Leviathan or The Whale

familiar with it.’ Meanwhile, in Norway, the Red Cross gave sperm whale teeth to the war disabled for scrimshanding, much as British veterans assembled paper poppies.
    Still in wartime mode, Britain applied the lessons of war to whaling. In June 1946 it sent out ships equipped with ‘sonic submarine detectors’ to find whales, using ultrasonic nets to keep them within range of the boat. Although these techniques were soon found inferior to the animals they mimicked, the renewed industry gathered pace. On 10 May 1948 the whale-ship
Balaena
–and her crew of seventy British and five hundred Norwegians–returned triumphantly to Southampton, having captured three thousand whales, ten per cent of the total catch that season, among them a monster measuring 94 feet and weighing 180 tons.
    This massive ship–complete with her own laboratories, blacksmith’s shop and hospital–stood alongside the docks I knew as a child, rivalling the ocean liners for size and presence. Her Antarctic cargo–a contrast to the heatwave in which she had arrived–may have been less glamorous than the Hollywood stars those passenger ships carried (Lana Turner was the next celebrity to appear on the quayside), but it was a major contribution to the national economy: 4,500 tons of meat, 163,000 barrels of edible oil (destined to make margarine), 10,000 barrels of sperm oil, 170 tons of meat extract, and a further 3,000 tons of meat for cattle fodder. Set alongside reports of Churchill’s exhortations to a United Europe in the local paper, the
Balaena
and her contents represented hope for a post-war world.
    Such resources soon became the cause for resentment, especially as the Americans were aiding the Japanese in their own whaling operations. These were, after all, austere times, and the Allies encouraged the vanquished nation to feed its population fried whale or parboiled blubber as a cheap source of protein. The occupying powers, under General Douglas MacArthur, also helped equip decommissioned naval ships for the purpose; vessels that had fought against the Allies now turned their tonnage towards the whales. They did so against strong opposition from Australia, which complained that the Americans had not consulted it in the matter. It was nervous at the notion of former enemies sailing in its waters, and protested ‘on the ground of earlier Japanese violations of international whaling regulations and the inefficiency and wastefulness of Japanese whaling’.
    That year, 1948, a Japanese whaling expedition sailed six thousand miles to the Antarctic, carrying a crew of thirteen hundred men, enough to populate a small town (or invade it, as some Antipodeans feared). This modern Armada comprised six catchers, a ten-thousand-ton factory ship, the
Hashidate Maru
, two processing ships to refrigerate its spoils, an oil tanker, and two vessels for cold storage. A Nantucketer would have blinked his eyes in wonder. The ships travelled far apart to avoid collision with each other or with icebergs–using radar to navigate through thick banks of fog–until they came upon their appointed foe: a gigantic blue whale.
    A catcher boat was sent ahead, but whenever it had the whale in its sights, the animal sounded. It was two hours before the gunner hit his target. The first deep cut was made then and there, at the geographical point of its demise, for fear of the animal’s extraordinary metabolism. Insulated by thick blubber, whales generate tremendous heat–as their condensing blows indicate, akin to great steam engines. If they were to over-exert themselves in pursuit of prey, they could die of heat exhaustion; hence their need to regulate their temperature by cooling their blood in their flukes and fins. A whale killed in the Southern Ocean was immediately slit open from throat to tail, allowing cold water to flush through it, lest its internal heat cause its very bones to combust, leaving its hunters with a ‘burnt whale’, burning on its own oil like a giant candle, just as its brethren once burned to light the world.
    Towed back tail first and up through a ferry-like skidway in the ship’s stern where eighty men worked for four hours to butcher it, the blue whale was one of the largest ever caught. It weighed 300,000 pounds, although they only knew this because they were able to slice it into pieces and place it on the ship’s scales. The tongue alone weighed three tons; the heart was as big as a car, and the arteries wide enough for a