WHALE HUNTING WITH GUN AND CAMERA 



Tied up to the side of the pier was the ship Orion. 

 She was typical of all steam whalers, had been built 

 in Norway and made, under her own steam, the long 

 stormy passage across the Atlantic to Newfoundland. 

 A few years of work there and she started for the 

 Pacific around the Horn, beating her way northward 

 to the scene of her present work at Sechart. 



The Orion had not gone to sea that morning, for 

 the fog outside made it useless to hunt; even 

 if the ship could have kept her bearings in the 

 mist it would have been impossible to see the spout 

 of a whale, or to follow the animal if one were 

 found. 



The crew were all ashore, and I met Captain Bal- 

 com, an alert young Canadian, and one of the few 

 successful gunners who was not a Norwegian. He 

 offered at once to take me "outside" with him when 

 the weather cleared but said we would see only hump- 

 backs, for the blue whales and finbacks had not yet 

 appeared on these hunting grounds. At Kyuquot, a 

 station only one hundred miles farther up the coast, 

 blue whales and finbacks were taken with the hump- 

 backs in March as soon as the station opened, while 

 at Sechart they did not come until July. 



When the station was first located at Sechart, hump- 

 backs were frequently taken in Barclay Sound but 

 were soon all killed, and others did not take their 

 places!- At the time I was there, the Orion seldom 

 found whales less than thirty miles at sea. She usu- 

 ally arr-ived about two o'clock in the morning, dropped 

 her catch, and in half or three-quarters of an hour 



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