NEW ZEALAND WHALING 245 



certain from Plate XIII, fig. 2, which illustrates the process being carried out in the early 

 days of the modern station at Whangamumu, Bay of Islands. The shears can be seen 

 in the background, while the blubber of one of the carcases is being cut into square 

 sections. 



The yield of oil per whale varied from two to thirteen tons and averaged six tons. 

 Cows were larger than bulls and yielded more oil, but became thin towards the end of 

 the season from supporting the calves. "It is a pity", wrote Mr Bell, "that it should 

 often be necessary to fasten to the calf in order to secure the cow." The whalers made 

 a practice of taking the calf first since it was inexperienced and slow, and the cow then 

 became an easy prey, refusing to leave the calf. The boat which killed the calf claimed 

 the cow, even if the latter were captured by a different crew. 



With the development of bay whaling, more elaborate shore stations were established 

 all round the coast, especially at Preservation Inlet, Cloudy Bay, Otago and Marlborough 

 Sound. Many of them were well-equipped factories employing, perhaps, a hundred 

 Europeans. The earliest shore stations were established in New Zealand about 1830 at 

 Te-Awaiti in Tory Channel, and at Preservation Inlet. At the latter place there was a 

 dwelling-house for the manager and his family and a large storehouse. There were also 

 six houses for the use of other whaling companies and a shed for sixteen boats (McNab, 

 1913, p. 85). Thus it seems that at some at least of the stations accommodation was 

 available for the use of whaHng ships. Diefl^enbach (1843, p. 371) records that at the 

 Te-Awaiti station some of the houses "were substantial wooden buildings, but the 

 majority had thatched walls of hands and bulrushes". 



Preservation Inlet employed some fifty or sixty Europeans, who were engaged in 

 sealing or sawing timber when the whaling season was over. At Te-Awaiti, however, 

 Diefl^enbach wrote that in the summer season the whalers lived "dispersed over the 

 (Queen Charlotte) Sound, sometimes trading in a small way with passing ships in 

 potatoes and pigs. . .but more generally passing their lives in idleness". Most of the 

 stations possessed a ship which brought stores from Australia and took back oil at the 

 end of the season. The main lines, in fact, upon which the stations were run do not 

 seem to have been very diflFerent from those of a modern Norwegian shore station. Each 

 one manned perhaps half a dozen boats. 



Each boat's crew at most of the stations, as on the ships, consisted of the usual five 

 or six oars (either Europeans or natives), a "headsman" or "boat-header", who was 

 officer-in-charge, and a " boat-steerer ". The headsman and steerer were always 

 Europeans. Scammon (1874, p. 226) wrote, "The officer-in-charge, or boat-header, 

 in the stern . . . steers the boat with the steering oar, which is usually 22 ft. long ; the 

 boat-steerer pulls the oar farthest forward, which is called the harpooner oar. (The 

 boat-steerer) darts the harpoon, and, after the boat is fast, changes ends with the 

 boat-header and steers the boat while the latter attends to killing the whale ". Scammon 

 was writing of the Californian bay whalers, but the methods used in New Zealand seem 

 to have been the same. 



The whalers in New Zealand came into close contact with the natives and often into 



