Granville Allen Mawer: Ahab's Trade - The Saga Of South Seas Whaling

Allen and Unwin

$32.95

Review: Hugh Laracyrd

Ever since "Jonah made his home in dat fish's abdomen" people have, in diverse and often contradictory ways, been drawn to whales. The Basques began the first systematic hunting of them in the Bay of Biscay in the 10th century. Alternatively, whales have also been hugely mythologised. One of them, named Mocha Dick, inspired one of the greatest novels in the English language.

They have also generated much specious rhetoric. This is discernable in the anthropomorphising by animal-rights devotees, as well as in various utterances emanating from interests sympathetic to the World Council of Whalers. There, Japanese and Norwegian hunting interests appear to have made common cause with the proponents of a myopic, anachronistic and distorted notion of indigeneity. The mercenary and the meretrix are formidable allies, but the facts scarcely justify their claims. For not only are some whale stocks very low, but nowhere are the vital interests of anyone dependent either on killing whales or on letting beached ones die. No longer is any indispensable purpose served by not restraining all would-be predators, commercial or otherwise. Indeed, it seems wilful to flout popular sentiment in the matter.

Such are the hysteria and hypocrisy that have come to attend the present discussion of whale hunting that it is salutary to read an objective, wide-ranging and up-to-date history of that enterprise, which reached its apogee in the Pacific in the 1840s. That is, during a period when whales were abundant, and when their carcasses supplied industrial, domestic and fashion markets with products for which alternatives were not readily available.

While British and French crews were well represented among the whalers, Americans predominated, as they also do in Mawer's chronicle. He traces the rise of Nantucket, and then its decline as other whaling centres emerged. He discusses the business, managerial and technical sides of whaling as well as the crews' working conditions, including their food, on voyages that might last for four years. Most participants gained as little profit from it as the whales they hunted, and many died. Throwing spears from a row boat was a dangerous activity. But at least we have Moby Dick.

As for the environmental impact of whaling, that became severe only in the 20th century with the advent of the Norwegians, who worked with high-powered vessels and explosive harpoons. Theirs, Mawer observes, was not a specific assault: the floating factories and their attendant fleets of catchers vacuumed the oceans of anything that came their way.

True to its title, Ahab's Trade focuses solidly on the whalers and their work. It has little to say about the other major dimension of the topic: the profound impact of the whaling industry on the cultures and societies of the Pacific. But that is another story which, for New Zealand at least, has been broached by Harry Morton in The Whale's Wake (1982).

* Hugh Laracy is an associate professor of Pacific history at the University of Auckland.