Part I: Seals teeth and whales ears - Scott Polar Research Institute ...

This was the first station to be established in the Antarctic, when Captain C A
Larsen arrived on 16 November 1904, with about 60 other Norwegians on three
ships, Louise, Rolf and Fortuna. The first whale, a humpback was taken on 22
December and the factory, operational in about a month produced the first oil on
24 December. The station they established was the forerunner of the immense and
extensive Antarctic whaling industry that developed later. It had accommodation
for 300 men and was designed to produce whale oil (from baleen whales) sperm
oil, whale meat meal, and bone meal. A few years after my time there it also began
producing protein solubles, whale meat extract and frozen whale meat. It was an
efficient factory and could process some 24 fin whales, each 60-70 ft long in 24 hrs.
(As many as the floating factory Balaena could process over 24 hrs in 1954). An
additional 100 men worked on the catcher boats in the whaling season and the
total winter complement was about 200. There were three other stations on the
island, an hour by sea up the coast to the north in Stromness Bay. These were
Husvik (Norwegian owned) and Leith Harbour and Stromness (both owned by
the British Company, Christian Salvesen). Husvik and Leith Harbour were active
whaling stations, Stromness, with a floating dock, was used for major engineering
repairs.
Grytviken, was located half a mile across the cove from King Edward Point. A
track led around the shore to the complex, which was built on flat ground below
Mount Hodges (605m). Its factory buildings were mostly clad in corrugated iron
sheets, living quarters and offices were of wood. Its primary function was to
process the whales that were caught by Pesca. Almost identical numbers of whales
were caught by Pesca in the two seasons I was there – 1950/51 and 1951/52 –
namely 796 and 798 respectively! Nineteen blue whales were taken in 1950/51, by
far the largest number taken in any recent season. In these two seasons
respectively 515 and 567 fin whales were caught, 165 and 155 sei whales, a mere 2
and 5 humpbacks and 95 and 65 sperm. The combined catches of all species at
Grytviken, Husvik and Leith Harbour were 2,662 and 2,333 respectively in
1950/51 and 1951/52, so the Grytviken catch was roughly a third of the total
caught in these years.
Central to the operations was the wooden flensing plan, raised on piles. It lay
between the two main jetties of the station and was about 75m long by 45m across
(roughly an acre). The dead whales were towed into the cove by a ‘buoy boat’ (or
the catcher involved) from where they had been killed and flagged, up to 300-400
miles away. Usually they were attached to one of a number of buoys in the cove,
until they were ready to be processed. Then one of the station motor boats
collected them and moored them at the foot of a slipway that led up from the sea
onto the plan. On a signal from the head flenser, a whale would be maneuvered
to the slip and a wire strop passed around its tail just in front of the flukes. A
heavy hawser was heaved down from the steam winch (45 ton pull) mounted at
the other end of the plan, which was kept slippery with water and with blood and
oil from previously dismembered whales. Steam winches on either side ripped off
two sheets of blubber, progressively freed by the flensing knives of the flensers,
shaped like a giant hockey stick. Whale blubber is not flabby like the fat on
overweight humans but firm, a network of dense fibrous tissue in which the oil is
stored. Winches at the side of the plan rolled the whale over to remove the lower
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