History Of Whaling In Scotland

A Wild Rough Lot by Malcolm Archibald

Book excerpt

Introduction

Whaling and sealing are evocative subjects today. Extensive media coverage of the actions of environmental groups have brought the world’s attention to the plight of seals and the great whales in a way that would have been incomprehensible when Moray Firth ports sent ships to the hunting grounds. The attitudes and actions of the nineteenth century were vastly different from those of the twenty-first; hunting was a popular sport and whales were seen as a valuable commodity rather than a fellow species deserving of conservation.

To the Greenlandmen, the mariners who sailed the ships and hunted the whale in the waters of the Greenland Sea and the Davis Strait, whaling was a job. It may have been tinged with romance and spiced with adventure, but essentially it provided a wage that paid the rent and clothed and fed the family. At its peak in the 1850s nine whaling and sealing vessels sailed from Moray Firth ports. That was a significant percentage of the Scottish total, and the Arctic adventure certainly contributed to the local economy.

The mid nineteenth century was an exciting time to be alive, with the destitution years of the Hungry Forties past and innovation, enterprise and confidence blossoming. The coast of the Moray Firth was no exception, with new ventures being considered, and sealing was suddenly on the agenda as a commercial possibility. The Victorians had a zest for life and the Moray Firth ports entered the Arctic trade as if it was a great adventure, commercialism tinged with the sheer joy of trying something new. Whatever one’s feelings for the rights or wrongs of hunting seals and whales, there can be no denying the raw courage the seamen needed to venture into the iced waters of the north in a small sail powered vessel, never knowing what tomorrow would bring, never knowing if they would return home to their wives and children.

Three ports of the Moray Firth sent ships north: Fraserburgh, Banff and Nairn, while Inverness toyed with the idea and Garmouth and Lossiemouth had tentative connections. Of the three, Fraserburgh was the most successful, with Banff next and Nairn not really getting anywhere.

This small book will show something of the sealing and whaling industries of the Moray Firth coast. It will start with a brief look at the Moray coast, and then give an overview of the industry. There is a chapter giving what could be a typical voyage, followed by a chapter on sealing, the Nairn and Banff experience, a brief look at the dangers the whaling men faced and two chapters on Fraserburgh’s time as a sealing and whaling port. Finally there are lists of ships from Banff and Fraserburgh.

When this book was first compiled, it was intended to give endnotes for every detail, but the end result was a text littered with numbers that made reading a chore. It was decided to write a free-flowing book instead; easier to read and with the main sources mentioned within the text. The book gives anecdotes, names and a few details. It is not intended to justify an industry that is today in public disfavour, nor is it in any degree an exhaustive study, but it should sketch the outline of a time when Fraserburgh and Banff send hardy men to the hunting grounds of the Arctic circle.

Chapter One

A MARITIME BREED OF MEN

Again for Greenland we are bound

To leave you all behind

With timbers firm and hearts so warm

We sail before the wind

The Whaler’s Song – traditional

Burghead was never a whaling port but it is an enigma. It is a small fishing village on the south coast of the Moray Firth, about 37 miles east of Inverness and 69 miles west of Fraserburgh. Any visitor will immediately surmise that here is something special, although they might not immediately know why. It is not a large place, but built on a north thrusting promontory that ends in a curious, grass covered mound with an old signal station on top, and affording splendid views of huge stretches of the Moray Firth.

There are many places along this coast that give good views, but Burghead is different somehow. There is an atmosphere here, an aura of great age and of something else, watchfulness nearly, that alerts those who have the perception that they are somewhere unique. There are other places with this atmosphere; DunAdd in Argyll is one, and Edinburgh Castle, another. They were all ancient fortifications, Dark Age settlements where Stevenson’s “silent races” now slumber in all but memory.

The mound at the tip of Burghead’s promontory is all that remains of what was once a prominent Pictish fort, and the relentless grid-iron pattern of Burghead’s streets were planted upon the remainder, thus destroying what might have been one of the most valuable archaeological sites in Northern Europe.

There is no mistaking the strategic location of Burghead fort. On a promontory, surrounded by sea on three sides and with an easily defendable neck of land on the fourth, it is a natural stronghold for a maritime people. And that is the point. Only a people secure in their mastery of the sea would choose such a site, for it is as near an island as a shore based fort can be, and if besieged, could be easily supplied by sea. There is no doubt that the Picts, or Cruithin, were a sea going people, and the coastline of the Moray Firth was their home.

The Moray Firth is that huge mouth of northern Scotland that roars eastward toward Europe. It is the largest and most northerly indentation on the East Coast, marked at either extremity by dramatic promontories and fringed with some of the most picturesque and historic communities in the country.

Kinnaird Head, at the knuckle end of the Buchan fist, marks the southern end of the firth, and in its shadow sits Fraserburgh, that most maritime of Scottish towns where a still thriving fishing fleet provides employment and a focus for the community. From here the coast stretches westward, passing cliffs where the sea fumes, glorious and amazingly empty beaches and a host of small towns and tiny villages. The names are evocative with history: Rosehearty and Crovie, Macduff and Banff, Portsoy and Buckie; Lossiemouth, Burghead and Nairn. In some, fishing boats still provide employment, but others are attempting to re-invent themselves with tourism or heritage. Marinas of pleasure craft now take the place of harbours filled with brown-sailed Zulus or Scaffies, and tourists photograph dolphins where fishermen once cast hopeful nets.

The southern coast of the Moray Firth ends at the hinge of Inverness, then alters direction to slice north eastward, past the smaller Dornoch Firth and Loch Fleet to Clearance haunted Sutherland and the great gaunt coastline of Caithness and some of the most dramatic cliffs of Europe. At last, in the very north eastern extremity of mainland Scotland, Duncansby Head places a final full stop to the firth. It is a fittingly emphatic ending to a coast of unending drama, a place of wild sea and unconquerable land. To look south from here is to view a peerless geographic panorama, but even the keenest observer could not see into the past.

The Picts of Burghead were only one of the maritime peoples who made this beautiful coastline their home. Between the retreat of the great ice caps and the beginning of recorded history, the Mesolithic hunter-gatherers paddled through the marshes to merge, a few millennia later, with the Neolithic people. If, as is often assumed, the Neolithic people arrived by canoe, skirting the coast from the south, then they were the first seamen in the Moray Firth.

The Bronze Age arrived much later, followed by the Celts with their superior iron tools. More centuries past and Roman galleys carried the imperial eagles to the north, but their visit was fleeting; they came, saw but failed to conquer. Nevertheless, their visits did help to put the Moray Firth coastline on the map. It may have been the example or the threat of Rome that encouraged the local tribes to merge into larger groups, but from around the third century after Christ the Picts were the dominant people here. Presumably the Picts were a combination of all the indigenous peoples under a warrior aristocracy that may have been the last Iron-age immigrants. For long a people shrouded by ignorance, current research is unearthing many facts about these Picts, so they are gradually emerging from the haze of history as less than mysterious. There was a Pictish monastery at Portmahomack within shouting distance of the Firth, and where hand-working monks made books. Around this coast, carved stones reveal that the Picts eased from pagan superstition to Christianity at about the same time as other peoples in what is now Scotland.

Picts would clash with invading Scots along this coast, and then came the Norse. Either Scots or Norse ravaged Pictish Burghead, but while the Scots remained, the Norse withdrew westward and northward, beyond Inverness. From their capital at Dingwall, the Norse remained a threat, making this a Scottish frontier every bit as volatile as that with England hundreds of miles to the south. The kingdom of Scotland had to balance two borders in order to survive, so it is no wonder that the Province of Moray boasts so many monuments to the past.

As the Scottish kingdom pushed its border north, hard-won peace came to this coast and the maritime peoples put down their swords and searched instead for other pursuits. By the end of the 11th century the Moray Firth was bounded on three sides by a united Scotland and on the fourth by the North Sea. Trade was a natural continuation of peace, and the people of the Firth exchanged goods with their overseas neighbours. Trading towns such as Inverness, Banff and Fraserburgh sent ships to Europe and south to other ports of Scotland. Fishing became a major industry, with Wick and Balintore, Fraserburgh and Lossiemouth, Buckie and Brora all sending their quota of boats into the often-stormy waters of the Firth. There was also boat building, with nearly every fishing community larger than a village making and repairing the local craft, and larger scale enterprises at Garmouth, Lossiemouth and Buckie. The sea was vital to the people of the Firth, and the northern waters bred hardy seamen. It is hardly surprising that when sealing and whaling offered lucrative opportunities, many local seamen donned their foul weather gear and looked to the north.

Chapter Two

THE SCOTTISH WHALING INDUSTRY

‘With Riff Koll Hill and Disco dipping

There you will see the whale fish skipping’

Traditional whaling saying

To see a whale at sea is to witness one of the wonders of the world. There is nothing quite so awe inspiring as to be in a boat when the great fin emerges from the water, and to witness the flukes of its tail wave a final goodbye is heart wrenchingly beautiful. These are magnificent oxygen breathing mammals that survive underwater and roam the seas by right. Yet from time immemorial humanity has hunted them, both by driving them ashore singly or in great pods, or by taking boats to sea to kill them in their own environment.

By the middle of the 19th century humans were so expert in hunting that they had driven the whales to the furthest, coldest oceans of the north so that every whale hunt was a perilous adventure for man as for animal.

The Scottish whale hunters were principally after the Greenland Right Whale, Balaena Mysticetus, as it was slow in the water and floated once killed. A good specimen might weigh around one hundred tons and stretch for over sixty feet, which was two thirds the length of the early whaling ships and over twice as long as the whaleboats from which they were hunted. They are distinctive creatures, designed to swim and with a layer of blubber that serves to maintain their body heat even in conditions of extreme cold, although it is believed that the species originated in warmer waters, where most return to breed.

Until well into the nineteenth century, whales were regarded as very large fish, and the whaling industry was known as whale fishing. The Greenland Right whales were distinctively smooth backed and swim slowly at perhaps five knots, which suited the wind powered sailing ships and their oar-powered boats. Greenland Right Whales also floated when killed, which was a great bonus to men in an open boat with maybe ten miles to row back to the mother ship. The Scottish Arctic whalers were not after the sperm whales, but they did kill narwhals when they could and actively hunted polar bears and just about anything else that could make them a profit or provide some sport.