WHALE OIL

Hokitika Guardian, 1 June 1929, Page 3

WHALE OIL

A RECORD CARGO

SAN FRANCISCO, April 29

With the hallmark of her trade—a flaming white..whale .barrel affixed to her foremast—contrasting sharply with the tramp.ike appearance of her rustcuten hull, the whaling “mother ship,” Sir James Clark Ross, sloughed up through the narrows at dawn and made fast at Pier 0, oil Staten Island, New York. By dusk the same day her Plimsol! mark emerged from beneath the water, for the first, time since she left the Ross Sea, as the tanker throbbed with the pulse boat of pumps discharging more than 1,509,000 dollars’ worth of whale oil into a score of tank cars on a harbour float.

The Sir James Clark Russ, second largest, whaling “factory” in the world, seamed out of the Ross Sea on. February 18th with 50,060 barre’s of ie wlcilc oil sloshing in liter hold. This constituted the record cargo that the ship has carried into the port of New York. She left behind her the best “fishing” season that the majority of her crew’s complement of 186 Norwegians had . experienced. The entire cargo of whale oil will be used in the manufacture of soap by the firm of Procter and Gamble.

The Ross Sea, where Commander Richard E.'Byrd and his men are hibernating. also gave up sufficient whales for 73,000 barrels of the precious fluid to the C. A. Larsen, larges' whaling tanker and supply ship in the world, according to the Norwegian whalemen. This vessel also arrived in New York a few days aftei the Ross.

The story told in New York was to the effect that the Larsen lost one of her “chaser” trawlers in the Ross Sea, but the “chaser’’ was later found after springing a leak. Her entire crew of 11 men were saved. According to the crew of the Ross, the whaling trawler foundered after she had been rammed by a pain-mad-dened hull whale as it performed the v.uial “flving die.” It was explained iliac whales mortally wounded by the 451 h harpoon shell frequently “fly’ through the water, making eomp'ctc circles as they throb about with their great tails in their lask agony. Several of the trawlers of the Ross were disabled temporarily hv contact with the heads of dying whales, the impact buckling the double steel plating of the “chasers.”

The heavy plating is necessary because of the. grinding of the ice floes, it was explained. The Ross reporte» nn uneventful trip with all hands safe although she was ice-bound in the Ross Sea for three weeks hist December. The Norwegian tanker was within 300 miles of Little America, and was frequently in touch with the Bvrd expedition bv radio.'She carried 100 sled clogs to New Zealand for the B-rd party last autumn. By th<> l'"’e Gn dispatch reaches New Z-'a’aml Gr Ross will I*‘ on her way there for annual overhauling.