Early days

As we’ve learned, Māori welcomed the meat, bone, and ivory that could be gathered when whales stranded. Such events provided enormous amounts of protein – something not readily available in a place with no large, naturally occurring land mammals. Artisans fashioned weapons out of the bone and ornaments from the ivory.

Māori also began to understand where and when these gifts from the sea might appear, developing rich traditions around stranding sites. Harvesting of this kind had minimal impact on whale populations.

Going commercial

The practice of harvesting stranded whales continued into the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It also became a small-scale commercial operation, with oil being boiled out of blubber from the carcasses. This kind of low-impact ‘whaling’ changed in the early 1800s, when ships from Europe and America came to hunt the bonanza of whales in Pacific waters.

Ocean hunting

From the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries European, American, and Japanese whalers roamed the world’s oceans, killing hundreds of thousands of whales. Whales fetched good prices for various reasons. Blubber was rendered down, either on ships or ashore, to make a clear straw-coloured oil used in lamps and stoves and as a lubricant. Oil from whales lit city streets and lubricated machines in rapidly industrialising countries like Britain and America before mineral oil was discovered. Baleen (flexible bony plates from the mouths of baleen whales) also provided the ‘bones’ to stiffen corsets, or was used in the manufacture of such things as umbrellas.

Southern abundance

From about 1800, whaling ships sailed from Europe and America to hunt in unexploited southern waters, lured by the staggering numbers of whales that had been seen there. One ship in 1792 reported sighting 15,000 whales off the coast of Australia in less than two weeks!

Many whalers came to Aotearoa New Zealand on multi-year whaling expeditions from the US, England, and Australia to hunt the prized sperm whale. Many were convict ships who, after depositing their prisoners in Australia, were eager to collect a return cargo of whale products harvested from the seas around Aotearoa New Zealand by crewmembers in small rowboats. Hurled harpoons that found their mark would drag the boats along by rope until the animal was exhausted and killed, to be hauled back to the larger ship. But these large sailing ship crews were not the only whalers of the time.

The first whaling ship, from America, came to New Zealand waters in 1791 [just 20 years after Captain Cook’s first visit to Aotearoa New Zealand]. Over the next 10 years, the seas around New Zealand became a popular place to catch whales. There were plenty of them, and New Zealand provided safe waters and a place to stock up on food and wood. A lot of American and French whalers arrived in the 1830s. Whalers were a tough group of men – they had to be, because the work was difficult. In New Zealand, many of the whalers were Māori.
– Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand

^{Artist unknown :A race for a whale. [1861].. [Jones, John D], fl 1861 :Life and adventures in the South Pacific, by a Roving Printer. New York, Harper & Bros., 1861.. Ref: PUBL-0161-001. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. /records/22882463}

Māori Whalers

Very early in the 19th century Māori men started working individually aboard ships, particularly whaling vessels. A Māori crew member was working on a whaler as early as 1804. One whaling vessel was reported in 1826 as having 12 Māori crew, who were described as ‘orderly and powerful seamen’.1 In 1838, during the whale-boat races at Hobart, one-third of the whalers present were Māori.

Māori men played a major role at shore stations, some reaching the position of headsman in command of a whaleboat. Around most of the country, as many as 40% of the whalers may have been Māori, and in Otago the figure was higher.

This spirit of curiosity leads [Māori] often to trust themselves to small coasting vessels; or they go with whalers to see still more distant parts of the globe. They adapt themselves readily to European navigation and boating, and at this moment a native of New Zealand is master of a whale-ship; and in Cook’s Straits many boats are manned by them alone. […] In this dangerous occupation [they] have acquired in a short time so much skill, that they are perfectly equal to the Europeans, and being always ready to work, sober and frugal, the proprietors of the boats often prefer a crew of natives.

Targets

Danger money

^{Polack, Joel Samuel, 1807-1882. Polack, Joel Samuel 1807-1882 :The North Cape, New Zealand, and sperm whale fishery. J. S. Polack, del., W. Read, sc. London, Richard Bentley, 1838.. Ref: A-032-026. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. /records/22876310}

Whaling Stations

^{Baby whale being stripped of blubber, Kaikoura. Ref: 1/2-022935-F. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. /records/23227002}

^{Whaleboat, used by Expedition, and crew in Carnley Harbour. From the album: [1907 Sub-Antarctic Expedition]; circa 1908; North, W., November 1907, Auckland Islands, by Samuel Page. Te Papa (O.007027)}

^{Men, amongst the bodies of whales cast up on a beach, Houhora, Northland. Ref: 1/2-051326-F. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. /records/22710096}

^{Northwood, Arthur James, 1880-1949. Whalers cutting blackfish blubber for boiling down. Northwood brothers :Photographs of Northland. Ref: 1/2-050836-F. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. /records/23238494}

^{Unidentified Maori group pouring whale oil. Original photographic prints and postcards from file print collection, Box 10. Ref: PAColl-6208-31. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. /records/23164185}

Connections

^{Pātītī (hatchet) with harpoon head, carver unknown, 1830-1850, Ōtaki. Oldman Collection. Gift of the New Zealand Government, 1992. Te Papa (OL000035)}

Impact

The shorewhalers, in hunting the animal in the season when it visits the shallow waters of the coast to bring forth the young, and suckle it in security, have felled the tree to obtain the fruit, and have taken the most certain means of destroying an otherwise profitable and important trade.

In the next step we’ll learn how whaling changed completely from the early 20th century, and just how much of an impact this would have on the whale species of the great Southern Ocean, and indeed, the entire southern hemisphere.

Further resources

Whales and dolphins of Aotearoa New Zealand, by Barbara Todd, Te Papa Press, 2014

Ship-based whaling, Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand

Shore-based whaling, Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand

Pursuit and capture, Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand