Sea Beast

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 369, 19 July 1946, Page 14

Sea Beast

VETERAN who prefers to be known as "Bosun" spoke the other night from 3YA on "Pelorus Jack," the porpoise or dolphin of whom the young New Zealander first hears while gazing suspiciously from his cradle. "Bosun’s" choice of a name and his reminiscences somehow suggest the Ancient Mariner (though his manners are far superior and! his persistence correspondingly less and certainly Coleridge-or perhaps Melville -would have been the best authority on this fish (as we, with "Bosun," may agree to call him, with his unfailing accompanying of vessels and the innumerable legends that gathered about his name. Some New Zealand folklorist will have to make a collection of these; and "Bosun" will provide a number. I particularly appreciated the tale of the steward who did something to offend Jack and was dogged by ill-luck for the

rest of his seafaring days, his ships run. ning aground or sinking under him "so that he finally left the shipping company and took up a position in Napier." The story of Pelorus Jack illustrates the interesting fact that the instinct of play seems to have developed in the seaing mammals, so that men have traditionally regarded them with a measure of affection. The most ancient illustrations to Homer are those of the Greek black-figured vases of the 8th Century B.C. In these the men have pointed beards sticking out at right angles to the profile, and white gleaming Levantine eyes that make the words "the wily Odysseus" come suddenly and disreputably alive; and whenever the artist wishes to convey that his scene is at sea he shows leaping about the human figures a company of dolphins, who have a cheerful appearance and even a facial expression very like the man’s. It is in this character that one should think of Pelorus Jack.