Dundee Antarctic Whaling Expedition 1892

The Dundee Whaling Expedition (1892–1893) was a commercial voyage from Scotland to Antarctica.

Whaling Whaling is the process of hunting of whales for their usable products such as meat and blubber, which can be turned into a type of oil that became increasingly important in the Industrial Revolution. It was practiced as an organized industr ...

in the Arctic was in decline from overfishing. The merchants of Dundee decided to equip a fleet to sail all the way to the

Weddell Sea The Weddell Sea is part of the Southern Ocean and contains the Weddell Gyre. Its land boundaries are defined by the bay formed from the coasts of Coats Land and the Antarctic Peninsula. The easternmost point is Cape Norvegia at Princess Martha ...

in search of right whales. Antarctic whaling was mostly done from shore-based stations. On 6 September 1892, four steam-powered whaling ships, the , , '' Diana'' and ''

Polar Star A pole star or polar star is a star, preferably bright, nearly aligned with the axis of a rotating astronomical body. Currently, Earth's pole stars are Polaris (Alpha Ursae Minoris), a bright magnitude-2 star aligned approximately with its ...

'', set off.Voyage of the Balaena
Glasgow Digital Library, retrieved 3 December 2013 In the end they found no whales they could harvest as the

blue whale The blue whale (''Balaenoptera musculus'') is a marine mammal and a baleen whale. Reaching a maximum confirmed length of and weighing up to , it is the largest animal known to have ever existed. The blue whale's long and slender body can ...

s of the Antarctic were too powerful to be captured. However, the expedition managed to make a profit by collecting numerous seal pelts. The expedition included the polar scientist

William Speirs Bruce William Speirs Bruce (1 August 1867 – 28 October 1921) was a British naturalist, polar scientist and oceanographer who organized and led the Scottish National Antarctic Expedition (SNAE, 1902–04) to the South Orkney Islands and the Wedd ...

and William Gordon Burn Murdoch, surgeon and assistant on the ''Balaena'' under Captain Alexander Fairweather. On 8 January 1893, Captain Thomas Robertson of ''Active'' discovered

Dundee Island Dundee Island is an ice-covered island lying east of the northeastern tip of Antarctic Peninsula and south of Joinville Island. It is named after the city of Dundee in Scotland. The Petrel Base is a scientific station in Antarctica belongin ...

().

References

Antarctic expeditions History of Dundee Whaling in Scotland 1892 in Scotland 1893 in Scotland 1892 in Antarctica 1893 in Antarctica Joinville Island group Expeditions from the United Kingdom Whaling in Antarctica {{hunting-stub

See also

References