Tales of the Whales (Part Two): the Rise of Dundee and Montrose

This piece acts as a follow on to my first post on Dundee whaling (Tales of the Whales (Part One)  Due to the large amount of material on whaling, I thought it best to break down the subject into bit sized chunks (is that possibly a pun?).  This piece concentrates on the general development of Dundee and Montrose as whaling ports.  At the outset, what has to be said, is that the whaling industry was subject to massive unpswings and down-turns, not only dependent on economics, but also the transitory nature of the raw material - the whales themselves.  Even though Dundee was indisputedly the premier whaling port in the British Isles for a period, it did not last long.  Maybe that's a good thing.

Crunching the Numbers, Seeking the Fish.  The 18th and 19th Centuries

   Reasons for the rise of Dundee in the decades to follow are no more easy to definitively pinpoint than it is to trace the beginnings of the industry as a whole.  The first concerted efforts to encourage whaling had taken place in the 17th century, but state intervention intensified in the middle of the following century and the trade grew in the following decades.  By 1753 there were 48 whaling ships operational in Great Britain. In that year Dundee's first recorded whaler - naturally called the Dundee - which had been bought from London was sent north on its maiden exploratory mission to the frozen northern fishing waters. (There were 14 whalers in Scotland in 1760.) British whaling was  still heavily outmatched by a huge Dutch fleet.  In 1791 details of Dundee's modest whaling fleet were captured as follows:

SHIP	CAPTAIN	TONNAGE	DESTINATION
Dundee	W. Soutar	342	Davis Straits
Rodney	C. Frogget	176	Greenland
Success	J. Lundie	219	Greenland
Tay	R. Webster	290	Greenland

There was only apparently a single whaler operating out of the Tay at the very beginning of the 19th century, though two decades later there were 10 Dundee vessels engaged in the industry.  The table below lists the operational whaling vessels in British ports in 1813, at which time Dundee was only third in rank of Scottish ports and fifth overall in the U.K.  

Port	Vessels	Port	Vessels
London	18	Berwick	2
Aberdeen	13	Liverpool	2
Leith	10	Grimsby	2
Whitby	8	Lynn	2
Dundee	8	Greenock	1
Peterhead	6	Banff	1
Newcastle	5	Kirkcaldy	1
Montrose	3	Kirkwall	1

   During the next few decades Hull, which of course does not even figure in the above list, was competing for whaling business with the port now at the forefront, Peterhead.  But the middle of the century saw Dundee heavily invest in auxiliary steam-powered ships which gave the port the technological advantage which enabled it to leapfrog to the premier position in terms of number of whalers. From the 1860s through to the 1880s the tide was hide for Dundee whales, in terms of technological advances, profits and - generally - very good hunting.  There was an all-time high of 17 whaling vessels afloat from Dundee in the year 1885, yet the very next year saw the sart of a decline.  Part of this was due to sheer bad luck, with four ships lost to the treacherous conditions of the remote far north.  Decline was also further evident generally throughout the next decade.  There was a variation in hunting grounds and prey. Most vessels were engaged in Newfoundland and Davis Strait whaling, though several in the 1890s sought seals in Greenland.  The sum of seals caught was 50,296 in 1890, but fell dramatically to 809 in 1898.  There were only a hand of the ttraditional whale prey, the Right Whales, caught each season.

Captain Robertson of the Dundee whaling vessel the 'Active'

Into the Twentieth Century, the Twilight Era

  Into the 20th century the whaling industry as a whole was likely dwindling due to over exploitation and for other reasons.  According to Norman Watson in The Dundee Whalers (2003, p. 144): 'The new century accelerated the decline and brought an end to Dundee's pre-eminence as a whaling port.'  An industry dependent of highly changeable raw materials, added to high risk to its operating personnel was always going to be incapable of surviving forever.  The whalers had to be versatile in terms of what prey they took, as this snapshot of the catch of the Dundee fleet in the 1904 season shows:

This year the Scottish whaling fleet from Dundee consisted of seven vessels, which fished in Hudson Bay and Davis Strait. They captured eleven Greenland Whales (Black Whales) with one thousand one hundred and fifty barrels of train oil and twelve thousand five hundred pounds of whalebone, as well as one hundred and sixty-eight White Whales, one thousand one hundred and thirty-five seals, one hundred and nine polar bears, two hundred and eleven foxes, and thirty musk-ox.

(A History of the Whale Fisheries, J. T. Jenkins, 1921, p. 283) 

   The following year, eight Dundonian vessels (Eclipse, Balaena, Morning, Scotia, Windward, Diana, Snowdrop, Active) caught right whales, white whales, walrus, seals, bears, foxes, but the numbers were not encouraging.  The First World War marked the real end. There were only a couple of the old ships afloat at the beginning of that conflict and by the end only the Balaena was still active as a whaling ship.  

Whaling in Montrose

The whaling industry of Montrose got off to a find start in the late 18th century, encouraged by an Act of Parliament in 1771 which encouraged the formation of the Montrose Greenland Whale Fishery Company, which bought the vessel the Little Fanny.  A rival was formed in the port, the New Whale Fishing Company, and its first ship was the Eliza Swan. (The Union Whale Fishing Company was formed later in Montrose.) A third vessel, the George Dempster, bolstered the small fleet towards the end of the century.  The number of ships setting out from Montrose was never great and the high point of the port's industry seems to have been the 1820s. In 1823 the four whaling ships in Montrose had a bumper and unprecedented catch - but it all seems to have been downhill thereafter.

   There must have been many circumstances which kept Montrose's whaling fleet at a modest number.  One of these may have been the predation of hostile American vessels, preying on anything British during a period of tension between the nations.  In August 1813 the U.S. warship President captured Eliza Swan (the second vessel of that name) 'and after robbing her of fishing-lines, spare sails, bread etc, ransomed her for the sum of five thousand guineas.' (reported in the Dundee Advertiser).  She continued whaling again for several more years.  A ship named the Hero (Union Whale Fishing Company) was lost in 1822, though all of the crew were saved.  In 1833 the Montrose Whale Fishing Company went bust.  The following year the ship London was lost and its operators, the Union Whale Fishing Company, also went into liquidation.  As reported below, the Montrose New Whale Fishing Company also ceased operation several years later.  

Sailor's scrimshaw work on sperm whale tooth