Whales

Into New York Harbor last week steamed the second biggest whaling ship afloat, the 22,000-ton S. S. Sir James Clark Ross. In her hold was the largest cargo of whale oil ever to enter the port--a 45,000,000-lb. consignment for Procter & Gamble to use in its soaps. Five months in the Antarctic whaling grounds and 1,117 whales were "required to fill the Ross's 120,000 barrels.*

In command of the Ross was Captain Oscar Nilsen, who began his whaling under the man who saved the industry from extinction. Modern whaling dates back to Christmas Eve, 1904, when Captain Carl Anton Larsen of Sandefjord, Norway, brought the first whale oil of the season into Grytviken, a bleak whaling station on the Island of South Georgia east of Cape Horn. Captain Larsen, already an oldster in the trade, realized that whaling was doomed unless new grounds were discovered. The Arctic, hunted for centuries, was nearing exhaustion. With great difficulty he raised enough capital for an expedition to the Weddell Sea. There he found whales aplenty and within ten years the Antarctic whaling industry was employing 8,000 Norwegians.

Soon after the War the vast waters lying between the South Polar ice barrier, Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope threatened to go the way of the Arctic whaling grounds. Again Captain Larsen set out to find more whales. This time he went through the ice pack into the Ross Sea* where no explorer had been for a decade. Thence he pounded his way into the Bay of Whales where six years later Richard Evelyn Byrd established a base at Little America. Once again Captain Larsen made whaling history, by arriving on a Christmas Eve. Four days later he took the first whale ever shot by gun in the Ross Sea.

Within a few years the Antarctic was producing about 70% of the world's oil. Whalers have always cocked a dour eyebrow at the hullabaloo the world makes over explorers. Time & again they have gone to the rescue of an explorer in regions where they had been plying their regular trade for years. When Admiral Byrd went into the Ross Sea in 1929, when the ice was so thick that relatively few whaling expeditions bucked the pack, he found no less than 32 vessels at work. The Ross Sea whaling fleet is composed of big factory ships, each mothering a flock of chasers, each about the size of a small tugboat. The chasers scour the frigid waters until they spy a spouting whale, sneak up on it and let fly a harpoon bomb from a cannon. After the dead whale is pulled to the surface, it is inflated with air pumps, towed to the factory ship.

Big factory ships like the Sir James Clark Ross or the 25,000-ton Kosmos swallow the whale through a port in the stern and haul the carcass on deck. There flensers with knives as big as hoes strip the blubber, which produces the highest grade of oil. Power saws reduce the skeleton to handy chunks which can be tossed into steam digesters. In some ships the meat is canned (largely for Japanese consumption) and what scraps remain are ground or burned for fertilizer. For "whalebone," which is not bone but gargantuan mouth bristles, there is now almost no market.

Operating costs are so high that a factory ship and its fleet of chasers must average a whale a day to break even. The average blue whale produces about 100 barrels of oil worth around $1,000. World production rose from 1,300,000 bbl. in the 1928-29 season to 3,600,000 bbl. in the 1930-31 season. This was more than the world could use either in soap or in European margarine. So in 1931-32 most of the Antarctic companies declared a whaling holiday and production dropped to 775,000 bbl. In the season just closed production was some 2,400,000 barrels worth about $26,000,000. But some 1,800,000 bbl. still overhang the market and another holiday next year is by no means improbable. Only British whaling company with publicly owned stock is Anglo-Norwegian Holdings. Ltd. which was organized in 1929 and which earned $542,000 in 1930, $60,300 last year. The Norwegian companies, which dominate the field, are largely locally owned.

*The Ross did not beat the 3-c--per-pound tax on vegetable and animal oils. Procter & Gamble, largest user of whale oil in the U. S., must pay a duty of $1,350,000, a figure approximately equal to the total value of the oil. *Named for Sir James Clark Ross who discovered it 80 years before.

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