Chapter 11. The Chaotic Years

In 1804, the year that David Collins established the Risdon Cove settlement, an English whaler already was exploiting the whaling prospects of Adventure Bay. Two years later, William Collins established a bay whaling post at Ralphs Bay on the Derwent estuary. Over the following three decades, eastern Tasmania and Bass Strait became a global centre for whaling and sealing.^[1] Sadly, the region witnessed the introduction of destructive diseases into the Aboriginal population and the abduction of females, well ahead of the tide of Tasmanian land settlement.

George Augustus Robinson has relevant information about the impact of whalers or sealers on the Aboriginal population. He talked with a girl whose hands and feet had been tied when she was placed in a boat and taken away. She claimed that there were 50 such women then in Bass Strait. More specifically, he reported that there were three Bruny Island women who had been abducted.^[2] Diseases invaded men, women and children, to add to the demographic impact of the abductions. In 1829, Robinson reported the deaths of 10 persons, eight from Bruny Island and two from Port Davey. Most illnesses originated with colds. A few days later, the total of dead reached 22. By February 1831, he believed that, throughout south-east Tasmania, including Recherche Bay and Bruny, only several people had survived.^[3]

The shore-based whaling industry, which saw bay whalers working at Recherche Bay by the 1820s, was a dangerous, bloody and short-lived industry. It was encouraged by a reduction in the English duty on whale oil in 1828.^[4] Crews harvested the southern right (or ‘black’) whales, Eubalaena australis, as they migrated up the D’Entrecasteaux Channel from the Antarctic during the winter. Pregnant females sought calm harbour waters in which to calve, so Recherche Bay was a superior haven as its waters were the required minimum of five metres deep. They fell easy prey to hunters, but proved an obviously non-renewable resource as pregnant females were the prime target. The Bay offered another natural advantage for whalers, in that the Actaeon Reef outside the harbour entrance assisted the hunt by blocking an exit for escaping harpooned whales. George Augustus Robinson was present there in 1833 and described the reef’s value and the dangers of the trade. He was told that during the 1832 winter season around 100 whales were slaughtered there.^[5] As this was an average of at least two whales a day, the waters must have been turbulent and bloodied with thrashing bodies. During 1839 more than 1,000 right whales were harpooned in Tasmanian waters; 645 whales died in 1837, resulting in a financial return of £135,210.^[6] The oil and baleen bone were sought eagerly in London for lighting, cooking and corsets, amongst other uses. This ruthless industry was self-destructive. By the 1840s the stream of right whales diminished and deep-ocean whaling of other species was substituted. A shore-based station persisted at Recherche Bay for another 20 years, but returns were small.

The Imlay shore-based whaling station at Snake Point. Whale carcasses were winched onto this sloping rock for flensing. Photograph by John Mulvaney, 2006.

In his careful archaeological survey around Recherche Bay, Parry Kostoglou located 15 separate sites, six on Gagen’s Point, where the evidence revealed occupation traces — basal remnants of huts or stores, glass and ceramics, chimney butts and whalebone.^[7] Life for the whalers during their winter vigil must have been rudimentary and cold in their bark huts. Robinson arrived there in March 1833, before the main whaling season, but found ‘the shore is strewed with putrid carcasses and bones … There are still remaining on shore numerous huts and iron pots where they boil down, or try, the oil.’^[8]

Robinson was on Bruny Island during the 1829 winter. He described a whale hunt involving seven boats, each crewed with six oarsmen and a cox-harpoonist.^[9] Such figures imply that 49 men were involved in competitive killing of one whale. By 1836, at least 260 men were employed in the industry.^[10]

The Fisher Point pilot station, established in 1836 and abandoned 1851, when whaling virtually ceased. Subsequently it became a rowdy pub frequented by deep-sea whalers. Photograph by John Mulvaney, 2006.

With so many ships entering the harbour, in 1836 a pilot’s station was established on the southern headland (Fisher’s Point), given a permanent presence for a few years, until it was abandoned in 1851.^[11] Recherche Bay must have been a competitive and potentially unruly place as whaling teams sought the same quarry from co-existing shore stations. The pilot station became a pub, which attracted crews of deep-sea whalers. The boisterous Sawyers Arms quenched deep thirsts.

That boundary disputes existed both on land concerning space to process the whale and on sea as to which team harpooned first, is understandable. For example, at Cockle Creek during the 1830s there were four whaling stations. In 1833, the government intervened. The Colonial Surveyor, J. E. Calder, arrived to delimit boundaries between leases allotted to the rival parties. Even when the industry was in decline, the Crown issued seven leases for bay whaling stations at Recherche Bay between 1840 and 1859. Surviving archaeological sites are valuable testimony to the harsh way of life involved in Tasmania’s first major export industry. Recherche Bay played a prominent role in that primitive economy.

The dolerite rocks defining the bay in places provided sloping flat platforms for some shore-based whale fisheries to flense a whale carcase. One is on Gagen’s Point, but the most striking facility is at Snake Point, near Fisher’s Point. It was capable of holding a carcase once it was winched from the sea. Traces of bricks and other relics occur in the wooded area behind this massive rock, evidence for the crude shelters in which men sheltered. This station was established in 1835 by Alexander Imlay.

Symbolising the dangers of this violent profession is the nearby gravestone of Samuel Thomas Pryat. He died aboard the Alladin, off Southwest Cape, aged in his 20s, a possible shipmate of the ill-fated Aboriginal man William Lanney. Lady Jane Franklin’s visit to the bay in 1838 provided testimony to the busy and smelly harbour. On Gagen’s Point she observed Kerr’s whaling station equipped with shear-legs for carving up a carcase.