Modern Whaling & Bear-Hunting A record of present-day whaling with up-to-date appliances in many parts of the world, and of bear and seal hunting in the Arctic regions

Norway to Tonsberg—Comparison between the Old Viking Ships and our Modern Vessel—Similarity of Lines—Modern Methods of Whaling—“Modern Whales” compared with Old Style—Whales, Sp...

In Southern Norway—Building our Whaler—Cutting Lance Shafts—Tanks—Whale Lines—Outfit for Prolonged Cruise—Rigging and Arrangements of Hull—Our Harpoon Guns—The Henriksens of Ton...

Clear St Ebba from Quay Side—Anchor in Sheltered Fiord—Getting our Fishing Gear, Guns, etc., in order—Adjusting Compass—Final Provisioning—Ammunition—The Islands in the South At...

Leave South Norway for the Shetlands—Anchors foul—At Sea at Last—Down the Skagerak in Calm—Picking up Lights—Unpromising Weather—Half a Gale—Digging into same Hole—Full Gale—St...

Drifting—Gale falling—Engines start—Set Sail—The Name St Ebba—We put aside our Plans for Arctic Whaling—Fair Isle Light—Sumburgh Light—Bressay and Lerwick—Quiet and Greyness of...

The Waiting Part of Whaling—Before “grassing a Fish”—Waiting in Japanese Seas—Poultry on a Whaler—Small Whale Yarn—Tied up in Lerwick—“Customs” on Board—“Tearing Tartan”—Entangl...

Visit to R. C. Haldane at Lochend—Return to St Ebba—Captain Henriksen entertains the Board of Trade Inspector—Registers our Tonnage at Sixty-nine Tons—A Sunday Saturnalia of Sha...

Extracts from Whaling Log and Sketch-Book—In Shetland—Sea-Trout in the Voe—The Whaler Haldane calls for the Writer—The Forty-Mile Limit—Seals and Birds—The Modern Whale Gun—Diff...

Better Luck—Spectacular Effect—Whales and Rainbow—On Chase—The Sea teems with Life—Our Chance comes—Heart-stopping Excitement—A Close Shave—In Tow—Seventy Tons in the Basket—Ten...

Whaling has its seamy Side—A Whale Hunt—Colours of the Sea and Whales—In Tow—Whale is killed—Another Whale—“Thrilling Dangers” of Whaling and Exceptional Behaviour of Whales—Dan...

Back to the St Ebba on West of Shetland—Fine Weather—No Competition—All Hands busy but no Whales—Our Last Night in Port—Out to the West—The Ramna Stacks as Targets for H.M.S.—A...

A Fine Weather Chantey “California”—Back to Lochend—Cormorant Hash—Up Anchor and leave the Shetlands—Cape Wrath—Lewis—Dunvegan—Picking up Lights—South to Tobermory—Our West Coas...

The British Fleet at Oban—A Union Jack made in Norway—St George _versus_ Imperial Idea—Violation of British Constitution—John Knox a Sunday Golfer—Wives at Sea—A Yarn—A Spy in T...

Harvest Moon—Across the Irish Sea—Belfast—Origin of our Name Scotland—Erin go Bragh—What brought us to Ulster Day and the Covenant—The Crew’s Adventures—Greenhorns in Ballymacar...

N.E. Gale—“Oot o’ this intil a waur”—Into Deep Soundings—It Blows Hard—Black Night and Phosphorescent Wake—Oil on the Waters—Driving through—A Scrap of Sail—Attempt at Dolphin S...

A New Land (to us)—St Michael of the Azores—Bens and Glens—Colour of the Island—Portuguese Pilot—Talk by Signs—About Sperm Whales—Ponta Delgada—Its Remarkable Beauty—Arcades—Col...

Notes about the Island—Compared with Madeira—Its Sights—The Streets of Delgada—A Café—Vino Tinto—Guitar Melody—Costumes—Chase Small Whales—Whales’ Ocean Routes—“The Ladies’ Gulf...

A Sudden Gale—Driving on to a Lee Shore—Bad Night—Engine Trouble—Killers attacking Whale—Recollections of the Antarctic—Oddments—An Eight-Foot Ray or Skate—A Jaunt on Shore—The...

Leave the Azores and San Miguel—Madeira in Prospect and Tunny Fishing—Whales at Last!—Sperm—A Chase—Prospects of Success—Long Chase—Fast!—A Straight Shot—A Bull Sperm—Cutting up...

Madeira at Dawn from the Sea—Description—Funchal Flowers—Tunny Fishing—Early Morning Start—Splendid Colours of Native Boats and Crews—Small Fry for Bait—A Large Tunny caught by...

We leave the North Atlantic—Engine Troubles—Slow Voyage to Cape Town—New Engineer puts Diesel Engine right—Up the East Coast of Africa—The Seychelles Islands—Many Whales—We deci...

Going to the Arctic—Objects in View—Our Little Company in the Fonix—Rough Weather—The First Ice—Draw for Watches—A Party lost in the Ice and a possible Cure for Scurvy—A Lunatic...

Arctic Ice compared to Antarctic Ice—Colours of the Floes—First Blood—Habits of Arctic Seals compared with those of the Antarctic—Stopped in the Floes—Cobalt Ice Water—White Bea...

Six Bears in the Twenty-four Hours—A Bear’s Meal—C. A. Hamilton’s Veteran Bear—The Writer and a Bear stalk each other—Tips for Animal Painters—Sensation facing a Bear at Three i...

Waiting for Whales—Narwhals at last!—Our She-Cook—An Arctic Sanatorium—A Shark—Arctic Seals and Seals of the Antarctic—Our Bear’s Food—_L’éscrime_—Rifle, Pistol, Lasso—Lasso our...

A Walk on the Floe—Bear takes a Football—Lasso Practice—A Piece of Driftwood—The Bagpipes—Pushing West—A Cold Bath—Chasing a Bear and Cubs—Lost in Mist—Clever Mother Bear—Bear-h...

A Narwhal and a Bear in the Bag—Missing Whales—Old Style of Whale Gun—Svend Foyn’s Cure for Toothache—Is Whaling an “Industry” or a “Speculation”?—Whales “Tail up”—Excitement of...

Arctic and Antarctic Floes compared—The Writer, the Bear and our “She-Cook”—Bear bids for Freedom—Rope-throwing—An Artist’s Points in a Little Seal Stalk—Man and his Works in Ar...

All Hands to secure the Bears—Two Bear Cubs captured—Invidious Comparisons between the Starboard and Port Bear—Another Bear for the Larder—Greenland’s Icy Mountains—A Blue Seal—...

We get out of the Ice—Open Sea again—Spanish Airs—Killers—A Whaler’s Esperanto—Killers attacking a Rorqual—A Gleam of Sun—Then Rough Weather—Then Shelter in a Fiord—Beards off a...

Trömso again—Down the Coast—Selling our Bears—Bears Escape—Eat the Fish in Market-place—We put our Bears into New Cages—Notes amongst the Norwegian Islands—Recollections of Hunt...

It blows, it blows, at Balta Sound, a cold, strong wind, and yet we are in June. I think it always blows at this northern end of Shetland, but we on our little steam-whaler, the...

In August I went to Tonsberg, the capital of the old Viking days, and over the wooden housetops saw the two bare pole masts of our ship and a little later saw her entire hull! H...

It does not surprise me that the Vikings of the olden days used to leave the southern coast of Norway for summer visits to our Highlands and western isles, for the climate in th...

At last! on the 23rd of August, the St Ebba was ready to be taken away from the slip, and the town, and the noise of the builders’ yard, and one morning, with rain blotting out...

Then it’s hey! and it’s ho! for Scotland, chilly Lerwick and the Shetlands and kindly English-speaking people. My heart warms at the prospect of seeing our western hills and hea...

But the old sea still runs high from N.W. and the wind blows little ripples down the long furrows, and the lumpy waves stop our way down to four or five knots.

Whaling is like salmon-fishing, but the waiting part is on an enormous scale, bigger in proportion than even the game or the tackle, however huge that is. Fancy waiting and fish...

I have just come over the island and on board ship after a week-end trip to the north of this main island to my friend R. C. Haldane, of the distinguished family of that name, a...

Perhaps it will be as well for me to hark back here and make some extracts from my last year’s whaling log and sketch-books, for who knows when this St Ebba will fall in with wh...

The solitary finner we hunted disappeared, and we hunted for hours towards heavy purple clouds in the S.W., and the sea seemed deserted as before, till towards six o’clock we sa...

Whaling has its seamy side. We met it outside the loch going up west of Shetland—the wind had almost dropped, but the cross sea it left was as if several Mulls of Cantire had be...

Having put down these recent experiences of modern whaling, which, though not exciting, may at least be instructive, let us return to follow the fortunes of our patient whalers...

We began this day with a chantey—a cheerful, fine-weather chantey. There are lugubrious songs too for bad weather or unhappy crews—“Stormalong,” for instance, “Stormie,” who “he...

The British fleet lay at Oban; I don’t think any wars-man on any of the vessels would not have changed places with one of us; for to any seaman there is an air of romance and ad...

“It was a’ for our richtfu’ King We left fair Scotland’s strand, It was a’ for our richtfu’ King, We first saw Irish land, my dear, We first saw Irish land.

It is a strong N.E. gale, but “Muckle word pass ower,” as the children were taught by a certain dominie in the north to repeat when they came to a word beyond his knowledge, so...

A new land, new to us, only a faint tint above the horizon, but land it is, we know; merely an outline of faint soft blue-grey mountains over the sparkling morning sea.

So we left our wreck, meditating on the ways of a wicked world, and went on our own business to hunt round the south coast of San Miguel or St Michael (we call the island) to th...

I see I have gushed a little about the blue sea in the last chapter. This begins with storm, and gale, and courage running into water in the grip of the elements.

Farewell, Ponta Delgada, with your pretty streets perfumed with fir planks and pineapples; farewell, San Miguel. How sweetly the delicate tints of your capital—pale pink and blu...

The St Ebba killed a few more whales in the seas between the Azores and Madeira, but they were of no great value—seihvale and small sperm—and the weather became tempestuous, so...

After killing our first bull sperm off the Azores we killed a few more whales, north of the Line, rorquals and small sperms of no great value. Then, owing to the warm water of t...

Now we come to notes about the Arctic regions, whales and bears, promised in the preface to this collection of spun yarn, as a sailor-man might call it. Long ago the writer, as...

My first impressions of the Arctic ice compared to Antarctic ice are distinctly disappointing, which reminds me of my friend Dr Bruce’s first impressions of the same. He had bee...

I continue these bear-shooting notes this evening, Friday, 11th July. I know it is evening from a faint blush of pink on the snow that is just perceptible; without this I would...

No whales yet, never a blow, no chance to use our harpoon-guns from the ship’s bows or from the boats, so we keep their covers on. What patience is needed for whaling! Two seaso...

On the 15th of July we started looking for whale or bear in the mist again, but with never a sign of either. So painting was the order of the day for the writer, such a chance,...

If I had not been writing these notes I would have harpooned a whale, I believe, for a few minutes after getting on board the narwhals appeared again, and by the time we were af...

Before we left our last misty anchorage we partook of a meal of both bear and narwhal. The narwhal’s flesh is blacker than an old mushroom, and as food it is only passable. Youn...

Bright sun for once and away we have been steaming since early morning, south and east, hoping to get clear of the great floes that bar our way to the west. I long for mountains...

This chapter will show that it is foolish to sit up late, and that it does not do to shoot polar bears in pyjamas. Last night Hamilton and I sat up fairly late playing vingt-et-...

“Ugh—ugh!” our starboard bear shouts to-day; not a roar now, it is a hopeless complaint. “Ugh! let me out—ugh! look at my coat, all stained and soiled.... Ugh! let me out, I don...

Right about wheel then, for we are sick of eternal flat ice-floes. If we had a new boiler, new coal supply, new food supply and unlimited time, we would hang on. The ice may ope...

There being still mist this morning our budget of news can only be described as strictly Local, for we can only see over a few yards of floe and rippling sea. Three hooded-seals...

After several weeks’ trying to get through the ice we failed to get ashore, owing to there being twenty to sixty miles of fixed land ice, and now have worked our way back eastwa...

To-day it is almost rough, a fresh north-east breeze, and as our little ship rolls far and often in a swell, or anything like a sea, strong men turn pale and say they feel a lit...

We find little difference here in Trömso since we left for the cold North. Then it was sunny but very cold, now all the snow has melted away from the hills and they are green wi...

In the smoking-room on the way south on board we naturally talk much about fishing, for half our fellow-passengers have been salmon-fishing and there is much comparison of Bags...