STRANDED WHALES

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 65, 7 September 1911, Page 7

STRANDED WHALES

' SIXTY ASHORE IN .MOUNT'S BAY. CRUELTY BY BOYS. For the first time on record a school of whales visited Mount's Bay, Cornwall, on Saturday, July Ist. Sixty in number, of the bottle-nosed variety, the whales entrapped themselves by coming in too far on the high tide, and' getting on the i stretch of sands adjoining Penzance i Harbor, they became stranded when the tide went out. The school was principally made up of cows and calves, and finding their way to the open sea barred, they lashed the water with great fury, churning it into foam. Their lengths varied from about *25 feet down to a few feet. Several of the whales were shot bv men in a boat, but the majority of them were stranded high and drv alive. i UNRESTRICTED STABBING. A regrettable scene then occurred. It i is thus described by a. correspondent:— ! "An unrestricted, wicked butchery of the whales by boys began. They used their pocket knives .so freely that the area covered by the mammals became a shambles. In some cases the ends of the pectoral fins were cut off. This unrestricted stabbing and cutting, which caused great blood-shed', was eventually checked by intervention of the authorities. Those whales which had been brutally cut were put out of their misery with, service revolvers-, under the direction of t.he officer commanding the coastguard division, Lieutenant Chambers. With the high water most of the whales got off to sea. The casualty list totalled about twenty-five." A few of the living whales apparently lost all sense of direction and remained about the'water in the foreshore sands bo languidly that they were again left high ajid dry.