Whaling, the bloody pursuit of the leviathan, is something more often associated with Nantucket and the epic novel, Moby Dick.
Trinidad too has a history of whaling until synthetic petroleum-based oils became widely available in the 20th century, whale oil was in very high demand for a host of purposes from lamp fuel to being used for soap and perfumes.
Whale bone, being tough and springy, was perhaps the only material used for ladies’ corsets and other applications requiring a pliant, durable substance.
From 1498 to the late 18th century, whales were commonly sighted in huge pods in the Gulf. Jean Michel Cazabon recorded in his painting, ‘Whaling in the Bocas’, the dangerous and thrilling activities of whale hunters.
Whaling required a special breed of adventurers. A wooden pirogue rowed vigourously by six or seven oarmen and the brawny harpooner with his iron harpoon was the only equipment availiable to conquer the largest animal on earth.
The harpoon is launched. The whale dives, thrashes, accelerates, testing the courage and fortitude of everyone on board, The line plays out. Another harpoon is launched.
The whale now is in its death throes, splashes its mighty tail often smashing the pirouge to splinters and spilling its occupants into the swirling sea.
The early months of the year were when the great pods of razor back whales, 60 feet in length, along with humpback whales and their calves began their migrations through the Bocas.
At the whaling stations, a sharp lookout was maintained on the hilltops and a conch shell was used to raise the alarm.
The process of processing the catch was described in 1857 by L A A DeVerteuil as follows: “In taking the whale, peculiar boats only are used, so that the whalers do not venture beyond the placid waters of the gulf.
The method followed here is the same as that pursued on the ocean; but, no large vessels being engaged in the pursuit, when the animal has been killed it is towed to the establishment by the boats: this is a very tedious mode of procedure and should the wind and tide be against the boatmen, it often occupies 24 hours.
The animal is brought as near the shore as possible, the blubber cut into long slices and carried to the boilers; even this, however, is not accomplished without much trouble.
“Very often immense troops of sharks attack the carcase of the whale and devour part of it before it can be removed to the establishment; but they particularly swarm around when the operation of slicing is commenced, from 1,500 to 3,000 sharks sometimes collecting in an incredibly short time, so that some of the men are then employed in killing them with harpoons and hatchets.
Great waste often takes place from imperfect resources; one-fourth of the available parts of the animal being sometimes left on the spot.
The number of whales caught annually is from 25 to 30; quantity of oil, about 20,000 gallons. Sometimes whales come in accompanied by their young, and as the female is very fond of its offspring, the whaler aims at wounding the calf with the least possible injury.
The mother, in this case, never abandons her young, but continues swimming around, so as to be easily approached and harpooned.”
During the process of defleshing (called flensing), the thousands of sharks swarming around the bloody carcass posed little danger to the whalers.
One 1847 account actually speaks of the sharks being dealt a smart whack on the head by whalers when they came too close for comfort.
American whaleboats sometimes provided competition for the shore whalers of the islands but this caused little conflict.
By 1880, the entire industry was dead due to a multitude of reasons from decline in the whale populations to low market prices for whale oil.
At Monos Island, one of the old stations, Copperhole (so called because of the enormous copper cauldrons brought in from sugar estates to boil down the blubber into oil) became a popular holiday resort, but very little else survives of this maverick chapter in Trinidad’s history.
In 186, Captain C A White bought the land on Gaspar Grande, now called Point Baleine and established a whaling station.
He sold the venture to Richard Joell and when Joell died, the Tardieu family took possession.
Around 1880, over-exploitation by commercial whalers from the US, Canada and Europe had decimated these migratory pools almost to extinction.
Only the ghostly sounds of the whales calling to their calves echo in the winds of these islands today.