Shetland would have cleared out to Australia and New Zealand and Canada. I 121 had a grand-aunt that went to America and built aircraft, and de last aircraft she worked on was de DC-9, and she was at de company for 40 years in Los Angeles. So people were drifin’ away. LB]] How did it feel for you to watch an industry over that amount of time? To go through whaling in such a dramatic time of history? JW]] It would appear dat in Norway, north of Norway, dere was some difficulty between de whalers and shore gang and dey went to Iceland, went to Faroe, and den came here and settled de shore station. And den probably 1920-22 or somewhere around dat kind of time, dese whaling companies were on de go in South Georgia and dey needed men with experience in whaling so they did recruiting here and dey went dere, and dat was de start that kept goin’. So de Southern Venturer sailin’ out of de U.K. or Norway goin’ down woulda had around 520 people on board. And you’d think the Southern Harvester would be doin’ about de same and den dere were other ships, Southern Garden and another few, dey all… so I think it saved the population of Shetland in de pre-war days. Because de tendancy would be to pack up and… which was happenin’ here in de mid-1800s people were goin’ out and sailin’ ships whole families and takin’ months and months to arrive at New Zealand or Australia. So it’s had its time. But I would imagine, see de South Georgia is a destination for cruise ships. I suppose dere’s lots of things for dem to see, still lots of buildings about and whatever. So dey’ve got as many cruise ships as we have here. 76 here this year! For de summer season. LB]] Do you have anything else that you want to add? JW]] The longest time I spent in Norway in the last days of April to mid-August. LB]] And then when would you sail again? JW]] October. Come back in April. But you could also stay over winter. LB]] Did you do that? JW]] Only once. But it was alright, it was one of de docks, one of the floatin’ docks and dat was alright. And what we did was there was four to a gang, what we did was propellers and rudders on de dock. A couple of days on a boat. And of course de boat might be dere for a couple of weeks, but de other gangs, the painters and them, would be on it. Occasionally de boss man would come in durin’ de day and he would go and help somebody that’s busy and so it was alright. But on one occasion, in de middle of de winter, dere was a tanker dat came in to take whale oil away, and when de workin’ season, and de last tanker went away, he didn’t empty de pipe between de pumphouse and de jetty and de whale oil inside dis pipe was hard and frozen solid. And dey couldnae pump anything, it wouldnae go anywhere. He said go and see what we can do, so we went and we tried workin’ with steam hoses and things to thaw it a little bit, but it didn’t. So this evenin’ we went for our tea 6 o’clock and we went back again and one dem said what to do is go to de store and get dis burlap sacking, and tear it up into strips and lay it underneath de pipe all de way from de pump house down to de jetty. And den we went to de fuel store and we got a barrel of petrol and we put two holes in de cork and put it on a sledge and pulled de sledge along de snow and de petrol goin’ onto dis. And den we went into de boiler house and we got little torches and we lit de boiler and den we spread out along de length of de pipe to fan de flame and de whole thing took burnin’ through. And by dis time it was 9 o’clock at night and de blow from de mountains and snow was whippin’ up. And who appeared around de corner of de building but de chief engineer and he says, ‘What are you doin’?’ So he looked and he seen what we’re doin’ and he said, ‘Why didn’t you do that yesterday?’ LB]] Did it work? JW]] Yeah it did, thawed out de whole thing along de length of de pipe. And den de various pumps go and put de warm oil down. So it was very amusing. LB]] And then there’s camaraderie amongst the whalers? JW]] Yeah, but it’ll never start again in the grand style it went on. But the Salvesens went from Norway to Leith of shippers of timber in the mid-1800s. And it grew from dere. But every young 122 one, of the family, all went to university and studied but when they finished their time, he sent dem to the whaling for a trip.
[[JW2]]
LB]] You said that your grandfather did it, your uncle. Is it part of you in that way? JW]] Yes. But it’s, yeah it’s a sort of follow-on. Dere was odd ones that didnae go on, went and did something else. They were over that. LB]] How old were you? JW]] Fifteen. I went the next year at sixteen. LB]] As a mess boy? JW]] Engine room. LB]] Engine room the whole time? JW]] Yeah… Dere was more British people, Scottish people in de engine rooms dan dere was Norwegians. Dere were a few but… LB]] So where does a Shetlander fit in that mix? JW]] Engineers were all U.K. Mainly Scottish and mainly from around Dundee. LB]] I interviewed someone from Dundee and he said that he never considered himself a whaler, just an electrician. He felt that because he never touched the whale or did anything with it, that he wasn’t a whaler. What do you think about that? JW]] Well, everybody that was there workin’ was doin’ something that was necessary to the production. And de production was de whales. So… but I mean there were lots of people had nothin’ to do with the whale in any shape or form, but de job dey did. An electrician would have to keep a machine goin’, it was being used for something. But it didn’t have anything to do with the animal. So. And de biggest whale I ever saw on board was 98 feet. LB]] What was it like to see that? JW]] It was big, big, big. It was a struggle to get it on board. It took up so much room comin’ up de slipway and on another occasion de day shift had had a busy day and a whale at de end of de shift. It was 38 whales or somethin’ like that. When de night shift came on dey went down and I think they did 47. LB]] Bit of a pride thing… JW]] Just what Salvesen’s lookin’ for… production. But that was humpback whales. Humpback whales is smaller but plenty oil in dem. But dey could only take dem four days a year, as a restriction. Dese people goin’ down dere now on cruiseliners tell me dere are plenty of humpbacks around. LB]] They may be bouncing back. JW]] Another thing that was dere in the earlier day was seals, dey took seals. And recently, de things they’ve been tryin’ to get rid of was de rats… [[talks about New Zealand rat extermination programme]] JW]] Dere was a cinema in Leith Harbour, and now and again dey got new films. De films came in with new films and dey switched. The Duke of Edinburgh was dere. But occasionally a Russian ship would come to de dock and he was never let off de dock until de money was paid in Leith. LB]] Right, I read that. JW]] And yeah. So yeah, it was… a little exciting. LB]] Do you miss it? JW]] What else… dere was de occasional film and telly, shows you some of de stations and dat. Dey were various stations, but in 1931 or so they more or less all closed except Leith Harbour and Grytviken. Grytviken was Argentine. Salvesen started de Falklands War?! Yeah. So trying to sell 123 dere old scrap to de Argentines. And de Argentine government got de idea to take an oil rig down and take charge of de place now. It didnae work. LB]] Do you have anything else that you think is important for me to include? JW]] What about you? LB]] You’ve answered my questions very well, and I appreciate it. JW]] I don’t think… we had… when de place was goin’ it was day and night. And it was always somebody dere I could think of when somethin’ went broken and dere were always someone who could fix it. And dey had machinists dat could machine… we had two helicopters (Mach 3?), and one of dem at one stage needed something with its carburation, which dey didn’t have a spare but one de machine men made it on his and it went on de helicopter. And it flew 3 or 4 months around de Antarctic wi’ it. And on de road home it was at de Bay of Biscay and de helicopter gang and dey flew up to de oval somewhere in Devon. When dis helicopter landed dey wouldn’t let him fly again. Dey says he was flyin’ with uncertified parts. LB]] A different era… JW]] Dey could do anything. If you needed it. Dere were carpenters and machinists and plumbers and electricians and every trade was around. And sometimes it was an untraded where de idea came from… We had a doctor dat took fire, he was sleepin’ in an electric blanket and de electric blanket took fire and he was fairly burnt by the time he climbed out of it. And of course he was shipped out of South Georgia on one of dose corvette things and de doctor he come back wae was a Germant and I think he had been a German doctor in de S.S. but he certainly knew what he was doin’ and he was very sharp. Dere was one occasion when a guy cut off his thumb, was kinda nearly off wae a saw on de night shift, and someone took him up to de hospital and he sat down and de German came out and looked at it and said, ‘Ooh, what do you want me to do, sew it back on or take it off?’ He says sew it back on, and he did, but it took him along while before it was joined. Three weeks later de man was back workin’. But de German certainly knew what he was doin’, no doubt about dat. [[Talks about a specific doctor, Philip Richard.]] JW]] But people did die, through other things. I think three is the most I’m aware of. So it was quite an industry and lots of things went on.
[[JW03]]
LB]] Did you hear this talk given? [[referring to the printed transcript given to me from Winchester]] JW]] Yes, I was. LB]] What do you remember most about the whaling, when you think back? JW]] De other thing went on, dere’s never a dull moment. There’s always something. De engine room went ahead day and night, and de whole ship had a day shift and night shift, but even after de whaling and all finished and you’re cruisin’ back to de U.K., de engine room still had to go ahead 24 hours a day to keep de ship goin’. But I was on other boats as well, off an on. I was on a whale catcher and we went all de way around de Antarctic. But de manager we had fae about 1949 right to de end, Harold… he liked fishin’ better on Enderby Land, which was a kind of, dere wasn’t much ice dere and a lot of wind and a rough kind of corner. It was where he liked to… so you got de same people every year almost, all de same workers, de same ones over de year, whether dey came from Norway or Denmark or wherever, year after year. As far as lookin’ back at 1937, the Norwegian unions got a bee in their bonnet sayin’ that whaling should only be for Norwegians, not anybody else. And Salvesen more or less took on de Norwegian unions and won big-time at dere own game. Dere was a ship in Norway and she was a transporter when down to South Georgia so he sent a crew to Norway to fish it and when dey got to Tonsberg the union guys and all dat disabled all de buses so dey couldn’t get a bus to go to where de ship was. De captain was a man in Shetland and he says, ‘We’ll walk’ so dey started walkin’ and he said to split up and get rid of de Norwegian crowd. Dey 124 eventually made de ship and dat night dey raised power on de ship and dropped anchor and left and dey went down to Gutenberg in Sweden, tied up dere, and den all de Norwegians was against dis union carry on all came and joined dem dere and dey sailed off. Dese union crowds lost out.
125
APPENDIX B:
Pay slip, Southern Harvester Expedition, 1954/55 Season, 20 May 1955. 126
Pay slip, Southern Harvester Expedition, 1956/57 Season, 12 June 1957. 127
APPENDIX C:
"Nylon." Illustrated London News, 16 Oct. 1948, p. 447.