Leviathan or The Whale

measured and sketched the body as it lay on the beach, as if to reinforce his master’s right. His drawing was subsequently reproduced as an engraving, the accuracy of which would not have pleased Ishmael, resembling as it does a giant tadpole, with an out-of-scale surveyor–Iveson himself–striding across its head.
    More accurate were the illustrations made by Alderson’s brother, Christopher, and included in the doctor’s
An Account of the S. Whale Cast on Shore at Tunstall, 1825
, a copy of which, suitably bound in red morocco and stamped with gilt flourishes, was subsequently presented to the Lord Paramount. This portrait of the whale is distinctly romantic, every curve and undulation lovingly shaded like the Rokeby Venus–an impression reinforced by the animal’s oddly waisted form and feminine hips, despite the exposed member close to its lackadaisical tail. It is seen from front and rear, from every enticing angle, while yachts flutter in the distance, lending a lyrical air. More pathologically, a second illustration displays its jaw and skull in close-up, as well as a study of the eye, sliced open to display its beauty. A third shows a squid beak, one of a bucketful found in the belly of the beast.
    Although a stranded whale might represent a valuable contribution to the Constables’ coffers–in 1790 a whale found at Little Humber yielded 85 gallons of oil at 9d per gallon–the accounts of previous stewards show that the costs often exceeded the profits.

    Minutes of Escheats, Deodands, Royal Fishes, Wrecks, &c. John Raines, Steward to William Constable
.

    Jan. 30th 1749
. A Sperma Ceti Whale was thrown on the shore at Spurn Point–Mr Constable sold it to Mr David Bridges of Hull for £90.
    Sept. 13th 1750
. A Whale 33 yards long was thrown on shore upon Spurn Point. Mr George Thompson cut it up for Mr Constable–Mr Thompson’s charge for the Exp. s of cutting up amounted to £7 more than the Whale sold for.
    Nov. 7th 1758
. A Grampus came on shore at Marfleet–Mr Constable sold it to Mr Hamilton Merchant of Hull for £5. 10.s.
Nov. 9th 1782
. A Whale 17 yards long came on shore at East Newton–It was sold for one Guinea & an half, being much damaged, & in a state of putrefaction.
    Jul. 14th 1788
. A Whale 36 Feet long, came on shore at Spurn Point, opposite the Lights upon the Humber Side. Mr Pattinson the Baliff sold it to Mr De Poyster of Hull for £7. 7.s–But it proved good for nothing, having died of poverty…

    Whatever its financial benefits, the Tunstall whale was destined for a different fate. Sixty years earlier, the Bishop of Durham had laid claim to another of the spermaceti tribe thrown up on the north-east coast–a fifty-foot ‘Sea Monster’ still alive when it was beached at Seaton in 1766, where its ‘calls of distress as it touched ground could be heard for several miles’, and whose skeleton was later displayed in the undercroft of the cathedral; an image that reminds me of William Walker, the Victorian diver who was sent into the flooded foundations of Winchester Cathedral to shore up its medieval timbers. So too the Yorkshire whale was to be preserved for perpetuity. To that end, its remains were buried in a series of pits, and there they were left to rot.
    The new owner of Burton Constable Hall, Sir Thomas Ashton Clifford Constable, second baronet, was just eighteen years old in 1825, and whales were far from his mind. He was more concerned with the business of spending the substantial legacy he had just inherited. Two years later, Sir Thomas married Marianne, youngest daughter of Charles Chichester, and his Yorkshire pile lay empty while its lord lived in Staffordshire, closer to London and its amusements.
    Dry bones proved unequal to such diversions. While its owner enjoyed the fruits of his fortune, the whale’s skeleton, now picked clean and disinterred, languished ‘in a very neglectful condition, being laid in an irregular heap, in the middle of a field’, as one frustrated naturalist noted in 1829. ‘Whether it has since been put together and taken care of, I have not heard.’ Seven years later, little progress had been made in the matter. The geologist John Phillips found the bones in a barn, save those of the tail, which unaccountably hung in a tree. Then, in 1836–when Sir Thomas finally deigned to move to his ancestral home–Edward Wallis, surgeon, anatomist and astronomer, was engaged to articulate the whale: to give it life after death.
    In the