Whale boat
This very fine whaling song, and probably the oldest, was very popular in the folk clubs in the early 1960s. I can’t recall who I first heard sing it, everybody seemed to, and it just lodged itself in my memory.
The version given here is not a specific one, but
the one that has evolved in the folk clubs over
the years.
Captain W B Whall in his book ‘Sea Songs and Shanties collected by Captain W B Whall, Mater Mariner’
published in 1910, under the title of ‘The Whale’ states:
"The following is a genuine sea song, and was a favourite among old fashioned sailors 50 years ago.
“Span” was a technical term denoting the rise of the whale to the next, the whale blew every time it
came to the surface. With the old Scottish whalemen it was always ‘whalefish’ not merely ‘whale’. In
this they followed the Dutch fishermen whose term was “walfisch’. It is the same in German."
In eighteen hundred and forty-six
And of March the eighteenth day,
We hoisted our colours to the top of the mast
And for Greenland sailed away, brave boys,
And for Greenland sailed away.
The lookout in the crosstrees stood
With spyglass in his hand;
There's a whale, there's a whale,
And a whale fish he cried
And she blows at every span, brave boys
She blows at every span.
The captain stood on the quarter deck,
The ice was in his eye;
Overhaul, overhaul! Let your gibsheets fall,
And you'll put your boats to sea, brave boys
And you'll put your boats to sea.
Our harpoon struck and the line played out,
And the whale gave a flourish of his tail,
He capsized our boat, and we lost five men,
And we did not catch the whale, brave boys,
And we did not catch the whale.
The losing of those five jolly tars,
It grieved the captain sore,
But the losing of that fine whale fish
Now it grieved him ten times more, brave boys
Now it grieved him ten times more.
Oh, Greenland is a barren land
A land that knows no green
Where there's ice and snow, and the whale fishes blow
And the daylight's seldom seen, brave boys
And the daylight's seldom seen
Whaleboat near Spitzbergen.
The Greenland Whale fishery began as a bay fishery along the coast of Spitsbergen, a Norwegian island in the Svalbard archipelago, in 1611. After about 1650, as the bay whale stocks were depleted, whalemen moved west of Spitsbergen into the open sea in search of new stocks of the bowhead whale. The waters between Spitsbergen and Greenland became known as the “Greenland Whale Fishery".
The British whale ships usually left at the beginning of April, reaching the Spitsbergen whaling grounds by May. They then followed the bowhead whales northward on their summer migration west, to the edge of the East Greenland ice pack. The season generally lasted four to five months.
By 1719 the Greenland fishery was exhausted from over fishing. So the whale hunters moved to new hunting grounds, the open water between Greenland and Labrador, the Davis Straits.
The success of the whale trade fluctuated widely, some years were lucrative, and other years losses were sometimes made. The two main reasons were wars and overfishing. The trade declined in the American War of Independence years 1775-1783, and the French Revolutionary Wars 1792-1802, as most of the whaling fleet were employed as transport boats.
The Greenland Whale Fishery
The Greenland Fishery peaked in 1786–1788 when 250 British vessels, employing about 10,000 men, were involved. The vessels came from 23 different ports, with London alone sending 91 vessels, followed by Hull with 36 and Whitby and Newcastle with twenty each. In 1788, the fleet recorded massive losses and vessels began to leave the trade. Both fisheries, due to over fishing, quickly fell into decline and by 1790 only eleven ports were still involved.
Arctic Whalers trapped in ice.
The period from 1819-1822 was the most unproductive for years, and the price of oil and whalebone became unpredictable, and the fleet began to steadily decline. In 1824 the Board of Trade introduced free trade legislation, the high duty on whale oil fell, and as the stocks were also declining so did the whole industry. The vessels still engaged in whaling, to achieve better catches, had to stay longer at the whaling grounds, risking their boats being trapped by ice, and sometimes crushed.
Mick Haywood is a traditional folk singer & folk song collector who has run and organised folk clubs and festivals for many years. He now lives in Whitby, North Yorkshire.
© Copyright 2025 Mick Haywood
Website by Our Sal