by Zane Grey
Humpy and the other orca well-known to the whalers were often seen in the ensuing years. But whales finally became so scarce that the whalers did not go out, and the orca took to other hunting grounds. Finally the whaling business waned and died, but never the romance and wonderful doings of the orca whale killers. It was said by many that the friendly orca had all died, but others thought they’d roamed on to better hunting waters.
There are men now living in Eden who will take pleasure in verifying the story I have here told. Some will tell it conservatively; others will embellish it with the most remarkable fishing yarns that were ever invented. And they say an occasional fight between orca and whales can be seen to this day off the mouth of Two-Fold Bay.
Of Whales and Men
by Loren Grey
Eden is a quiet little town of perhaps forty-five hundred people, whose major industry is mosdy fishing, some sporadic logging nearby, and a huge chip mill, located on the bay some ten miles across from the town. Two-Fold Bay itself is a magnificent open harbor with eleven beaches, most of them relatively deserted, many in view of the town. There are several better-class motels in Eden, but tourists are still relatively scarce. The only contact is by road from Sydney—a distance of some three hundred miles—or Canberra, the Australian capital city, which is one hundred and fifty miles away. But I soon learned that Eden’s history does not revolve solely around its departed whaling or logging industries. In fact, a shipping magnate, a visionary entrepreneur named Benjamin Boyd, arrived in Eden in 1842, and dreamed of Two-Fold Bay as a third deep-water harbor, equidistant between Melbourne and Sydney, and with a center of commerce rivaling both. One of his first promotions, in 1845, was to build a magnificent hotel on the southeast shore of the bay, the remnants of which still stand today. Boyd also started a shipping run between Sydney and Melbourne with stops at Fort Jackson, Fort Phillip, and Two-Fold Bay. Furthermore, he bought thousands of acres of property on which to raise cattle and sheep, and established the first permanent whaling station in Eden, although this was before the time of the Davidsons and their orca allies. But Boyd’s administrative abilities apparently did not match his vision. In 1849, the whole venture sank into bankruptcy. An administrator was appointed from Sydney, and Boyd was relieved of his position and holdings in Eden. He then turned his attention to gold prospecting, and sailed his yacht, The Wanderer, to try his hand at mining in California, but after a year of fruidess effort he started back. On the 15th of October, 1851, he stopped at the Ponape on the Caroline Islands. Here, accompanied by a native, he went ashore to attempt some duck shooting. Sounds of gunfire were heard from aboard his yacht, but no trace of Boyd was ever found when a search was made ashore. There were rumors that the islanders had killed, cooked, and eaten Boyd, but no facts ever came to light.
Later efforts were made to turn Two-Fold Bay into a shipping center, particularly with the discovery of gold at Kiandra in 1859. But the gold rush subsided as quickly as it came, and the adroit business promoters in Sydney, who did not want a rival, blocked all efforts by the local residents to build a railroad connecting Sydney, Eden, and Melbourne.
And perhaps it is just as well. Most of the townspeople with whom I talked appeared to be content to let Eden remain as it was and is today. They seem almost bemused by the stunning tales of Eden’s past and particularly of the legendary whale killers—as if it were almost a lost and forgotten fable.
I visited Billy Grieg who, at age ninety, is the last surviving member of the whalers that went out in George Davidson’s little boats when Old Tom and Humpy were still about. But he was shy and ill at ease, so I did not press him for details of the past. However, it was Bert Eagen, the garrulous old caretaker of the tiny Eden Museum, located in the center of town, who gave me more than my fill of fascinating tales about the great days of the past. The skeleton of Old Tom is preserved there in its full splendor, along with many other artifacts, paintings, and replicas covering more than a hundred years of Eden’s history. Of course, Bert Eagen could hold forth endlessly on any number of other subjects relating to Eden and its history. However, much of his talk about the whale killers concerned Old Tom and his uncanny intelligence and obvious affinity with the Davidson family rather than with the competing whalers and their boats. Much of what he said is also documented by Tom Mead in his carefully researched book, KILLERS OF EDEN, in the form of interviews with George Davidson, his wife, Sarah, and surviving children, and other members of the whalers’ crews still living at the time—as well as numerous old newspaper clippings and photos of the killer whales that are still available in a booklet published by the museum.
By the time young George Davidson was twenty-five years old and taking over for his father, who was nearing retirement, he was already aware that Tom was different from the other killer whales. On one occasion George fell overboard while their boat was fastened to a whale, at a time when there were hordes of huge sharks in the vicinity. Tom immediately left his pursuit of the whale, came down, and swam by George Davidson to keep the sharks at a safe distance till he could climb back in the boat. Tom also had a habit which, in the beginning, was very frightening to the whalers. Often when a whale was fastened, he could grab the harpoon rope with his teeth and pull the boat toward the whale with great speed. But the apprehension among the boat crews subsided when they realized that he was only being playful. At no time did he ever act in a manner that endangered their safety.
On another occasion, a harpooned whale had escaped into deeper water and sounded. The men had to cut the last of their ropes, or the craft would have been pulled under by the whale. The whalers were disconsolate because they had lost their quarry as well as many hundreds of feet of valuable rope. But, suddenly, the whale reappeared about half a mile away with the killers still harassing it. When the boats caught up, they found that Tom was hanging onto the rope they had abandoned for lost.
Some time after the turn of the century, some of the other whalers began using a gun with an explosive charge in it, which had been developed to kill the whales after they had been harpooned. George Davidson had warned the opposition boats against this practice because he felt that this would upset the killer whales, and perhaps frighten them away. But the other whalers went ahead and used it anyway. The next day two whales had come into the bay, and, after the first charge was used, the killers were only willing to stay with a whale that Davidson’s boats had harpooned. His boats were always painted green, easily identified by the orca, and after that they left opposition boats strictly alone. As a result, in all his years of whaling, George Davidson never used a gun in his attempts to subdue a whale in Two-Fold Bay.
The Davidsons also found out that, when the killers would find a whale at night and chase it into the bay, they would signal to the whalers by slapping their tails loudly on the water—which in whaling parlance is called lobtailing.
As a result of this kinship with these strange creatures of the deep, George Davidson, his family, and his crew prospered. George’s son, Jack, grew up and was working alongside his father on the whaling boats, and the alliance kept up till the 1920s. But by this time, George and his men had become aware that things were not the same. Some of their old Mends were missing, although the pack was still led by Old Tom, with Humpy, Hooker, and the Kincher, Charlie, and young Ben as his lieutenants. Humpy and Hooker were showing signs of age, although Old Tom strangely enough seemed to retain his perpetual youth.
Then tragedy struck the Davidsons. Jack and his wife, Ann, had taken their dinghy with their five children out over the surf at the mouth of the Kiah River, where they had established the whaling station, to go to Eden for supplies. It was a perfect November Sunday, with a cloudless sky and a mild breeze just barely ruffling the calm waters of the bay. Normal Severs, a member of George’s crew, and his wife, Elsie, had come over to the Davidsons’ for Sunday dinner.
But George was uneasy that afternoon—Jack seemed to be taking longer to return than usual. “Looks like a storm brewing,” h
e said to Norman. “We’ve had good weather too long.”
“Barometer’s OK, but there was a fair sea building up when we came across,” Norman replied.
“Well, I’ll go down and take a look for Jack,” George said.
It was only a few minutes later that they heard George’s frantic voice calling: “Come quick, Norman, and you, too, Elsie. Jack’s boat has capsized on the bar . . . hurry for God’s sake!”
George, Norman, and Elsie rushed down to the shore and managed to get a whale boat out onto the now thunderous surf. They reached the overturned dinghy and were barely able to drag Ann and Tommy aboard just as she and the little girl clinging around her neck lost consciousness. In another minute she would have slid from her desperate hold and gone under the waves. But there was no sign of Jack, Roy, or little Patricia.
All the boats that were available from Eden turned out to search for the bodies. The next day they found the children, but there was still no evidence of Jack. Incredibly enough, Old Tom was there, swimming back and forth where the dinghy had capsized, as if he were trying to guide them to where the body was—and he did not leave there for days on end. Only once did he abandon his lonely patrol outside the bar, when other killer whales had driven a huge humpback into the harbor. The fight was long and frenzied, but eventually the injured whale managed to reach the open water and escape. Old Tom immediately returned to his vigil at the bar. After five days, they began to believe that the sharks had, indeed, gotten Jack. But Old Tom was still out there patrolling, so perhaps there was hope.
On the sixth day, Bill Grieg and Archer Davidson, two of George’s men, discovered Jack’s body very close to where Tom had been circling. The next day the Davidsons took Jack’s body in their launch out over the bar to Eden for the funeral. Incredibly, Old Tom was still there, and followed the launch all the way over to Eden. When the body, in its simple wooden casket, was finally lifted onto the dock, Tom made a circle as if to salute them, then turned out and headed toward the open sea. That was the last they saw of him until the following May at the start of another winter whaling season. George often thought about this episode in later years, particularly after Old Tom’s death, with a mixture of sadness and near reverence. Tom had then become a member of the family as much as Sarah, his other surviving children, and his grandchildren.
But somehow, after Jack’s death, things were no longer the same. While George Davidson whaled several more years with casual crews, he had lost his enthusiasm since the death of his son. Furthermore, the whaling they had known was just about over. For one thing, the killers seemed to be dying off one by one. The pack had dwindled down to Old Tom, Humpy, and a few of the younger orca. Then Humpy disappeared. Alex and Bill Grieg saw him for the last time when fishing one day near South Head, and they knew Humpy would not come back for another fishing season. He was like a feeble old man taking his last journey to the Antarctic, which was the only home he knew.
The next winter, Old Tom came back alone. Even though many whales passed the bay, and there were younger orcas to lead, he refused to go out and round them up. He was no longer interested in how many of them there were. He would go down to the river mouth and flop about as he had done in his more active days, when summoning up the whalers to come for their quarry. Suddenly—although it seemed hard to believe—Old Tom was dead. It was a lonely, cold, early spring day—September 17, 1930—when Tom’s body was spotted and towed ashore by George and his crew. There were many ideas brought forth as to what to do with the body. Some thought it would be best to have it mounted. But George himself decided to preserve the skeleton, in the hope that eventually a museum would be built to house it—as was finally done in 1938.
In retrospect, one can only wonder what kind of intelligence these great mammals really possessed. The killer whale had been venerated by primitive tribes all over the seas long before civilization as we know it began. Even in Eden, there is a legend about a fierce Polynesian tribe that lived and disappeared long before the aboriginals, who literally worshipped the orca and believed that, if they lived heroic lives, they would be reincarnated as killer whales. Indians in British Columbia have woven eyes and fins of the orca into their ceremonial blankets, but only the greatest chiefs could wear such a covering with the full whale woven into its design. There seems to be no comparable reverence known for any other sea creature. Although we are only beginning to find out how the dolphin and the orca think, some of the facts presented in this story should be of help to scientists in their investigations, as well as of interest to any lover of the wild. For one thing, the orca appears to possess a life span similar to, if not greater, than our own. Their method of communication is similar in its complexity and organization to that of the dolphins, which have only recently begun to be studied. That killer whales, as have the dolphins, can develop a strong sentimental attachment to human beings seems to have been verified here as well.
There are, of course, the skeptics who would attribute all these events to a form of conditioning rather than independent thinking. Killer whales, dolphins, dogs, and apes have been trained by humans to develop superior organizational abilities as a result of conditioning. But in this case, the whales trained themselves. And what kind of conditioning could explain Old Tom’s behavior after Jack Davidson’s tragic accident, particularly when he followed the launch with Jack’s body all the way to Eden, almost as if to pay his respects before the funeral. Was it instinct that kept him patrolling at the mouth of the Kiah River for days until Jack’s body was found? And what brought him back to Two-Fold Bay when he knew his own death was near? Was it because he knew the waters were safer there from the sharks who were the inevitable enemy of old and crippled killers? Or was it because he had lost all his old friends, that he came back to the one place where he knew other friends were waiting? Who can tell?
Whatever speculations one can make about the motivations or intelligence of the orca, I think few can deny that this tale—along with the legends about the dolphin, Pelorus Jack, who for more than forty years is reputed to have guided literally hundreds of sailing vessels through the treacherous reefs which separate New Zealand’s North Island from the South Island—ranks well up among the greatest sea stories of all time.