Our October 2013 meeting

For our meeting on 15th October 2013 we welcomed back Dr Eric Graham. As usual he entertained us with a very knowledgeable and informative talk on the Bounty Whalers.

Despite the dangers of being caught in the ice in the Davis Straits or East Greenland, and the risk of interception by French frigates, the bounty paid by the Government still made it a profitable for ship owners to risk their vessels. This bounty was paid according to the tonnage of the vessel and not the number of whales caught. There were various regulations attached to the bounty one of which was that the vessel must leave for Arctic waters before 10th April and remain above the latitude of 50 degrees 30 minutes north for at least 16 weeks. At its peak there were 57 vessels sailing to the Arctic and in 1825 the Government eventually stopped the bounty.

The Davis Straits whalers had made good contacts with the local Inuits who were a source of information on the conditions and currents of the area and they in turn were curious about the technology of the whaling industry. Many of the crew traded with the locals and several of them returned with the whalers to Scotland although many of them were short lived as they had no immunity to diseases they encountered. There is a record of one 13 year old, Jacob Johannes who died a year after he arrived in Peterhead and is buried locally.

The most famous is, however, John Sakeouse who arrived in Leith aboard the Thomas and Ann in 1816 with his sealskin clothing, kayak and lightweight harpoons. The following August he gave a demonstration of his skills with his kayak and it is reported that so many people turned out to watch that some were pushed into the water. The highlight was a race against a fully manned whaleboat out round the Martello Tower and back which he won with ease.

He accompanied an expedition to find the North West Passage as interpreter and after a stay in London returned to Leith where he died of typhoid in February 1819.