Whaling, the bloody pursuit of the leviathan is something more often associated with Nantucket and the novel Moby Dick–strong men plunging deadly harpoons into the side of a massive humpback or sperm whale and then the entire longboat being taking on a wild, dangerous jaunt known as the Nantucket Sleigh Ride. Trinidad, too, has a history of whaling. Until synthetic petroleum-based oils became widely available in the 20th century, whale oil was in very high demand for a host of purposes from lamp fuel to being used for soap and cosmetics. Whalebone, tough and springy, was perhaps the only material used for ladies' corsets and other applications requiring a pliant, durable substance. My friend Jalaluddin Khan, who has undertaken significant research into the history of local whaling asserts that as early as the 1830s there was activity of this kind since one Joell advertised in the Port-of-Spain Gazette for able-bodied boatmen. The now-sleepy islands of Gasparee, Monos and Chacachacare were a hive of activity. Aside from smaller operators, the Tardieu clan, the brave and hardy fishermen and seafarers whose name would be associated with these islets for well over two centuries were the primary whalers.
The early months of the year were when the great pods of razor-back whales, some over 60 feet in length with the occasional humpback whales and their calves began their migrations through the Bocas. The strategic position of the islets made whaling in Trinidad unique since American whalers were compelled to sail forth in huge ships for years at a time to remote parts of the globe in order to obtain their catch, whilst local whalers had simply to bivouac on their island bases and wait.At the whaling stations, a sharp lookout was maintained on the hilltops and a conch shell sounded when a herd spotted. The whaleboats consisting of as many as ten oarsmen and the harpooner would then sally out to bring in one of the whales. The process of processing the catch was described in 1857 by L A A DeVerteuil as follows:"In taking the whale, peculiar boats only are used, so that the whalers do not venture beyond the placid waters of the gulf. The method followed here is the same as that pursued on the ocean; but, no large vessels being engaged in the pursuit, when the animal has been killed it is towed to the establishment by the boats: this is a very tedious mode of procedure and should the wind and tide be against the boatmen, it often occupies 24 hours. The animal is brought as near the shore as possible, the blubber cut into long slices and carried to the boilers; even this, however, is not accomplished without much trouble.
"Very often immense troops of sharks attack the carcase of the whale and devour part of it before it can be removed to the establishment; but they particularly swarm around when the operation of slicing is commenced, from 1,500 to 3,000 sharks sometimes collecting in an incredibly short time, so that some of the men are then employed in killing them with harpoons and hatchets. Great waste often takes place from imperfect resources; one-fourth of the available parts of the animal being sometimes left on the spot. The number of whales caught annually is from 25 to 30; quantity of oil, about 20,000 gallons. Sometimes whales come in accompanied by their young, and as the female is very fond of its offspring, the whaler aims at wounding the calf with the least possible injury. The mother, in this case, never abandons her young, but continues swimming around, so as to be easily approached and harpooned."During the process of defleshing (called flensing), the thousands of sharks swarming around the bloody carcass posed little danger to the whalers. One 1847 account actually speaks of the sharks being dealt a smart whack on the head by whalers when they came too close for comfort. American whaleboats sometimes provided competition for the shore whalers of the islands but this caused little conflict.By 1880 the entire industry was dead due to a multitude of reasons from decline in the whale populations to low market prices for whale oil.At Monos Island, one of the old stations, Copperhole (so called because of the enormous copper cauldrons brought in from sugar estates to boil down the blubber into oil) became a popular holiday resort, but very little else survives of this maverick chapter in Trinidad's history.
