A Day in the Life of a Bequian Whaler by John Olsson
The Dart and Why Ask wait ready for instant launching . The sighting of a whale will be signalled with mirror flash es to the whalers by Duncan Derrick from the hilltop where he watches the sea .
The ocean appeared as an endless carpet of aqua blue from my view in the hilltops on the island of Mustique. "It' s a good day for spoutin '," Hardee Kidd said to me calmly in his deep Bequian accent. He looked through his binoculars again across the sea, checking for any flashes which the whale spotter, Duncan Derrick, might have signaled with his mirror. Hardee Kidd and the eleven other Bequian whalers kept their eyes fixed upon the waters known as ' ' The Pillories,'' located between the islands of Bequia, Baliceaux and Mustique in the Grenadines , where whales-mostly humpbacks-migrate from February to May . These Bequians are among the few remaining seamen who still hunt these leviathans in the same manner as the Yankee whalers of the 1800s, the founders of the whaling trade in Bequia. The men hunt whales from two fast 28ft sloops called Why Ask and Dart. Built of wood and painted gray , each boat is fitted with a gaff-rigged mainsail and genoa with a mast and spars of bamboo. They are manned by crews of six men consisting of a harpooner, a bow oarsman, a tub oarsman , a midship oarsman, a leading oarsman and a helmsman . Ephriam Binoe, the midship oarsman of Why Ask, handed me a hearty bowl of fish broth and gestured good appetite as the men took their morning meal together sitting around a small bristling fire . Our day had begun in the soft morning light of dawn as the whalers loaded a half-dozen fifty-pound boulders for ballast. Under sail, these boulders were shifted adroitly during tacks and jibes. The men rowed out to Friendship Bay where they hoisted sail and began their day's search for bulls, cows and calves. The sloops would cross Bequian channel, heading for Mustique, which they would reach in about an hour's time. Upon arrival , the whalers would head for their lookout point in the hills from which they had a good view of the sea to the north, south and west, while Duncan Derrick would spot the seas to the east. I looked at Athneal Ollivierre, the master harpooner of Bequia, hoping that I was accepted in the company of him and his crew on their daily passages. A bit hesitantly, I asked him 44
what he felt at the moment of striking a whale. In his soft-spoken voice he replied, "I think of God Almighty ." He then asked me if I believed in the Lord . I replied that with conscience and through Christ, I did . Athneal proceeded to tell me that he and his fellow whalers were devout Seventh Day Adventists, and that what they did was to receive the food of nature in the same way one does a cow , a pig or whatever else man kills to feed himself. He pointed out that the Bequian whalers kill only one or two whales a year as opposed to the thousands slaughtered by the Russians and Japanese . The Bequians use every bit of the meat and fat. The baleen, too, in the hands of master carvers, is a special artifact of Bequian heritage . " Sightings have become less and less," Athneal remarked. ''But usually a whale can be spotted three days before or three days after the change of the new moon.'' Ephriam explained that this was due to changes in tides and currents which the whales travel with . " Once spouts could be seen for miles, but now they are rare, " Athneal continued. He went on to describe the hunt. What caught my attention most was the tactic which they used in catching a whale . Raising sail , they would make swiftly towards the last seen heading of the whales. Upon reaching the area they would usually drop the sails and man the oars . They would strike the slower calf first, but only to wound it so that the cow would return . The cow is especially valued for her plentiful yield of oil which the Bequians use in their cooking and which they prize for their health and diet. Although bulls are occasionally sought, they are by far more dangerous, charging and leaping high out of the water. Athneal proceeded to tell me of an incident where a bull had charged him and knocked him unconscious while the line of the harpoon ran out against his leg which was caught between it and the ribs of the boat. The line skidded over his leg so fast that it burned right through to the bone, sealing the wound so hot that it didn't even bleed . He showed me the proof- a deep red gash below his lower left knee . After a whale is harpooned , Ephriam or one of the nimbler men would jump onto its back and deliver the coup de grace with a lance. He would then lasso the mouth and close the spout to prevent water from filling the lungs and sinking it. The whale would then be hauled off to be flensed at a station at Petite Nevis equipped with large vats to render the blubber into oil. I could picture the blood-red color of the cove where the men would wait in boats armed with harpoons and ready for the approaching menace of sharks heading for the whale as it was being flensed. The sun passed the noon mark as the whalers sat idle. Inevitably, their thoughts turned to their future prospects as whalers. There are fewer leviathans in the world and the Bequians are ever more sensitive to the international outcry against whaling, even though they are not the real culprits . They have been pressured by the International Whaling Commission to observe the ban on all whaling and they have reluctantly agreed to stop whaling after 1986. There is still some debate, but other means of income have been proposed to the government, including obtaining a modem trawler for deep sea fishing. All of a sudden, a young man staggered up the rocky path nearly out of breath and with arms pointing south, gasping, "There's a whale down there! " A silence fell among us as Athneal calmly picked up the binoculars and looked through them. The men, with their hands blocking the sun from their eyes , stared into the bright reflections of the mid-day sea to see where the whale would surface next. SEA HISTORY, SUMMER 1986