260 Monaco a Whaling Station 



of water. Then the animal reappeared on the surface, about half an hour 

 later and at a distance of three miles, we steamed after it and the run 

 lasted the whole day without loss or gain, but after all, without the possi- 

 bility for us to shoot the rocket to cause an end, the whale having got the 

 harpoon in some part which was not deadly and losing no blood at all. 

 At night I had, of course, to abandon the pursuit. 



The next day I came into a school of the good-sized cetaceans, which 

 we later recognized as Orca gladiator, almost white, of which we met one 

 individual about Cape St Vincent, if you remember 1 . Their aspect was 

 unheimlich, and they did not run away from the boat ; therefore, one was 

 shot at once and killed by the harpoon, which went right through and 

 wounded another, which was quite near him. Then the two other ones 

 came alongside the boat and worked so as to squeeze it between them, 

 which did not succeed, because the dead one, having been hauled up, 

 served as protection on one side, and also because the round shape of the 

 boat and of the animals produced each time on the boat the effect of lifting 

 it out of the water. However, other boats were immediately launched 

 and sent on the battlefield. Meanwhile, the whaler succeeded in killing 

 with one stroke of the spear the biggest of the two enemies ; and soon after 

 the third one, which had been wounded by the same shot which killed the 

 first animal, went away and was hunted for an hour by the steam launch , 

 but was lost after all. This incident turned into a real battle, which lasted 

 an hour, and in which four boats and 17 men had to be engaged. The 

 spot was about 20 miles off Monaco. During the same cruise I got also 

 one of three other pretty large cetaceans that I met and which were of 

 the Grampus griseus species. I returned to the harbour towing these 

 three animals, and I succeeded in pulling them on the beach, where crowds 

 of people soon gathered and where thousands came on the next days. 

 The Orca was about six metres long and weighed between three-and-a-half 

 and four tons; the others were four and three metres long. They were 

 properly studied by Richard ; the skeletons of two of them are now being 

 prepared, and the whaler made half a ton of oil out of the blubber. Monaco 

 is now a whaling station, as I am preparing a place to receive a whale and 

 other big cetaceans next winter. " 



(1918.) The Orca gladiator, a school of which was engaged 

 and beaten by the Prince in the boats of his yacht, is the lion 

 or tiger of the ocean, carrying jaws filled with formidable teeth 

 for attack and animated with dauntless courage. The biggest of 

 the three, which was killed by one stroke of Wedderburn's 

 harpoon, now forms the centre-piece of the collection of cetacean 

 skeletons in the Musee Oceanographique of Monaco. A fight 

 with these animals was worthy of the truly Homeric description 

 of it given by His Highness. 



1 See Contents, p. xl. 



