238 FOLLOW THE WHALE 



was later nullified by proclamation, and the whole country came for- 

 mally under British aegis. 



Meanwhile, the right whales had been declining in numbers even 

 more rapidly than in Australian waters, and small wonder! It was 

 estimated that American whalers alone took away ^140,000 worth 

 of bay-whale oil in one year, when the pound was worth a great 

 deal more than it is today and in whale products represented a tre- 

 mendous fortune. By 1850 bay whaling was virtually defunct and 

 the sperming had moved to more northern areas. The main sperm- 

 ing grounds were: the northern, between Queensland and New 

 Caledonia; the middle, between Sydney and New Zealand; the west- 

 ern, from Tasmania to the Leeuwin Islands; and the eastern, extend- 

 ing from New Zealand to the Chathams; but these were still very 

 minor areas compared to the great Vasquez Ground north of New 

 Zealand, that around the ElHce Islands, and the string of vast off- 

 shore grounds stretching across the Pacific athwart the equator. The 

 so-called "golden age" of American whaling was dawning and the 

 international fleet moved away from the Tasman Sea area. But it left 

 some odd footprints. 



In July of 1 842 a curious man named Ben Boyd, who had been a 

 wealthy stockbroker in London, arrived in Sydney on his private 

 yacht named the Wanderer, preceded by three steamships full of 

 provisions. He built a seventy-six-foot lighthouse and a township 

 at Twofold Bay, and started bay whaling and sperming. He first lost 

 his steamers, then quarreled with everybody, and finally lost most 

 of his capital in London due to a "crash." He sailed for California, 

 where he was even less successful, and then attempted to set up a 

 republic in Papua. He finally disappeared on Guadalcanal in 1851. 

 However, his assistant, one Oswald Brierly, stayed on in Australia. 

 He was a recognized Royal Academician at the age of twenty-five 

 and continued to paint in Australia. He also went on a voyage of 

 scientific exploration in H.M.S. Rattlesjiake, on which the famous 

 Huxley had shipped as the official naturalist. He made a consider- 

 able study of the southern whales, and when he finally returned to 

 England — to become official royal marine painter to Her Majesty 

 Queen Victoria, incidentally — he ran afoul of that irascible old 

 gentleman, Professor Richard Owen, who was noted for making 

 sweeping statements about almost any matter zoological on no 



