Australian Whaling : Reports

Where the Australian whalers went

Where Australian whaling vessels went in their search for whales in the nineteenth century will probably never be fully known. Relatively few logbooks survive, especially for Sydney vessels. But by using the logs that do exist, plus contemporary newspaper reports, private journals, port-records and published accounts, it is possible to build up a partial list of the places visited. These include the whaling grounds, ports of call, bays, harbours, islands, landfalls, headlands, coasts, regions and seas where they were reported, sighted or “spoken” in the ordinary course of business.

It must be stressed again, the data does not include all places visited. And even for the places listed, the entries are often incomplete as they omit the whole period they were there. But even so, the 9,000 or so entries represent a sample large enough to indicate the most popular whaling grounds on which they cruised and the ports and islands most commonly visited for water, provisions and recreation. It also conveys the time of the year they were at those places and how the frequency of visits changed over time. It can also show how some captains preferred to visit certain places over others in the same region.

Each entry gives the name of the vessel, the name the captain and the date the vessel was known to be there.

Searching for place reports

In the Search box (in the header of every page) one can find reports of Australian whalers by first searching for a Place, Vessel or Master. If reports are available for an individual Place, Vessel or Master, there will be a tab displaying ‘Australian Place Reports’ below the main block of data about the individual found item.