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

By the evening of 8 November we had passed through the Channel seeing
Guernsey during the afternoon, and were off Ushant at midnight. We would be
crossing the Bay of Biscay next day and it was already getting quite rough. At lunch
we had red wine (Medoc) and a wonderful Norwegian cake smothered in lovely
cream in three layers with pineapple filling! Unfortunately as the voyage drew on
the food was not to be very interesting. I had been writing most of the time in the lab.
It was very tidy by now and no one disturbed me; with luck I would finish the seal
paper but I wanted to get on with it before the tropics - or it might be too hot to work
on it!
Next day at noon we were in the middle of the Bay of Biscay – the sea quite calm
for a large ship like us, but other ships were bucking about. The Balaena was so long
and so huge (23,000 tons) that it took a big sea to make her move at all. I walked
about on deck in the afternoons, watching the crew splicing wire strops, making
wooden toggles, painting ship and doing other jobs. They also laid the false deck (a
wooden deck that covered the real deck and was to protect it from the heavy wear,
and staining with blood and oil during the whaling season). The crew stowed
harpoons and other stores and the blacksmith's shop was making equipment. We
had a Leach's fork-tailed storm petrel fly aboard and saw a few shearwaters, but the
birds left us later that day. Chris Ash (Chief Chemist) showed Jim Clifton and me
around the factory, explaining the working of the various plants: blubber oil, hard
blubber processing, meat oil and meat meal and the bone plant. It was all very
interesting and I was getting used to the sickly sweet smell of the ship.
I had a cable from home saying that I had been awarded my PhD degree and
threw a little party on the strength of it. Seven of us got through a bottle of gin in
half an hour - it was quite a hard-drinking community. The wardrobe in my cabin
now contained 2 cases of gin and 1 of whisky and there were two cases of gin under
the washbasin, and a bottle presented by the Captain to each of the officers. At dutyfree
prices the spirits were ridiculously cheap - as I recall gin was 8s/6d and whisky
10s/6d!
Now is the time to introduce the people I lived with on this long voyage. The
Commander I have already mentioned. He was a charming old (64yr!). ‘rascal’. Then,
there was Christopher Ash (Chris), the chief chemist – a degree from Cambridge,
about 35yrs and a very good chap. Alec Robertson, a little older, was the meat expert
who selected the whale meat suitable for freezing (for pet food). He rejected meat
which had deteriorated since the whale was killed. He had spent six years at
Smithfield Market in London, came from Newcastle originally and drank like the
proverbial fish but could take it - he also knew Portugal well. Richard Sheppard
(Shep) was the radar man and chief technician or boffin concerned with all radio,
electrical and electronic work and projected the films on film nights - but he was
more than a mere technician as we were to discover later in the voyage. Mitchell
(Mitch) was a freezer engineer who provided the cold for freezing meat. He spoke
Norwegian well and drank too much, but was a pleasant chap. Ole Ness Jensen -
secretary of Balaena, did all the office work and administration and was very capable;
he had an English wife. Jim Clifton, the third Chemist with whom I was sharing a
cabin was not as insufferable as I had thought at first but still a bit of a nuisance.
Captain Virik was a very good sort, a bit reticent but friendly; he served in the Royal
Navy during the war, as did many of the Norwegians, and had an English wife.
432