ARCHAEOLOGY OF WHALING IN SOUTHERN AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND

'If the Government Think Proper to Support It':Issues of Relevance to Australian Whaling in the Demise

of the British Southern Whale Fishery

DALE CHATWIN

INTRODUCTION

Australian whaling in the early half of the nineteenth centuryowed much to its British counterpart. English whaling vesselsmade many stops in Australian ports and in terms of trade,imports of whaling stores represented a sizeable component ofgoods imported into the colonies. Whale oil was Australia'shighest earning export commodity until the 1830s.

However, a most obvious development which did notoccur, though often proposed and discussed in England andAustralia at the time, was large scale relocation of the existingBritish whaling fleet to the Australian colonies. Whenrelocation was finally attempted in the early 1850s it tookplace within the context of a final attempt to resurrect theailing British trade and the project was an expensive failure.

This paper will provide an overview of events in the BritishSouthern Whale Fishery in its final forty years to 1860. Factorswhich encouraged concentration and specialisation in theEnglish whaling trade after 1823 will be identified, as willBritish Government initiatives which sought to promote thegrowth of the Australian whaling trade. The paper will alsolook at whale oil, its uses and the effect of demand on price,for it was the demand for oil and the price paid that primarilyfuelled whaling speculations. Within this context somereference will also be made to wider events in Englishshipping and how these events affected the business of thewhaling trade.

The paper will also look at Australian whaling groundsfrequented by British vessels and the use of Australian ports bythe English fleet. Finally, the paper will examine crewingpatterns on English whaling ships. From the mid 1830s manyEnglish whalemen re-based themselves in Australian andPacific ports. The reasons for this and its effect on the Englishfleet will be discussed. In the main the paper deals with pelagicwhaling. For reasons which will become obvious Englishwhaleship owners and whalemen had little interest in blackwhales or sealing from the mid 1820s, effectively leaving theblack oil trade to the colonists.

THE BRITISH SOUTHERN WHALINGFISHERY

Prior to 1800 the English southern whaling trade was a trade inblack oil just like its sister northern trade. In the southernwhale fishery black oil was taken from right whales, pilotwhales and very occasionally humpback or other types ofrorquals. Black whales have a significantly higher oil yieldthan sperm whales and could be taken from shore basedstations as well as at sea. The oil obtained from black whaleswas used in tanning, as a lubricant and to a lesser extent inlighting. Sperm oil was also taken in the southern fishery andalthough recognised as a clearly superior product it initiallyattracted no premium in the market.

The English southern whale fishery commenced in 1775.The impetus for the development of the trade lay in the disputebetween England and her American colonies which saw oilimports from the American east cost considerably reduced inthe early 1770s. In operation, the English trade copied almostevery detail of the already industrious actions of north-eastern

American ports like Nantucket and Boston. For the first25 years of the trade the number of ships engaged at one timenever exceeded 100, and for the majority of the period wasmuch less than 50.

It was not until 1809 that sperm oil exceeded black oilproduction from the southern fishery. This occurred for anumber of reasons. At a practical level specialised uses forsperm oil were now beginning to be discovered. Sperm oil wasconsiderably finer than other whale, animal and vegetable oilsavailable at that time. Because of this, sperm oils' ability toreduce wear on machine parts and increase the number ofrevolutions possible on machines quickly became well known.Sperm oil also became the oil of choice in illuminating 'well todo" houses and in lighthouses.

Another element directing English whalemen's effort intosperm whaling were declining black whale stocks. The Brazilgrounds, where the majority of British effort had been directedprior to 1800, had been progressively yielding fewer and fewerblack whales and British vessels began instead to direct theirefforts to the Pacific grounds where sperm whales were knownto exist in great numbers (Richards 1993:44).

Other factors contributing to the shift to sperm whalingwere competition from the northern fishery and the growingdifferential in price which was developing between black andsperm oil. In the hazardous trading environment arising fromthe war with France and Spain, southern whaleship ownersrecognised that the relatively unthreatened northern fisherywas more than capable of maintaining the supply of black oilto the home market. In wartime conditions the higher risks andcost of preparing and despatching vessels to the southernfishery from London required returns to be substantial,especially when so many alternatives were available. Forinstance, a steady income could be derived from simplyleasing ships to the Transport Board for convoy duty and theBoard guaranteed replacement value if lost (Ville 1987:4).When sperm oil began to bring two and a half to three timesthe price of black oil due to wartime scarcity it made a lot ofsense to take the most valuable fish. As a result, and not for thelast time in the English trade's history, owners orderedcaptains to concentrate on taking sperm whales instead ofblack whales.

The outbreak of war with the Americans in 1812 sentsperm oil prices even higher, but when peace with theAmericans was achieved, and as the likelihood of a final peacein Europe drew nearer, the price of sperm oil collapsed.Though the demand for sperm oil was now well established,those in the trade felt that in peace time the supply of sperm oilwould be plentiful enough.

They were wrong though. Rapid economic expansionfollowed the peace as financiers and others who had madefortunes in the war looked for new investment opportunities.Emanating from this was a significant investment in newmanufacturing industries and infrastructure. In the post warenvironment the massive supply of cheap second hand vesselsboosted Britain's import capability dramatically and led to afall in freight rates. The building of new port infrastructure(docks, railways and warehouses) helped even further toreduce the costs of moving raw materials.

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A consequence of the falling freight rates was the searchby shipowners for other trade activities in which to deploy thesignificant over-supply of shipping. One place where theseships were deployed was in the whaling and sealing trades.The number of vessels engaged in the English southern fisheryincreased by nearly three times in the first five years after thewar (Jones 1986:254).

Another factor influencing economic development after1815 was politically based. In the years to 1850 the Britisheconomy shifted from being an economy characterised bytariffs and duties (protectionist) to one characterised byminimal tariff protection (ie free trade). Hence the titleselected for this paper, 'If the Government think proper tosupport it', a statement made in evidence by the famousEnglish whaleship owner, Charles Enderby, before the 1833Parliamentary Select Committee on Manufactures, Commerceand Shipping (SC on Manufactures, Commerce & Shipping1833:Q.8453).

Enderby was responding to a question by one of theCommittee members seeking to establish why Enderby andother English whaleship owners were not conducting theirwhaling businesses out of New South Wales. Conditions in thecolony appeared to be ideal for maintaining whaling fleetslocally and sending home the produce in trading vessels.Enderby replied, that he saw more value in continuing to runthe business out of England as the trade was 'the most valuablebranch of shipping that the country possesses' (SC onManufactures, Commerce & Shipping 1833:Q.8453). In termsof the profits that an English south sea whaleship could make

at this time Enderby was not far wrong. A successful three yearwhaling cruise out of England could realise a considerableprofit. In the early 1830s whaling was a most profitablebusiness in which to be engaged when compared with othershipping trades.

We have already seen that falling freight rates and improvedport infrastructure had the effect of limiting or reducing thebase price of imported raw materials in the post war period.Few imported commodities resisted this downward trend unlessthey were in considerable demand. Two commodities whichmatched this criteria were sperm oil and black oil.

The rapidly growing post war English economy hadrevealed further uses for whale oils. Developments in industry(particularly woollen mills) and infrastructure (the spread ofstreet lighting in particular) exerted demand on whale oilstocks (Figs. 1 and 2) Prices in the immediate post war yearssoared and were only brought back under control by a massiveincrease in the amount of oil landed. This occurred as a directresult of a political decision to open up the London trade tocolonial oil (Fig. 3).

In 1823 the British government acted in response topressure from the colonies to develop and promote their ownindustries by providing equal access to the London oil market.One natural resource which the colonies in Newfoundland,South Africa and Australia had ready access to was whale oil.Along the coasts, or near enough to the coasts of each of thecolonies, whales abounded. To assist the colonies to developthis trade the Government lowered the differential tariffswhich had been applied to oil imported from the colonies to

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1800 1805 1810 1815

Fig. 1: Sperm oil imports into London 1800—1850.

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Fig. 2: South Sea oil imports into London 1800-1838.

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Fig. 3: Price of Smith Seax Whale Oils into London ISIO-1859.

1835 1840 1845 1850 1855

the same level as that of home production. To protect the homemarket and fledgling colonial oil trade though, a punitive tariffon foreign (ie American) whale oil remained in place.

The response by London whaleship owners to the openingup of the market to colonial oil after 1823 was immediate.Almost all the speculators who had entered the trade in theimmediate post war period left the trade completely and thoseowners who did remain abandoned the black oil trade. Thisdecision was made in recognition of the various colonies'considerable natural advantages in the pursuit of black oil. ButLondon owners also realised that none of the colonies yet hadthe ability to outfit pelagic whaleships, and therefore tosuccessfully pursue the sperm whale. Import figures from thecolonies over the next ten years confirm the accuracy of thisappraisal (Figs. 1 and 2). It was not until the early 1830s thatthe southern colonies shipped more sperm whale oil to Londonthan black oil, and imports of colonial sperm oil did not attainparity with that of the home trade until even later.

From the mid 1820s to the early 1840s, whaling out ofLondon was almost completely a trade in search of the spermwhale. As Charles Enderby related to the 1833 ParliamentarySelect Committee on Manufactures, Commerce and Shipping,"The [Home] black oil fishery has been completely destroyedby the colonial fisheries' (SC on Manufactures, Commerce &Shipping 1833:Q.8459). From the mid 1820s ownersinstructed their whaling masters not to take black whales andthere are numerous instances in the surviving logs of Britishwhaleships from the 1830s of the master choosing not to lowerthe boats after 'black whales' (Chatwin 1989; Vigilant Journal1831: Entry for 26 December).

But it was not just the matching of the tariff that led Britishowners to order the vessels to take sperm whales only. Therewere other economic factors as well. During the 1820s thedemand for sperm whale oil jumped and despite the amount ofsperm oil being landed almost doubling, the London marketeasily accommodated the increase. This sperm oil found use intwo areas, as a lubricant in industry, and in lighting.

The growth of .manufacturing in England in the 1820s wassignificant. The number of powered cotton looms increasedfrom 14150 in 1820 to 55000 by 1829 (Gayer et al1953:198). Sperm oil was a particularly fine lubricant, wellrecognised for its ability to increase the number of revolutionspossible on a machine, '500 more upon 4 000 than any otherdescription of oil', as Charles Enderby noted before the 1840Parliamentary Select Committee on New Zealand (SC on N.Z.1840:Q.1047)

But it was the use of sperm oil in commercial and domesticlighting where the really significant increase in oil occurred.

From the mid 1820s until the mid 1840s sperm oils' use inilluminating Britain's lighthouses remained unchallenged. Inthe first half of the nineteenth century, lighting of the coastaround the British Isles was a major safety priority of the homegovernment. To regulate the lighting services, bodies such asTrinity House and the Northern Lights were specificallycharged to maintain and improve the country's coastal lightssystem. Use of sperm oil in Argand lamps greatly increased thecandlepower of lighthouses. A single Argand lamp, such asthose used to light a room in a house, burnt about 40 gallons(182 litres) of sperm oil per year, whereas an Argand lamp ofthe first class, the type used in major lighthouses, couldconsume more than 800 gallons (3 636 litres) per year (Saxby-Wryde 1913:227).

But it is the use of sperm oil in domestic lighting thatremains the most under-acknowledged aspect of the growth indemand for sperm oil. Many later observers have stated thatgas replaced oil from the mid 1820s. In a sense this was true,gas did replace black oil in street lighting, and it was thisdevelopment and a couple of disastrous years in the ice whichsaw the English northern fishery virtually cease to exist in the1830s. But coal gas could not be successfully used indoors.There were two reasons: it stank, and it emitted black soot onburning (Encyclopedia of the History of Technology1990:914). Sperm oil on the other hand, because it burnt soclearly and brilliantly, became the preferred indoor lightingfuel in the homes of the growing middle class and Britain'swealthy (O'Dea 1958:51-54). Contemporary observers hadlittle problem in correlating the growth in the use of Argandlamps in private houses to the use of gas lighting in the streets,but there have been few modern observers who have everrecognised a connection, or understood which oil gas reallyreplaced.

Another major element in the home fisheries' shift tobecome a trade in sperm oil was profitability. The reality wasthat unless a vessel could land a cargo of considerable value inthe 1820s and 1830s then sailing out of London was tooexpensive. The fixed costs were too high: vessels, casks andwhaling stores were all expensive and attracted cripplingduties.

It was these high costs that led to the final development inthe British Southern Whale Fishery, and its evolution into aspecialist trade comprising a quite small group of owners.Speculators could simply not participate in the trade from themid 1820s as they could not afford to bear the high capitalcosts of outfitting, followed then by the long wait until a catchwas landed. From the 1830s, three and four year whalingcruises were the norm in the English trade. One cruise which

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began in 1842 lasted 71 months — a long time to wait for areturn on any investment.

The evidence for the development of the English trade intoa specialised industry can be found in a number of sources, themost revealing being the Bills of Entry — Customs Houserecords for the Port of London, which detail the cargoes ofships arriving and leaving. An examination of these recordsdemonstrates conclusively that from the late 1820s the trade inLondon was concentrated in the hands of a small group ofowners.

Further evidence can be gleaned from the various Registersof Shipping, though one needs to keep their wits about themwhen using the published sources. The two competingregisters, the 'Red' and 'Green' books, which merged in theearly 1830s to become Lloyd's Register of Shipping, were notreliable, and the quality of the merged product was even lessthan that of its predecessors.

One aspect of the concentration of English whaleshipowning deserves special mention. From the early 1820s asignificant new group joined the existing whaleship owners.These owners were the very elite, some have even called themthe aristocracy, of British shipping (Palmer 1990:15). Thegroup included Joseph Somes, George Young of theshipbuilding company of Curling & Young, and the firm ofGreen, Wigrams & Green. Green, Wigrams & Green wereowners of England's most famous private shipyard, theBlackwall Yard, and specialised in high quality vessels for theEast India and other trades.

Why did these firms invest in whaling? The answer lies inthe depressed shipping environment which existed followingthe French wars and the need for shipowners to find suitableopportunities in which to deploy their ships. These elite firmshad access to massive amounts of capital and shippingresources and their businesses were considerable. It is statedthat the shipbuilding and shipowning firm of Green, Wigrams& Green was probably the most considerable private concernin Europe in the mid 1830s (Green & Wigram 1881:60).

These elite firms were the only businesses undertaking anysort of expansion in the British Southern Whale Fishery in the1830s. In contrast, the more established whaling companieslike Enderby's and Bennett's were being forced to contract insize despite the high prices being paid for oil. The problem thatfirms like Enderby's and the Bennett's faced was acombination of risk, costs and liquidity. The elite firms on theother hand were able to build and outfit their own whaleshipsand accept the risk of whaling cruises on themselves.

Many a researcher of the English whaling trade hascontemplated why owners in the British southern whalefishery never relocated their whaling ships to Australian portsin the 1830s, and we have already seen that ParliamentaryCommittee members asked such questions of whaleshipowners. The reality was, that whaleship owning, at least forthe elite owners, was only a minor part of a much largershipping business. The more traditional whaleship owners, theEnderby's and Bennetts, were encountering a different set ofcircumstances. They were so closely tied in to the Londontrade in terms of financing, contacts and contracts that theywere unable to break free. The whaleship owners who didrelocate to Australia in the 1830s tended to be successfulmasters who purchased the whaling vessel they hadpreviously commanded and then relocated both themselvesand their ship. One example was Robert Duke and hiswhaleship, the Sisters.

One final point must be made before leaving discussionabout elite whaleship owners. Some thirty newly built whalingvessels entered the English whaling trade during the late 1820sand 1830s. Included amongst these vessels were some of thefinest wooden whaling vessels ever designed: 'state of the art'sailing vessels, built on the Thames in first class shipyards like

the Blackwall Yard. These vessels were designed not only tocruise for whales, but also for getting to and from the Pacificwhaling grounds at speed, a not unexpected design featuregiven the distance between the whaling grounds and themarket in London. The quality of such vessels was widelyacknowledged in contemporary sources like the Times(London Times 24 November 1837 and 6 May 1842) and evenMelville's Moby Dick. In Moby Dick Melville describes theSamuel Enderby, named after the founder of the British firm,as a 'noble craft' and 'a very fast sailor' (Melville 1986:100).One often thinks of whaling ships as slow moving, practical,even ugly vessels, an impression one easily gets from thesurviving pictorial evidence of the American whaling fleet,where many vessels were converted merchantmen. But it wasnot always the case.

Through the 1830s, the price and value of sperm oilcontinued to increase and as much sperm oil as could belanded in London was being used. A report from the leadingLondon oil auction house of W & J Beale, which wascirculated in Sydney in July 1838, forecast that sperm oilconsumption would exceed supply by 800 tuns (about fourlarge cargoes) in that year (Sydney Gazette 10 July 1838:2).This confirms the inability of the home fishery in the late1830s to meet the requirements of the London market.

Competition on the whaling grounds became significant inthe late 1830s as the Colonial and American fleets grew andthe catch sizes, on whaling grounds that had been occupied for20 to 30 years, decreased. A major consequence of decreasingcatches was of course lengthening cruise times.

To combat this many English whaling masters changedtheir pattern of whaling, forsaking the eastern Pacific whalinggrounds and concentrating instead on the whaling grounds tothe north of Australia. It is not well known, but in 1838, closeto one-half of the active English whaling fleet was at sometime or another whalina in the vicinity of Indonesia (Chatwin1996:102-3).

Competition from the American and Australian whalingfleets in the late 1830s put the English fleet under considerablepressure but it was the performance or rather non-performanceof the crews that really compounded the English fleet'sproblems. This development will be discussed in Part 2 of thispaper, but one outcome of the high turnover in crew was thatthe efficient running of many English whaling ships becamecompletely disrupted.

By the late 1830s the continuing demand for sperm oil andescalating prices needed to be addressed. Despite initialpromise, the pelagic whaling trade in the Australian colonieshad stalled, a result of a tightening of capital, as much as thepoor performance of the whaling fleet. In the early 1840s, withneither the British nor colonial fleets appearing capable ofproviding the amount of oil required by the market, the Britishgovernment acted to encourage foreign imports.

The move cannot be seen as just a move against Englishand Colonial whaleship owners. In the early 1840s tariffs oncommodities imported into London were reduced across theboard. The reduction in tariff must also be seen as part of thegovernment's embracing of free trade which culminatedfinally in the late 1840s in the removal of the country'sNavigation Acts — the very laws which had ensured thatEnglish trade had been carried in English ships for so long.

In 1842, the British government announced that the tariffon foreign oil would be reduced by £10 per tun from July 1843and that the tariff would be completely removed by 1849. Theeffect on the home trade was catastrophic. As Joseph Somes, aLondon whaleship owner, stated when giving evidence beforethe 1844 Parliamentary Select Committee into BritishShipping, 'five ships out of every six returning have beenwithdrawn from the trade' (SC on British Shipping1844:Q.523). The tariff reduction did not exactly have that

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effect, but it did more than halve the number of whaleships inthe English trade, and did little to bolster the ailing Australiantrade.

The English fishery lingered for another 15 years, resistingall efforts to revive it at home and abroad. When evaluating thetrade near its end, the most obvious conclusion is that theBritish market had become so sophisticated by this period thatit was capable of controlling the market for the commodities itrequired. Only exceptional circumstances, like the outbreak ofthe Crimean War, could push prices high and even then thewealth of the country enabled the market to easilyaccommodate the prices being paid for whale oil.

THE BRITISH IN AUSTRALASIA

The overview of the British Southern Whale Fishery justprovided is drawn from a wider study just recently completed(Chatwin 1996). Despite the Anglo bias of the study, there area number of aspects which are of direct relevance to the studyof the history and archaeology of the Australian whale fishery.The first concerns the relocation of English whaling vessels toAustralia.

The results of the author's analysis of the fate of shipsemployed in the English whaling fleet indicate that fewEnglish whaling vessels directly transferred their registrationfrom London to Sydney or sailed out of Sydney as their homeport on a regular basis. Occasionally, English whaleships diddouble-cruise. Double cruising involved calling at a colonialport such as Sydney and shipping a complete cargo of oilhome, then proceeding again to the whaling grounds anddirectly home with the second cargo. Decisions to doublecruise though were made by the master, not by the owner.

English whaling ships which did relocate to the coloniescan be generally categorised as owner/master operations.Examples were the Sisters, owned and operated by RobertDuke, and the Jane & Eliza, originally owned by Foster & Co,but later owned and operated by Captain J. Jones. Theseowner/masters often operated as agents for the Londonowners. Robert Duke acted as agent for the Green, Wigrams &Green whaleship Vigilant when that vessel called at Sydney in1833 and 1834. It is also likely that he acted as agent for theMatilda, another Green, Wigrams & Green whaleship, when italso visited Sydney in late 1834.

One conclusion that can be drawn then is that the shipsemployed or redeployed in the Australian sperm fishery werenot sourced from the English whaling trade. They must thenhave been either purpose built or converted from use in othertrades. It is also not likely that there would have been a trade insecond-hand American whaleships in the 1830s as that tradewas in the throes of rapid expansion.

There must then have been a considerable business inbuilding, modifying and outfitting ships for whaling takingplace in Sydney in the 1830s and 1840s. When the Englishwhaleship Harpooner was dismasted and badly damaged inlate 1844 it was forced to put in to Sydney for extensiverepairs. The Sydney Morning Herald reported on the 30th May1845 that

'this fine whaler is now ready for sea again; she will beremoved from Moore's Wharf to Pinchgut tomorrowmorning, and proceed to sea on Monday next. It will beremembered that the Harpooner put in here...dismasted, having encountered a typhoon in theChina Sea. Since that time she has undergone thenecessary repairs, and taken in provisions for a twoyears cruise, the whole of which are colonialproduction.'

The other element of relevance to Australian whalinginvolves the movement of men. In the process of acquiring

crew lists for various whaleships involved in the English trade,the author was astonished by the high turnover of crew onmany of the vessels. An English whaling ship normally carrieda crew of between 30 to 33 men. On cruises the author hasbeen able to document, the average crewing figure over the lifeof each cruise was 58, and in one instance no less than 77 menserved aboard a ship on a 45 month cruise.

For fairly obvious reasons, Australian and New Zealandports played a significant part in encouraging this crewmobility. When the Vigilant called at Sydney in February 1837the first mate and sixteen other members of the crew left thevessel. This pattern was often repeated in other Australianports and at the Bay of Islands in New Zealand. What issurprising though is that the whalemen who left Englishwhaling ships do not appear to have re-shipped on otherEnglish whaling vessels. The question must then be asked:where did these experienced English whalemen go? Did theyjoin colonial whaling vessels or bay whaling ventures? If so, isthere some evidence of this? This puzzle is certainly an areafor further study in the history of the colonial fishery.

CONCLUSION

When the tariffs on colonial oil were matched to those of homeproduction in 1823, English whaleship owners almostimmediately abandoned the black oil trade, leaving itcompletely to the colonies. For the next twenty years Englishowners concentrated their efforts on the sperm oil trade.During this period the demand for sperm oil remained strong.The trade was driven by sperm oils use as a lubricant inindustry and its use as the preferred oil used in lighting,particularly domestic lighting. It was the high prices paid forsperm oil that kept owners in the English trade despite the highcosts of building and outfitting ships. Gas was not a competitoragainst sperm oil. It did compete though against black oil andreplaced black oil in the lighting of street lamps.

The costs of pursuing the sperm oil trade were high and thetrade became a trade of a few specialist owners from the late1820s. A component of this small group could be characterisedas elite shipowners and shipbuilders. These businessmen hadaccess to capital and ships, and in the depressed Englishshipping environment which existed in the 1820s and 1830s,chose to risk some their capital in a related shipping traderather than diversify into other speculative ventures.

Despite the high prices being paid for oil in the late 1830s,the London trade had difficulty remaining viable due to highcapital costs and growing voyage lengths. Voyages lengthenedas a result of competition from the American and colonialfleets and decreasing whale stocks on the whaling grounds.Longer voyages resulted in a significant growth in crewingproblems on English vessels. Many of the crew on theseEnglish whaleships left or abandoned their vessels inAustralian or New Zealand ports. Whether they took upemployment in the Australian whaling trade is not known,though the considerable financial difficulties experienced bythe colonial trade in the early 1840s may have encouragedthem into bay whaling rather than pelagic whaling ventures.When tariffs on oil were lowered in the 1840s London ownerswithdrew from the trade in great numbers.

Finally, why did owners in the British trade not relocate tothe colonies despite the obvious natural advantages? In thecase of the elite owners, who came to dominate the trade in the1830s, they were clearly not interested in operating a businesshalf way around the world. Their world was London. In thecase of specialist whaling firms like Bennett's and theEnderby's, they were too locked in to the London trade andwere caught up in an ever tightening noose of costs. From the1830s for every three of their ships that returned, they couldonly send out two.

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