A Savage History

The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were the age of whaling, with tens of thousands of whales being hunted down each year to feed the west's demand for oil for lamps and fuel, and baleen bone - the plastic of its day. No two countries' foundation was as indelibly linked to this savage industry as the fledgling colonies of Australia and New Zealand, with their unprecedented access to southern waters. 'We have the pleasure to say we killed the first 4 whales on this coast', wrote Captain Thomas Melville aboard one of the five whaling ships that arrived with the Third Fleet in 1791. Thus began the burgeoning industry for Britain's newest colonies.