Visiting the past….  Monday, 23/12/2024

Last week I went to an excellent second hand bookshop in central Durban, searching for a book called A Whale of a Time: The Story of Durban’s Union Whaling Company. Written by a man called Peter Froude, who had been an industrial chemist at the whaling company’s station, and ultimately ran the factory. I found it, as well as another book he’d written, Chasing the Whales around the Antarctic: Five Months among the Ice Floes with Norwegian Whalers.

I was booked to go on a walking tour to the remains of the old whaling station on Sunday morning. I thought that the first book would provide background that would make the trip more meaningful. Well, it did. My interest is obvious, given that my father worked for the company from his arrival in Durban aged 16 in early 1946 until the end of whaling in 1975 (and made numerous annual expeditions to Antarctica until the mid-60’s). What was really interesting was finding out how these people knew that whaling was coming to an end – basically because too many whales were being killed globally: it was unsustainable. At its height, the whaling station in Durban employed a thousand people: not just processing the whales being brought in, but developing a wide range of products – including synthetic products developed from vegetable and animal products which the chemists believed would create a viable business after the end of whale hunting. It came to nought: in 1975 the owners simply took the decision to shut down completely. 

My father was at the end of a 66 year old industry here. In 1968, when whaling officially ceased globally, the number of whale catching boats was cut to seven, with seven captain/gunners, then cut to six until South Africa eventually ceased whaling in 1975. This was no surprise to him: some years later when he was interviewed by a local newspaper, he stated clearly that it had been necessary to stop, not least because the number of whales off the South African coast had diminished considerably. (That said, it came at considerable personal cost: I don’t think he was ever happy in his subsequent work captaining other vessels – whaling was wild and exhilarating, a vocation, a way of life, rather than a job).

Some 25 people gathered for the guided walk at 07:30 on Sunday morning. We began by going down into a tunnel which goes under Durban’s harbour entrance. It’s 530 metres long and 30 metres deep, and comes out at the beginning of the south pier, on the Bluff side of the entrance. There is the old slipway, up which the whales were winched after being dropped by the catcher. They were put on flatbed rail wagons and then trundled around the Bluff to the seaward side. A couple of kilometres south are the remains of the old whaling station. We walked this, and then wandered around the old buildings – an industrial graveyard, currently owned by the South African Defence Force, who have used it for military training exercises. (None of this is accessible without permission from the harbour authority and the military). The buildings are in various stages of ruin: some largely intact, some with no roofs and vegetation growing within. It’s hard to imagine a thousand people working there.

Aware of my background, and how I’ve returned to Durban, the tour leader asked me to say a few words about the lives of my father and grandfather, as well as my voyage. As a result, many of the people on the tour engaged me in conversation over the last couple of hours of the four-hour, 12 kilometre walk. For me, that made it more active than just passive observation. 

All-in-all, the whaling station is a stark reminder of the past. Back in the 1950’s and 1960’s when whaling was in full swing, there was very little awareness of conservation issues. Whales were plentiful, and killing them seemed no different to killing farm animals or fish for their meat and other ingredients. Whale oil was the most pure of all oils, and absolutely required for the lubrication of precision industrial machinery – nothing else worked as well. Whale products were used in perfume, as the base for ice cream, as meat extract used by Knorr for its seasonings, and in multiple chemical formulations. It was only in the 1960s that viable synthetic alternatives began to be developed. Durban’s whaling station was the most advanced in the world, developing a wide range of industrial and consumer products.

The author of the book quotes L.P. Hartley’s famous line: “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” Very apt. The way that my father lived his life until age 46 (and my grandfather his life after serving on the Atlantic convoys until the end of the 1950’s) belongs to a lost world, the deserted remnants of which cling to a beach on the hidden side of Durban’s Bluff. I stand there, the inheritor of a largely forgotten age.