Whale Hunters of the West

By Tim Blue

For half a century, West Australians vied with vast sailing fleets from the United States and France in the global hunt for whales. Seas offshore from the southern and western coasts were scoured for right, humpback and sperm whales, for oil to illuminate homes and lubricate machinery. Whale Hunters of the West collects the logbooks, letters and early newspapeers to reveal a brutal yet vital trade for early settlers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tim Blue
• Release date: Jul 26, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201066321

Tim Blue

Tim Blue is a retired newspaper and broadcast journalist with a long-standing interest in historical whaling along the coasts of his childhood in Western Australia.

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Introduction

In my youth, schoolboys on bicycles swarmed the length of Busselton jetty whenever a timber ship was in port. We would cycle out the mile-long jetty to stare for hours in rapt fascination as bundles of sawn timber were hauled high from railcars, swung out over our heads and lowered into black, seemingly-bottomless holds. Where the ship was going never entered into our heads, just some place that was out past the bay on a vast mysterious ocean.

We were in a dream state, captured by the sight and sounds of large machinery at work. Some days we would be bold enough to venture up the gangway and ask the man at the top for a look over the ship. He would usually nod, knowing that if he refused we would badger him for hours. In a flash we would be onboard, peering into the engine room or roaming the passageways with their exotic maps and diagrams.

As a schoolboy in the 1950s, I was one of those sea-struck children, destined forever to have a fantasy attraction towards far-off places, like American boys of a century earlier, hooked on the lore of the sea and beguiled by a kind of romance. What hooked them in – and myself much later – were the tales of whaling, in the seas that run away from Geographe Bay. That’s the subject of this book.

Reminders of those times are easily seen. A nearby church ground in Busselton has a wooden plaque that reads: ‘To William Sowl, late first officer of the Hibernia of New Bedford … who departed this life December 18, 1850. Aged 34. Born Westport Mass, United States’.

What was an American sailor doing in this neighbourhood – a new English colony – all those years ago? And how did his life end at the young age of 34?

Princess Royal Harbour

An aerial view of Princess Royal Harbour at Albany, on the south coast. It was a popular stop-over for American and colonial whalers. (Courtesy Birdseye View Photography)

Cape Leeuwin

Cape Leeuwin, where the Southern and Indian Oceans meet — the most south-westerly point of the Australian continent. (Courtesy Geoff Vickridge)

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The Hibernia was one of a fleet of seven hundred-plus vessels to scour the globe in search of whales whose oil lit the lamps and lubricated the railways snaking out across the American landscape. Most were from the north-eastern ports of New Bedford, Fall River and Nantucket, and on voyages that could last several years they would often stop at Geographe Bay and further south at Albany. The graveyard plaque reveals Hibernia’s captain as Archelaus Baker Jr., a man then on the first of six whaling voyages to the Indian Ocean.

American whaling was an industry of unparalleled wealth and power in this era, with several favoured grounds on the southern and western coasts of Australia. On the continent’s south-west corner is Cape Leeuwin, a wind-beaten tableland of scrub and rock that today bears a white, needle-shaped, lighthouse to mark the location of latitude 34 degrees 22 minutes South, longitude 115 degrees 8 minutes East. A sign at its foot has one arrow pointing south that reads ‘Southern Ocean’ and another pointing west that reads ‘Indian Ocean’. The nearest landmass to the south is Antarctica and Africa to the west.

In the lee of Cape Leeuwin is Flinders Bay, where right whales and later humpbacks were eagerly sought by American whalers. In 1837 Nancy Turner, the daughter of a pioneer settler, wrote in her diary that the whaleship Huntress of New Bedford, Massachusetts, had anchored in the bay, soon followed by the Pacific of Nantucket. ‘We have had six American whalers around since January,’ she wrote. ‘It seems every year during January, February and March the fleet were expected.’ South of Flinders Bay are underwater canyons that fill with large squid, much favoured as food by sperm whales that roam between sub-Antarctic waters and warm breeding grounds in the equatorial waters above the Australian continent.

Given an average crew of thirty, at times there were twice as many men in whaleships off the coast than in the fledgling south-west colonial settlements. In exchange for vegetables and fruit, firewood and water, the whalemen delivered oil, farm tools, boots and ‘Yankee notions’ of glassware, cloth and thread. It was a trade much welcomed at a dozen sites along the southern and western shores.

The French too were active in hunting whales. Their names are everywhere in south-western Australia, a legacy of French scientific interest and territorial ambition building on a network of ties between the north-east U.S.A. and the French whaling industry. Edward John Eyre’s reputation as a famous explorer was due in part to a French whaler restoring him to good health on his epic trek across southern Australia, while the liquor supplies of French ships warmed many a settler in the remote communities south of the Swan River.

The U.S. whalers helped foster a wider recognition of the unique flora of the south-west. The whaler Napoleon carried pioneer Georgiana Molloy on her collecting expeditions around Geographe Bay for seeds and flora that excited botanists at Kew Gardens in London. The explorer George Grey would have struggled to travel to the remote north-west to determine its geography and agricultural potential without passage on a U.S. whaler, while many settlers were grateful that whalers allowed them to move between settlements along the southern and western coasts.

On their return to home shores, the whalers transfixed American society with images and tales of unfamiliar peoples: clay-daubed Aborigines who danced for hours, raucous bird calls and kangaroos which could not easily be described. One sailor, William Jackman, who was held for eighteen months by an aboriginal tribe, wrote a best-selling account of his experiences which sustained years of fairground recitations.

Early map of the coast of New Holland

An early map of the coast of New Holland. (Thornton, John. A Draught of the Coast of New Holland and Parts Adjacent. London, Samuel Thornton, c. 1711. 395 x 200mm.) A rare and important chart of the west coast of Australia, with some of the southern Indonesian islands. Published in "The English Pilot: the third book", it depicts the discoveries of the Dutch East India Company in the region, information gathered by Thornton despite the strict ban on publication. (Courtesy of the New York Public Library)

Tales of beautiful nymphs and erotic dancing also circulated from men returning from the South Seas. Onboard the whaler Charles W Morgan, boatsteerer Nelson Haley could only bring himself to write of women having ‘beautiful backs’ as if their fronts did not exist.

The whaleships might have taken oil and whalebone home over the laments of the settlers, but as the American historian Samuel Eliot Morison has written, the vessels arrived with holds filled with tools and household goods which made the distant settlements function: ploughs and pick axes, shovels and seeds, house frames and grindstones, clocks and dictionaries. For the land and people that the whalers encountered, the impact of their arrival was profound and yet in some ways destructive, for their legacy included rum, influenza, smallpox and syphilis. The American and French whalemen pioneered the exploration of the southwestern shores as much as the early colonists on land and their presence in the early years of the settlements was vital for their eventual success. How the whalemen did so, and why they made everyday life better, is the story that follows – a history of the wind-driven whalers off Western Australia.

twisted harpoon

A harpoon twisted in battle with a whale. (Courtesy Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery)

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map of main settlements

Main settlements and shore whaling stations. (Courtesy Meredith Shimmin)

1

Hunting at Sea

Captain John Cole

snatched a glance over his shoulder at the whaleboat: he saw five tired men clinging to oars, the ship a distant speck on the horizon and white water trailing behind as their boat sped crazily through the water. They were in the middle of the Indian Ocean, towed by a whale that for hours had shown no signs of tiring and was seemingly untroubled by the harpoon sunk deep in its hide. At their feet an empty wooden tub sloshed about in the bilge waters, the line it once held running taut down the centre of the boat, over the bow to a powerful animal still very much alive. Cole took up a small hatchet and chopped the line cleanly. As the boat eased back into the water the whale disappeared in the distance. Back onboard the Huntress John Abbott wrote up the event in his journal: ‘The first whale that the boat I was in got fast too ... was a small whale.’ he wrote. ‘He ran fast and the water flew amazingly, could not see much. The whale was so small that the Captain cut the line and let him go.’ ¹

Huntress had sailed from New Bedford four months earlier on a whaling voyage of two years, an adventure that would likely make the owners and crew’s fortunes, or so it was said in the waterfront bars and boarding houses. John Abbott, an African-American, had shipped out on the Huntress in the northern spring of 1836, as an economic boom gathered pace from the turmoil of revolutionary war and trade boycotts of the United States decades earlier. America needed oil to speed machinery and illuminate homes and workplaces, and oil-rich whales were in demand. New Bedford, with its deep-water port, was out-pacing Nantucket Island as North America’s premier base for the 700-strong whaling fleet. Its wealth was beginning to show in the burgeoning numbers of large Regency-style buildings with stucco facades and colonnaded fronts. Oil that underpinned the wealth lay stacked in serried rows of casks along the wharves as swarms of tradesmen prepared vessels for fresh voyages which could last three years or more. Abbott, from inland Montpelier in Vermont, kept a journal to record almost every act and thought of he and his 30-fellow crew, from simply talking, or gamming, to sharing their suffering in seasickness as they sailed towards the whaling grounds.

The first stop for the Huntress was Amsterdam Island, no more than a volcanic pimple in the vast Indian Ocean, known for its abundant seals, good fishing and herds of whales. Abbott learned quickly of the nature of his new world. As his whaleboat approached five large whales, ‘one came up under our boat, raised it out of the water and came near to turning it over, then he settled and let us float. The Mate got fast to one and thought he had killed it … got up close but it flounced and stove a hole in his boat.’

The Huntress sailed on towards a coast known to whalemen as New Holland, its looming arrival heralded by breezes which ‘smelt very sweet when we got within two miles.’ Two boats went ashore in the lee of Cape Leeuwin where Captain Cole left several men by the boats ‘to give the alarm if natives should come down upon them … we knew they ware savage,’ added Abbott. The sight of bush flowers after four months at sea delighted the men who took to picking them by the handful. Then the sound of a bell stopped them in their tracks; ‘Some ware afrade its the natives,’ wrote Abbott. ‘The Captain crept off one way and I another way and in a short while I espyed a young calf with a bell on.’ Eight or ten cows came walking into view, a sight which pleased Abbott, as he surmised that where cattle lived, people lived.

As the men skylarked in the grass under the spring sunshine a man arrived on horseback. He was Captain John Molloy, a former British army officer who had fought Napoleon’s soldiers in the Spanish Peninsula wars, and had emigrated from England a few years earlier with his new wife Georgiana. Together with a handful of other families they formed the core of the settlement of Augusta, close by Cape Leeuwin. ‘He was Governor of the town and had come after his cows,’ Abbott wrote. ‘He was very glad to see us and we him.’

Cole and his men went back to the Huntress with a boat full of flowers and moved around to a river mouth. Molloy came onboard, bringing with him an army sergeant and a settler, James Turner. ‘There is but five or six families here and twenty soldiers for to guard against the natives,’ Abbott observed. Turner sold the whalemen ‘ticker’, home-brew beer, and ‘English blood’ or rum.

From the Huntress, Abbott and Captain Cole went ashore for dinner one night with James Turner, whose dreams of reaping a fortune had led him to the new colony only a few years earlier. Abbott took his violin along and had played ‘two or three tunes’, before Turner offered wine to Cole but not Abbott. ‘I had my mouth made up to say no, but he did not give me the chance,’ Abbott wrote. ‘He supposed I was the Captain’s Nigger, seeing that I was pretty black, however I laid down the violin and took my hat to walk out and take the air and they got no more fiddling.’ ²

deck plan of a whaleboat

Deck plan, side view and interior of a typical four-boat whaling barque. From G.B. Goode’s The Fisheries and Fishery Industries of the United States. (National Library of Australia)

side view of typical whaleboat

The side view of a typical whaleboat. From G.B. Goode’s The Fisheries and Fishery Industries of the United States. (National Library of Australia)

plan of a typical whaleboat

The plan of a typical whaleboat. From G.B. Goode’s The Fisheries and Fishery Industries of the United States. (National Library of Australia)

At sea again and intent on whaling, there were days of gales before a large sperm whale was seen and battle joined. Harpooned by the Second Mate, it lunged and cracked the boat wide open, then stood off a mere body length, as if looking at the wreckage Abbott thought. After fifteen minutes, it turned and went off. ‘Our boat pulled up as fast as we could,’ he wrote, ‘but the whale was gone. We picked up the men and went abord. They said he was 125 feet long.’ ³

Huntress crew’s disappointment soon passed. In the next three weeks, eleven whales were killed. Five more were harpooned but lost amid frequent gales, one strong enough to blow out the whaler’s main topsail. The hunting went on with Abbott’s diary revealing his fear of being lost at sea: ‘We could just see [the ship] but they could not see us … We got within a mile of the ship and a man at the masthead saw us just as they were going to tack ship and stand off another way.’ Six whales were taken in a month including two in one day in arduous and dangerous chases. ‘The tail of one knocked over the Mate and another man then cut the boat rite in two. They all jumped overboard and we took them in.’ ⁴

The Huntress, like all whalers, was a factory ship. A brick stove on deck held two trypots or cauldrons filled with lumps of blubber and set above blazing fires fed by pieces of wood and discarded blubber scraps. It was a treacherous combination: in high seas hot oil could slop onto coals and send flaming spills to the deck. Only a water tray held the spills, not always successfully. On the first day of 1837, a fire broke out in the hold of the Huntress directly beneath the try works. Casks were heaved aside to get to the seat of the fire ‘as fast as we could … for a half an hour until we supposed it was out.’ Two large holes were left in the deck before it was finally extinguished. ⁵

One day in early January a harpooned whale ran at Abbott’s boat. Captain Cole, poised at the bow with a killing lance, jumped clear as the boat was hit and broken in two, ‘the whale just laid there slaping his flukes about until he had stove the boat all up.’ Next day a whale came up on Abbott’s new boat and ‘broke it into bits’, slapping his flukes before sliding away. ‘We was all took down under him about fifteen feet … some came up one side of him and some the other.’ Abbott put his feet against the whale and shoved himself off. ‘I would have liked to have been swimming on a bet then ... he pulverized the boat as fine as Gyane pepper.’ As the men climbed into the mate’s boat, already laden with its crew, they saw the whale turn to come after them. ‘We pulled about a mile as fast as we could and got away from him.’ ⁶

By the 1830s, with Atlantic grounds starting to run thin, American whalers began to venture round Africa’s Cape of Good Hope to explore the western and northern reaches of the Indian Ocean and across to New Zealand. A handful of Indian Ocean grounds were already known; two were around Madagascar and one further north off Arabia, plus another near Java and a new one spoken of highly that stretched down the length of New Holland. Encouraged by good reports, captains struck out from waters around the southern islands of Amsterdam and St Pauls towards the new coasts.

Nantucket’s Captain William Plaskett was already a 20-year veteran of eight voyages when he arrived off the south-western corner of Australia onboard the Clarkson. ‘At 2 pm saw sperm whales,’ the log recorded in February 1835. ‘Loard the boats and struck the whale and killed him. At 6 pm took him alongside and commenced cutting.’ Strong gales forced the crew to stop and secure the whale alongside for two days until the seas calmed. The Clarkson would take home more than 2500 barrels of sperm whale oil, prized for its bright light and sweeter smell when burned, and with prices rising above a dollar a gallon, news of his catch would have spread rapidly in whaling circles. ⁷

Perhaps another factor was at play in their success; Clarkson’s sailors were denied alcohol. Plaskett’s views were quite clear, ‘Alcohol, whether used in cider, beer, wines or distilled liquor is equally wrong and wicked,’ he wrote. Those who succumbed to its temptations ‘spin out a miserable existence, [become] a pest to society, a grief to their friends and a nuisance to all who may chance to get within smelling distance of them.’ Captain Benjamin Neal onboard the Reaper of Salem was similarly minded, ‘A whaleship ought, if possible, to avoid all ports in which rum can be obtained,’ he wrote as he cruised the southern reaches of the Indian Ocean. ‘It is a fact not to be disputed that the generality of seamen will sell the last rag of clothing to buy rum without the least thought of the morrow.’ ⁸

Onboard whaling vessels at this time, African-Americans formed about one in five of all crew, a legacy of the one-time pre-eminence in whaling of Nantucket Island, where businessmen steeped in the Quaker faith and caring less about race found themselves able to hire strong, willing men at low prices. As author Patricia McKissack writes, ‘their motivation might have been questionable, but Quakers had to be credited with giving men the opportunity to work when other doors were closed to them.’ ⁹

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In February 1837,

the Nile under Captain James Townsend, arrived back at New Bedford from the southern continent’s grounds with an excellent cargo of 230 barrels of sperm oil, 2400 barrels of southern right whale oil and 11,000 kg of whalebone, altogether worth close to one and a half million in today’s dollars. After a mere eighteen months at sea this was an eye-opener. In August, the Gratitude under Captain Alfred Fisher, arrived with 300 barrels of sperm oil and 3100 barrels of whale oil, an astonishing catch worth close to $1.6 million today. Two months later Huntress. returned from 18 months working in the Indian Ocean and the southern coast of Australia with 150 barrels of sperm oil and 3150 barrels of southern right whale oil. ¹⁰ Three great hauls – million-dollar plus jackpots – spurred a flotilla of American whalers to head towards the south-west seas of Australia.

a trypot

A trypot on the whaleship Mattapoisett, beside the brick furnace. (Courtesy of the Martha's Vineyard Museum)

At first, most were converted merchantman with rounded bows and broad hulls which could readily accommodate the oil casks in a vessel 30 or 40 metres long and ten to twelve metres wide. They were not pictures of speed or grace. Crews of more elegant ships sneered at them as ‘spouters’ or ‘blubber-boilers’ yet they were just the vessels to exploit the sensational new grounds along the southern Australian coast. Indeed, a boom was underway, fired by new highs in oil prices that blew a flurry of activity through the whaling ports of north-east U.S.A. Nantucket grew its fleet from 64 to 81 vessels. In New Bedford and across the Acushnet River at Fairhaven, numbers grew from 89 to 221, while tens of other eastern seaboard ports shared the enthusiasm. ¹¹ After a brief lull, oil prices rose to unheard of figures of $1.77 a gallon for sperm oil and 99 cents for lesser whale oil. No-one wanted the whale meat – at sea, carcasses were ‘hove to the sharks’ – but the mouth bristles or baleen of southern right whales was much prized. Known as whalebone it could be moulded like plastic yet stay flexible enough to be used as horse and buggy whips, umbrella ribs, and collar stays. In corsets its stiffness delivered the narrow waists and flared skirts demanded in women’s fashions of the day. In the early 1840s its price more than doubled to 40 cents a pound, making it more valuable than oil from the same animal. ¹²

The scale of action grew immense in the north-eastern hinterlands and along waterfronts. Ports rang with the sounds of activity; adzes on wood to shape ship frames, bellows roaring air into forges to make iron nails and bolts, and cauldrons of pitch bubbling ready to seal seams, while hemp for ropes was layed up and stretched in long sheds. Oakum was painstakingly hammered into hulls and decks to caulk seams and joints. Horse-drawn buggies and drays arrived at the wharves with barrels of meat, hard biscuit, rice and beans, to take a place in the holds alongside trading goods of cloth, shoes, farm tools and tobacco.

Such fit-outs and preparations were an enormous undertaking for owners, usually a syndicate of eight or ten to split the costs and risks. Vessels had to be prepared for all weathers while sustaining the lives of 30 men on voyages of three years and more in what amounted to a floating factory. Timber and water could be found in far-off lands but basic food needs had to be found at the outset. Vessels sailed away with barrels of salted meat, beef, pork and occasionally horse, to make first stopovers at the Atlantic islands of the Azores and St Helena for more men, fruit and water, and to fill deck pens with pigs and chickens.

By this time, France too had built a substantial whaling industry. Much earlier, in the wake of the U.S. War of Independence, Britain had applied import duties which made American oil expensive and uncompetitive; falling sales pushed whalemen from Nantucket and New Bedford to the edge of financial ruin. ¹³ The wealthy William Rotch, from one of whose ships tea was infamously dumped in Boston Harbor in 1773, shouldered these conditions for a time before seeking a deal with the British: he would transfer his whaling fleet to the United Kingdom in return for a few tax favours. Lord Hawksbury at the Treasury declined, but the French, by contrast, seeing a chance to keep 5,000 men from their arch-rival’s maritime strength, were ready to do a deal. ¹⁴ In 1786 Rotch sailed for France to establish a base. Within two years seventeen whaling vessels were operating under French colours from Dunkirk, Le Havre and Nantes. ¹⁵

deck of a whaleship

The deck of a whaleship, showing the tryworks, scrap hopper and utensils. (Courtesy New Bedford Whaling Museum)

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Rowing

up to a 50-ton animal roaming loose in its natural habitat of the sea would seem the height of folly at the best of times. To then jab it with harpoons and knives and hope it died sedately seems akin to lunacy. Little wonder that enraged whales struck back; seamen called it the hand of God. As ship’s logs record and contemporary images show, a sperm whale could roll over and chomp a tormentor in two with a tooth-lined jaw.

Like warships, whalers displayed their weapons, the whaleboats. Slung three on one side and one on the other, they were sleek, sharp at both ends and highly manoeuvrable. On the water, the five oarsmen could quickly reverse out of trouble. About ten metres long and two metres wide, they were light enough to be lowered and brought back onboard many times in a voyage. ¹⁶

The approach to a whale was critical. A boat had to get close enough to sink a harpoon deep into its body yet not touch or nudge it too soon so that it dived in alarm. With a whale’s acute hearing, quiet was the order. A small sail was used in favourable winds, then oars set within a pair of wooden pins that were wrapped in leather to dull any sound. On calm days, the oarsmen pulled closer when the whale spouted and stopped when it stopped. Woe betide anyone who coughed or spoke.

The usual path was to pull in from behind to sit near the whale’s fins. The forward rowing hand would stand, drive home the harpoon, then in a dangerous tango swap places with the mate or captain whose job was to lance the whale’s heart and lungs for the kill. Rope tied to the harpoon would fly out of a tub, around a post near the stern then out between the men and over the bow. It could snare arms and legs of unwary oarsmen to drag them overboard, some to drown. The mates of at least three vessels were killed this way while off the south coast. ¹⁷

Dead whales were lashed tail-first to the ship’s bow so the carcass stayed close for the ‘cutting-in’ or flensing process. ¹⁸ Mates standing on a wooden scaffold set out amidships on the starboard side, used long, sharp spades to cut the thick, heavy, blubber in a strip to be peeled off and lifted inboard using a tackle and windlass. A safety line held the men dangling lest they slip and fall amongst sharks feasting below in a sea of blood and blubber. ‘Another sharp one, cooper,’ the cutters would bawl to the man on the grindstone as spades became dull or chipped.

Long strips of blubber were chopped into lumps then sliced more finely and tossed into trypots over the fires to cook out the oil. Any scraps from the pots were thrown into the furnace as fuel. Author Herman Melville found the smoke ‘smelled like the left wing on the day of judgement … like a Hindoo funeral pyre’. Others happily dunked hard cracker biscuits into the frying oil for a savoury snack. On many ships, it was a treat for the cook to bring up a bag of flour and make doughnuts in the boiling oil.

The whale’s head, perhaps the most valuable part, was left overboard at first then recovered for the oil in the lips and tongue. The filtering baleen strips on a southern right or humpback whale – nearly six hundred, each up to four metres long – were removed and set aside to dry.

whale ship at New Bedford

Whaleships being fitted out at New Bedford ahead of a voyage. (Courtesy New Bedford Whaling Museum)

The California

The whaleship California showing its fake gunports, designed to deter adventurous islanders. (Courtesy New Bedford Whaling Museum)

With sperm whales, the flensers first unhinged the long narrow jaw then wrenched it onboard. Its 40 or 50 gleaming ivory teeth, each a fist-sized cone, had no commercial value but were eagerly sought by the crew for carving and engraving or scrimshawing over long idle hours. Prized above all was a great chamber in the head, filled with precious spermaceti oil. It could be taken onboard in its entirety, but most often a man went over the side and into the head to stand in the liquid up to his armpits, and scoop it out bucket by bucket.

Imagine the scene on a working day: long slabs of fatty blubber swinging overhead, men covered in fat and gore waving razor-sharp blades on long poles, or feeding scraps of gristle to a roaring furnace beneath cauldrons of oil, bubbling away with piles of sliced fat and skin. Foul-smelling smoke would circle up and trail away downwind. Surrounding it all was a churning pack of hungry sharks gorging on the carcass, as seabirds squabbled overhead.

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Owners and agents

in the north-east of the United States turned their heads more keenly to New Holland with the arrival home of the Jasper at New Bedford and Pantheon at Fall River, both crammed with oil. Pantheon had 1000 barrels of sperm oil and 1,400 of whale oil, the Jasper 740 barrels of sperm oil and 1,890 of whale oil. Not long after, the Cambria arrived back with 1800 barrels, almost all superior sperm oil.

Off Western Australia, the Americans saw the whales as entirely theirs for the taking, as, after all, these animals were owned by no-one. To settlers in the new Swan River colony, however, the Americans were foreign invaders, plundering the water-borne wealth in ways they were powerless to stop. Barrister and prominent settler George Fletcher Moore wrote of ‘a regular parade of humpback and southern right whales, even sperm whales, but without ships or whaling hardware ‘these aspiring whalers remained ashore’. ¹⁹ The Perth Gazette found it ‘painful to see strangers sweeping from us one of our richest harvests – the whale fishery – whilst we are indolent spectators.’ ²⁰ The paper soon hardened its tone toward the Americans ‘swarming round our coast’, finding them ‘most indefatigable and persevering’ and ready to seize any opportunities. ‘It becomes a subject of some moment to protect our bay-whaling establishments,’ it declared, a complaint increasingly heard from mid-1837. ²¹ The rival paper, The Inquirer, suggested joint ventures with ‘effective and substantial arrangements’ in time for the next season. It applauded Cambria’s Captain Nathaniel Cary of New Bedford who, ‘with a spirit of liberality highly to be commended, has furnished the [Fremantle] Bay Whaling Establishment with suitable gear.’ ²² More likely the American captain just off-loaded equipment he no longer needed nor could store onboard.

A ‘great rage for whaling’ took hold, as the Perth Gazette called it, that threatened to draw men away from other jobs, a prospect not ‘the most agreeable to those who require labourers’. Anyway, the paper sniffed, it was all ‘an idle infatuation, for nine-tenths are not fit to pull an oar.’ ²³ James Stirling, Governor of the Swan River settlement and ever seeking to grow his fledgling community, thought British whalers could be the answer; their presence might soothe local jealousies towards the Americans and perhaps bring in revenue and more people. He put an idea to superiors at Whitehall that British whalers could make a circular voyage of the Indian Ocean, where they would chase humpback and southern right whales on the Australian coast in the southern winter, then follow humpback and sperm whales north before going west and down the African coast to Cape Town. There, cargoes could be offloaded, crews changed and ships replenished. ‘The same round of operations … need never be interrupted until the ship is worn out,’ he wrote. ²⁴ But the dominant East India Company, enjoying its trade monopoly, preferred profit from Indian lands rather than the Indian Ocean. At the Swan River, one man, Thomas Peel, thought he had an answer. Taken by natives to