Days

Is It A Whale?

Queer Arrival on New Caledonia Beach Stirs Memories of Whaling Days

Noumea, Aug. 8.

AMARINE monster that seems to have been a war casualty has been washed up on a New Caledonian beach.

It was seen at sea, some time back, and then it drifted inshore, on to a small reef, and from there on to the beach, where it now lies. It is 50 feet long, 15 wide and higher than an ordinary doorway, and locally has been nick named the “Pocket Submarine.” The colour is that of chamois leather (it has also been likened to the colour of bread) and the feature which astonished people was the long (8 or 9 feet) ivory tusks or bones sticking out from the jaws. The question is being asked whether part of the head had not been destroyed, leaving these queer projections stick ing out, minus the flesh that usually covers them.

The animal seems to be a species of whale, for three quarters of the back is deeply rifled and the riflings crossed with horizontal lines, and there is a round mark which may be the aperture through which it blows. Rich, oily blubber was a foot or two thick on its sides, and it is a pity nobody was able to get to work and slash it off during the first day or two.

The animal’s two fins seem to be only two or three feet long.

Sharks are attacking the tail, and the creature daily is smelling stronger; also decreasing considerably in size by a sort of internal shrinkage. It will be some time before the place becomes a picnic spot for people anxious to see the monster’s bones.

WHALES are so much scarcer in the Pacific than they used to be. In the days when the industry flourished in New Zealand and Australia, New Caledonia was also the haunt of Massachusetts and Australasian whalers.

Some of them settled in the Loyalty Islands and lived with native women. That is why there are so many Anglo-Saxon names among the natives to-day—in certain Lifou villages, for example.

The Noumea “Moniteur Imperial” of October 24, 1869, informed its readers that many English and American whalers had begged the New Caledonian Administration for authorisation to hunt whales in the region of the Loyalties.

The masters of these vessels, needing men for their exploi tation, at the same time asked for permission to engage local native crews. Both requests were granted, on certain con ditions, and the Governor told his representative at Lifou to encourage this industry by all means possible.

Nor was whaling round the Caledonian outer reef to be despised. In 1862, it is on record, the French whaler “Winslow,” operating off the north-west of the Colony, cap tured 21 whales in three months, yielding 900 barrels of oil.

Whale oil was also shipped to Noumea from the New Hebrides, the local price being £26 per ton. • The yield varied from I'k to 7 tons of oil per whale, but the latter would be regarded a large fish for these waters (Greenland whales are much bigger).

IN the whaling season the natives would make fires on the beach and dance and sing “as at Harvest Home.” The missionaries objected to this as perpetuating heathen customs.

“The men,” says one writer, “were all paid m cash, and they could realise a very nice sum in a good year. The natives liked the work, which was the only thing in the shape of exciting sport which entered into their lives. They laid out their dollars in stores, tobacco, calico, etc.”

It was, of course, Captain Faddon who started the in dustry here. Sometimes news would come in that whales were in the vicinity of the outer reef, and his boats, seven men in each, including officer, harpooner and five rowers, would leave in all haste. The fight over, we can imagine the monster being towed in to Paddon’s special pier, where it would be cut into strips and carried to the blubber-room.