Dundee Whaling: Ships in the Ice and Oil for Jute

Each major claim carries one of three labels. established means supported by primary records, official bodies or several independent reliable sources. shared means the core fact is sound but sources disagree on details, dates or interpretation. traditional means widely repeated but not traceable to a primary or independent source.

Numbers of ships, whales killed and men lost vary between sources and years, so this card avoids single totals. The connection between whale oil and jute is well established.

Into the ice

established Whaling from Dundee began in the mid-eighteenth century. Each spring ships sailed north to the Greenland Sea and later to the Davis Strait and Baffin Bay, hunting the bowhead whale, whose thick blubber yielded large amounts of oil and whose mouth contained long plates of baleen. Crews rowed out in small boats and harpooned the whales, then towed the carcasses to the ship to strip the blubber. In some seasons ships also hunted seals off Newfoundland.

Oil for jute

established In the nineteenth century Dundee became the world centre of the jute industry. Raw jute fibre from Bengal was stiff and hard to spin, and manufacturers discovered that softening it with whale oil and water, a process called "batching", made it workable. Whaling and jute became closely linked, and the demand for oil helped keep Dundee's whaling fleet going after other British ports had given up. Baleen was used in corsets, brushes and whips.

Steam and wooden walls

established From the late 1850s Dundee owners introduced steam-powered whalers, with strong wooden hulls reinforced to withstand ice. They could force their way deeper into the pack, and Dundee became Britain's leading whaling port. Its shipyards became experts in building polar ships. The whaler Terra Nova, built in Dundee in 1884, later carried Scott's last Antarctic expedition, and the RRS Discovery, built by the Dundee Shipbuilders Company and launched in 1901, carried Scott's first. Discovery is now preserved at Discovery Point in Dundee.

The human cost

established Whaling was extremely dangerous. Ships were trapped and crushed in the ice, and crews sometimes had to abandon them and walk across the ice to other vessels. Men died of cold, scurvy and accidents. Whaling communities in Dundee knew the fear of ships that did not return.

The whales' cost

established Centuries of hunting by Dundee and other whaling fleets drove the bowhead whale close to extinction in the eastern Arctic. As catches fell, Dundee's whalers travelled further and hunted other animals, and in 1892–93 a Dundee expedition sailed to the Antarctic to look for new whaling grounds. The bowhead is now protected, and its populations have partly recovered.

Which whale? Bowhead and right whale

established Two "right whales". The name "right whale" is usually explained as meaning the right whale to hunt: slow, rich in oil and baleen. Two quite different animals carry it. The Dundee fleet's quarry in the Arctic was the bowhead, or Greenland right whale, of the genus Balaena. It is a different species from the northern right whale, Eubalaena glacialis, a temperate-water animal that once ranged from the Azores and north-west Africa to Iceland and Spitsbergen. The Handbook of British Mammals (1991), in the cetacean accounts by P. G. H. Evans, notes that the two are sometimes placed in the same genus, but treats them as separate species.

established Hunted out nearer home first. The Handbook describes the northern right whale as one of the earliest whales hunted by people, possibly from Neolithic times, and the main species taken in temperate waters in the Middle Ages, with the Bay of Biscay the centre of a whaling industry until the mid-nineteenth century. As slow coastal species such as the right whale and humpback declined, it says, British whalers travelled farther towards Arctic waters. Dundee's voyages to Greenland and the Davis Strait are part of that wider pattern.

established What the right whale is like. The Handbook describes a finless whale 15 to 18 m long and weighing around 50 to 56 tonnes, with a huge head about 30% of its body length, baleen plates usually 2.2 to 2.6 m long, and pale callosities on the head that can be used to tell individuals apart. Its V-shaped double blow is distinctive. It feeds mainly on copepods, tiny crustaceans, and calves in warm waters in winter.

established A remnant population. In 1991 the Handbook put the whole North Atlantic population of northern right whales at between 200 and 500, with the eastern stock "reduced to an extremely low level". There had been no strandings on British and Irish coasts since 1913. One of only three well-documented sightings in British and Irish waters in recent decades was in the Outer Hebrides in August 1980. The species has been completely protected since 1935.

After Dundee: Scottish shore whaling, 1903–51

established Whaling from the shore. While Dundee's Arctic trade was fading, a different kind of whaling began in Scotland. The Handbook records shore stations operating mainly in 1904–14 and 1920–29: two at Ronas Voe and one each at Colla Firth and Olna Firth in Shetland, and one at West Loch Tarbert in the Outer Hebrides. They concentrated on the big rorquals (blue, fin and sei whales) and sperm whales.

established The last right whales. Small numbers of right whales and humpbacks were also taken, and the Handbook calls this "further nails to the coffin" for populations already reduced to remnants. Between 1903 and 1928, 94 right whales were taken in the Outer Hebrides region, mostly on the continental shelf, and six in Shetland. Humpback catches were 51 in Shetland and 19 in the Outer Hebrides. When whaling resumed at West Loch Tarbert for two seasons in 1950–51, no right whales or humpbacks were caught at all. In 1991 these eastern populations showed little sign of recovery.

established The northern bottlenose whale. This deep-water beaked whale, up to about 9.5 m long and feeding mainly on squid, was another target of northern whaling. The Handbook records 25 taken around Shetland and one in the Outer Hebrides between 1903 and 1928, and more than 5,000 taken by Norwegian whalers between 1939 and 1969. It judged the north-east Atlantic population "much depleted", with strandings and sightings around Britain and Ireland both falling. Most sightings come from deep water west of Scotland, with coastal records around the Outer Hebrides and in the northern North Sea.

established Pilot whale drives. Shetland and Orkney communities also drove pilot whales ashore on an opportunistic basis for centuries. The Handbook says these drives ceased in the latter part of the nineteenth century, though they continue in the Faroe Islands.

established The law today. Whaling in UK waters is prohibited by the Whaling Industry (Regulation) Act 1934, as amended, which applies to all cetaceans. The International Whaling Commission's ban on commercial whaling has applied since 1986.

The end

established By the early twentieth century, whales were scarce, and petroleum and vegetable oils had replaced whale oil for most purposes, including jute batching. Dundee's whaling fleet dwindled, and the last voyages took place around the time of the First World War.

established In 1883 a humpback whale swam into the Tay estuary, was harpooned and eventually landed. The "Tay Whale" was exhibited and dissected, and was the subject of a famously bad poem by William McGonagall. Its skeleton is displayed in Dundee's McManus museum.

• Whale oil was used to soften jute fibres in Dundee's mills.
• Dundee built the Discovery for Scott's Antarctic expedition.
• The Terra Nova began life as a Dundee whaler.
• A whale swam into the Tay in 1883 and inspired a McGonagall poem.
• Dundee became Britain's leading whaling port in the later nineteenth century.
• The blue whale's scientific name was based by Linnaeus in 1758 on a whale from the Firth of Forth, and a fin whale from the Forth was described as Balaena sulcata in 1811.
• Ninety-four right whales were taken off the Outer Hebrides between 1903 and 1928. None were found when whaling briefly resumed in 1950–51.

• Myth: the bowhead and the northern right whale are the same animal. The bowhead, or Greenland right whale, is an Arctic species of the genus Balaena. The northern right whale, Eubalaena glacialis, is a different, temperate-water species that was hunted out of European waters earlier.
• Myth: Scottish whaling ended with Dundee's last voyages. Shore stations in Shetland and Harris worked mainly in 1904–14 and 1920–29, and West Loch Tarbert reopened for two seasons in 1950–51.
• Disputed: how many whales were killed and ships lost. Numbers vary between sources and years, so no single total can be given.
• Disputed: how many right whales survive. The population figures given here come from 1991 and are history, not a current count.