Australian Colonial Whaling : Owners
The owners of Australian whaling ships in the 19th century
This data includes all the major or managing owners of Australian whalers. Also listed are many, but not all, of those who had minority shares in such vessels. Each owners name is accompanied by the name of the vessel(s), the approximate period of ownership and the number of whaling voyages made by that ship. Most ships were owned in partnership with others. In a few cases, a name of an owner is listed, but not the name of his vessel. (This is because historic sources name the person as a whaling ship owner, but not the name of the vessel or vessels) The period of ownership only covers the time when the vessel was whaling. In other words, some vessels were involved in other maritime trades before, between and after whaling voyages.
The data mainly draws from:
- Contemporary newspapers,
- Ron Parsons, Ships of Australia and New Zealand before 1850, Two volumes, (1983)
- Susan Chamberlain (1988), “The Hobart whaling industry, 1830 to 1900,” La Trobe University PhD thesis.
A more accurate picture will emerge once the surviving original registration papers in state archives have been examined.
Some whaling vessels are included because, although owned and registered in Britain, they were temporarily based in Australian ports.
Searching for owners
In the Search box (in the header of every page) one can search for Australian whaling vessel owners by their names, by vessel name, or by Whaling Resource Identifier (WRI).