1
HENRY KEYSERLING THE WHALER
PART ONE: 1866-1903
By Robert Keyserlingk
“One of the pioneers of modern whaling off the coasts of East Asia.”
The History of Modern Whaling1
INTRODUCTION
Henry [Heinrich] was the father of three Keyserling[k]s who settled in North
America after WW I [Robert and Henry] and WW II; [Cecile Popp].
Despite his family’s landowning background, Henry [Heinrich] became and
remained a seaman. He served three times in the Imperial Russian navy, and ran whaling
and shipping businesses in the Pacific Ocean.
Henry became one of the well-known modern whalers. The Times Literary
Supplement had the following to say about him: “Whaling history is populated with
sturdy Vikings like Thomas Amlie, who took to sea when he retired from his Oslo
business at the age of sixty-eight. He led record-breaking expeditions until his eightysecond year, when he went down with his ship off the Faroes. There are also characters
of bathos like the German-Russian count Heinrich Kejzerling [sic]. He was ruined
successively by the Russo-Japanese war [1904-05], the Bolshevik revolution [1917-22],
the war between China and Japan [1930s], and ended up choosing Germany in [before]
the Second World War.”2
Family
Henry was born in 1866 on his father Hugo’s estate Staniuny in Lithuania, at that
time a part of Imperial Russia. Henry’s grandfather Carl (1809-1895) had married a
Ropp, who brought the estate Staniuny into the marriage as her dowry. This area
bordered to the north on the Russian Baltic province of Courland that like the other two
Baltic provinces, Estonia and Livonia, enjoyed self-government under its noble
corporation. Many Courland noble families had estates in this Lithuanian area, while
remaining members of the Courland Noble Corporation. Henry’s family had been
enrolled in the Courland Noble Corporation for centuries.
1
J.N. Tonnessen and A.O Johnsen, The History of Modern Whaling, an abridgement of the original four
volumes, written for the Norwegian Whaling Association, 1982, C. Hurst and Co, London; Australian
National University Press, Canberra, 133
2
Stephen Mills, review of Tonnessen and Johnsen’s The History of Modern Whaling, in the Times Literary
Supplement, April 30, 1982, p. 490
2
Henry’s father Hugo was a good example of a noble estate owner with residency
outside Courland, while still remaining an active member of its noble corporation. Hugo
was a respected leader among the Courland nobility. His fellow Courland nobles twice
elected him Courland’s head of state or Land Marshall (Landesbevollmaechtiger) in
1873-79 and again in 1893 until his death in 1903. As Land Marshal of Courland and
chamberlain at the court of St Petersburg, Hugo possessed the elevated fourth rank in the
Russian table of fourteen ranks. He enjoyed good personal relations with the Tsar and
was called upon frequently to advise the St. Petersburg government on political problems
in the Baltic provinces. The Polish nobles in Lithuania also elected him their Marshal for
a time.
Normally Hugo would not have inherited the Lithuanian estate Staniuny as his
elder brother, Eugen (1832-1889) had the first right to it. However, Eugen wanted to
become a scientist and so left the estate Staniuny in the hands of his younger brother
Hugo. Eugen became a world-renowned spider expert and a forerunner of Darwin, who
recognized him as such in the forward to his The Origin of the Species. He settled in
Germany, married, and is the great-grandfather of Michaela and her brother Christoph
Keyserlingk. Before he died, he left his papers and spider collection to the British
Museum in London.3
Therefore, Hugo took over the family estate Staniuny, married his cousin Cecile
Keyserlingk-Rautenburg from Prussia, and had eight children with her. Mother Cecile
was a powerful, if short and heavy woman. Father Hugo too was of middling height,
fairly squat, early balding, untidy in dress, with heavy-lidded eyes and a humorous
outlook on life. He is reputed to have been a fine conversationalist. Henry was their third
son. Pictures of Henry in later life show him to have inherited his parents’ physical
characteristics, except for his naval moustache and pointed beard.
Naval Service, 1882-1902, 1904-05, 1916-1917
As a third son, Henry had no prospects of owning land like his father, unless he
too were to accede to land through marriage as his grandfather had earlier done. So Henry
choose instead to follow a naval career. In 1882 Henry was sent to the Imperial Russian
Naval School in St Petersburg, becoming a commissioned naval officer in 1888.4
During this first phase of his naval career, Henry went on several naval cruises.
These trips included one in 1892 to the Far East with the young Nicholas, later the last
Tsar of Russia, as a fellow junior officer. While in Japan on an official visit with the
Russian fleet, Nicholas was to be presented to the Divine Emperor, a notion which
scandalized some Japanese. As Nicholas was being driven sightseeing in a rickshaw one
Charles Darwin paid tribute to Alexander Keyserling in “Historical Sketches,” the introduction to his
The Origin of Species By Natural Selection, 1871, D. Appelton and Co., New York, 15Eugen was my wife
Michaela nee Keyserlingk’s great-grandfather and Hugo mine
4
Henry wrote about his life in “Pioneerarbeir im Fernen Ost”, Das Buch der Keyserlinge: An Der Grenze
Zweier Welten, 1944, Suhrkamp Verlag, 131-53
3
3
day, he was attacked by an ex-samurai policeman who was supposed to be helping
control the crowd on the street. The rickshaw driver and the accompanying Russian
naval officers, including Henry, rallied to Nicholas’s defence. We still have in our
possession a beautiful silver cigarette case embossed with the imperial initials and a large
blue sapphire gratefully sent by the Tsar to all the officers who had been involved in the
affair. In 1892, he decided to leave the navy in order to return to the Far East and start a
whaling business.
But this was not to be the end of his naval involvement. During the 1904-05
Russian-Japanese war he rejoined the navy a second time. That war was began with a
sneak Japanese attack on the Russian Pacific fleet in Vladivostok - a tactic the Japanese
were later to repeat at Pearl Harbour - thereby sinking most of the Russian fleet. Help
was needed from the European-based fleet. So Henry found himself sailing with the
Russian Baltic fleet around the Horn of Africa - the British would not let them through
the Suez Canal - across the Indian Ocean to the Russian east coast, only to see his tired
fleet sunk upon arrival by the Japanese at the famous battle of Tsushima Straits.5
Finally, in 1916 during WW I Henry was recalled to the navy a third time to
command a ship in the Pacific, leaving the service in 1917 with the rank of captain during
the Russian Revolution.
Russian Pacific Whaling 1864Modern whaling begins with the invention by the Norwegian Svend Foyn in 1868
of the cannon-propelled harpoon with a grenade that exploded inside a captured whale.
Mounted on a steamship, it enabled whaling nations to turn from the almost extinct right
and grey whales and concentrate on exterminating the faster rorquals, the blue fin, sei and
humpback whales. Norwegian gunners were the best and worked throughout the whaling
world. In boom times like the 1920s these gunners could command 5,500 pounds a
season. Gradually the whale population sank. By 1977-78 only ninety-five whales were
caught in Antarctica compared to 15,000 twenty years earlier.
In the mid-nineteenth century, whaling in the Pacific was carried out by the
Japanese in the east and the Americans in the west and partly in the northeast as well. For
the Japanese, the main aim of the catch was to provide meat for human consumption,
5
A good summary of the battle in which Henry fought is by Archibald Graf Keyserling
in “Im Dienste der kaiserlichen russischen Kriegsmarine,” Das Buch der Keyserlinge,
186-96. The battle demonstrated the effectiveness of 12-inch guns and speedier
(Japanese) ships, spurring the evolution to huge dreadnought battleships. Robert K.
Massie, Dreadnought:Britain, Germany and the Coming of the Great War, 1991, New
York, 471
4
while the blubber was rendered to provide lighting oil. In the 1850s a few American and
British boats entered Japanese whaling areas, their crews were attacked by the Japanese
and their vessels sunk. In 1854 a treaty was signed with Japan allowing foreign ships to
whale and enter Japanese harbours for fuel, water, and food.
Russians began to whale in the Arctic in the 1880s with the help of state
subsidies. But profits remained low and catching ended in 1889 – much to the delight of
the world’s leading whalers, the Norwegians. In the East, whaling began somewhat
earlier and lasted much longer. Russian pioneers had pushed eastward in the eighteenth
century to the Pacific Ocean, reaching the seacoast and crossing into Alaska.
Vladivostok was founded in 1860, seven years before Russia sold Alaska to the United
States for $7.2 million. The first Pacific Russian whaling was started the next year by
Otto Lindholm, a Finnish Russian, who arrived at the Pacific after an 8,000 km trek
overland across the huge country. There was as yet no railway across Siberia. His private
company operated between 1864 and 1885 with no governmental privileges or support,
and still practiced the old ways of whaling. He made good money, despite a high tax of
500 roubles a whale. His market for whale products was primarily Japan. Lindholm also
dabbled in shipping and gold mining, becoming a wealthy man.6
In 1885 he was forced out of the whaling business, which was taken over by a
Russian landowner and naval lieutenant, Dydymov. He hired some Finns acquainted with
the new Norwegian catching methods, bought a modern whaler in Norway, which was
sailed by Svend Foyn to Vladivostok, and set up a whaling station at Gaidamak (бухте
Гайдамак, also spelt Haidamak) 180 km north up the Siberian coast from Vladivostok.
Henry Keyserling was later to take over Gaidamak for his whaling company. In 1890
Dydymov lost his ship at sea and closed his business.
The Pacific Whaling Company, 1894-1905
While on his 1892 naval cruise, Henry became acquainted with Russia’s Pacific
frontier and its possibilities for development. He noted the presence of many whales and
that no Russians were catching them. So he decided to enter the business himself.
Henry’s Pacific Whaling: Quoted from the Norwegian History of Whaling7
“A few unsuccessful attempts were made to get whaling going again, [after
Dydymov] but not until Count HEINRICH HUGOVITCH KEJZERLING [sic] appeared
on the scene did things get going. He was a member of a Baltic, German-Russian noble
family and, like Dydymov, had been trained as a naval officer. He prepared the setting
6
Translated typed extract by Jean B. Linnaae of Sandfjord of whaling studies by Dr John N. Tonnessen of
Oslo
7
Tonnessen and Johnsen, The History of Modern Whaling, 132-35
5
up of his whaling company with the greatest thoroughness, realizing that he would have
to go to Norway, “the classic land of whaling”, in order to learn the art. But the
Norwegians, following the example of the well-known Svend Foyn, kept the technical
details a close secret. A Norwegian in St Petersburg, however, helped him to engage [in]
the [Norwegian] services, as a sailor [of] Henry Carlsson, serving on a whale catcher with
a Norwegian company in Iceland and in this way he managed to ferret out of the
Norwegians the secret of the new catching technique. He submitted the plans to the
Government, and was granted a loan of 125,000 roubles for his company, the Pacific
Whale Fishing Company of H.H. Kejzerling, which received a concession for twenty-one
years covering five different stretches along the coast of Siberia. In Oslo, two whale
catchers were ordered, somewhat larger than the ordinary type, [the Nicholai and the
Georgi] at a price of 5,000 pounds each. In March 1895 they proceeded to Hajdamak,
where the abandoned station had been bought.
“Apart from Kejzerling himself the party included two men who were to exercise
a decisive influence on the fate of the company; these were the gunner and expedition
manager, the Norwegian HENDRICK G. MELSOM, later to play a leading role in
establishing pelagic whaling in the Antarctic; the second was an engineer, AUGUST
SOMMERMEYER, the son of German parents, born in St Petersburg. He had been
chosen as technical manager of the whale oil factory. The boats carried a great deal of
new machinery, designed by Sommermeyer, including a plant for turning out large tin
containers for whale oil, as it proved difficult to procure wooden barrels, which in any
case always suffered from leaks.
“Melsom relates that that summer catching (June-October) was carried on from
Hajdamak north as far as Sakhalin, the blubber being reduced to oil. In the winter,
catching operations moved south in the Sea of Japan and the whales were sold whole in
Nagasaki, where the market for meat for human consumption was inexhaustible. A very
large whale would fetch around 165 pounds … The annual catch in 1895-1903 was 110
whales; he [Melsom] could easily have shot more, but the station capacity was limited.
“It was extremely badly managed, had some difficult in processing the catch, and the
entire way this enterprise was managed was such a parody that this period spent in
Russian service was far from encouraging. Absolute chaos reigned.” These observations
are in marked contrast to Sommermeyer’s, who describes how excellently his new plant
worked. On board the whale catchers, only the gunner was Norwegian; the captain was a
Russian and the crew were Koreans and Chinese.
“Conditions at the station may have been bad, but in Melsom’s opinion, the
situation was still worse when Kejzerling acquired a floating factory, an epoch-making
step in the history of whaling. This had been suggested by Sommermeyer in 1899, in
order to avoid dependence on the shore station. Time would be saved if they could avoid
having to tow the whale all that long way; the raw material would be fresher and the
quality of oil improved. In that year a large second-hand steamer of 3,643 gross tons,
was purchased for 156,000 roubles. It was re-christened the Michail, and was the first
steamer in the world to be used as a floating factory. As it was difficult to find a yard
6
willing to carry out the comprehensive work of conversion, and as freight rates were
highly favourable, the ship spent two years as an ordinary freighter, making good money.
“Conversion and installation of the complicated machinery proceeded entirely
according to Sommermeyer’s plans in Danzig in the winter of 1902-03. This proved an
expensive business. And when completed the floating factory cost half a million roubles.
“The mobile factory Michail”, as the Russians called it, received its first whale on 27 July
1903, and by 21 October ninety-eight whales had been reduced to oil and guano. It was
calculated that the process admitted of a 40% higher utilization of the raw material than
would be the case on shore. The fact that the floating factory nevertheless proved little
short of a fiasco, so Melsom relates, was due not to the use itself to which the boat was
put, but to a breakdown in Sommermeyer’s machinery. This had been intended to reduce
six whales a day, but was not robustly enough designed to cope with more than one. In
his account, Sommermeyer is forced to admit that “the ideal was nothing like achieved”.
“Figures for the economic results are incomplete, but there appears to have been a
good surplus right up to 1900, while later on only a balance was achieved. Revenue
accrued mainly from the sale of meat and blubber in Japan. Administrative expenses
were tremendously high, a common phenomenon in Russian life at that time. The
enterprise might have proved a good investment, but it collapsed completely with the
outbreak of the Russo-Japanese war in February 1904.
“The company enjoyed a secret grant of 50,000 roubles annually from the Russian
state, in return for sounding and charting Korean and Japanese waters, with a view to
naval operations. In the event of war the entire whaling fleet was to be placed at the
disposal of the Russian navy. Consequently, one of the first steps taken by the Japanese
navy was to capture the floating factory and the whale catchers, and intern the crews as
prisoners of war. Kejzerling received no form of compensation from the Russian
government, and suffered a loss of one million roubles.
“From 1906 he ran a shipping company in Vladivostok, until he was forced to flee
from the Bolsheviks in 1922. Once again he lost everything. (His whaling company had
gone into formal liquidation in 1909). He was then active for a while in business in Japan
and China, until the outbreak of war between these two countries ruined him for a third
time. Abandoning thoughts of starting business again in the East, he made his way to
Germany, where in 1944 he published a book describing his adventurous life [actually
only part of a book]. He survived to witness the collapse of the Third Reich. [No, he died
in 1944]”.8
8
Tonnessen and Johnsen, History of Modern Whaling, same pages
7
The Pacific Ocean Whaling Company
Henry sailed his first ships to the East in the company of his cousin Robert
Keyserlingk, later a Prussian civil servant. As managers in his company he originally
took on two of his brothers, Alfred and Maximilian. Alfred left shortly thereafter and
eventually become head of the Siberian prison camps.9 Gradually the fleet grew to three
ships, a bigger one for transport and two smaller ones for towing whales as well as some
sailing vessels for transporting meat to Japan. Finally, the first factory ship, the Michail,
joined the fleet as well. The average annual whale catch between 1895 and 1903 was 110
whales. The company was transformed in 1899 into a limited company with 1.5 million
roubles capital, from which the Michail was financed. This made the company at the time
the largest Russian trade undertaking in the Far East. The company never paid any
dividends however, but it was considered a sold investment. 10
The following was an ad (translated from Russian) for Henry the Whaler’s company:11
PACIFIC OCEAN COMPANY: WHALING, FISHING AND CONSERVING
Owner: Count H.H. Keyserling.
Head office in St Petersburg, 10 Moika Road, office in Vladivostok.
Steam Driven Factory [for processing whales] on Gaidamak Bay. Wostok (East)
1. CANNERY. Production of various types of fish and vegetables pickled in tomato and
natural sauces.
2. BARREL FACTORY. Production of all types of barrels for salting of fish, caviar,
beer, spirits etc. Available in all sizes and woods.
3. SAWMILL. Produces containers for every purpose including oil, soap, sweets, tea etc.
The company experienced a good deal of trouble because of the faulty cooking
and rendering machinery designed and in part built by the engineer Sommermeyer. He
was a very able engineer and whaling machinery designer. But he had had no experience
in the whaling industry, which later proved almost fatal for the Pacific Ocean Whaling
Company. Apparently he vastly under-estimated the machinery’s strength needed to
9
See his Graf Keyserlingk Erzaehlt, with Otto von Gruenewaldt, 1936, Harro von Hirschheydt, Gr.
Biewende ueber Boerssum
10
From notes for the above whaling book by Jean N. Linaae of Sandfjord, included with letter to Robert
Wendelin Keyserlingk, 24 November 1964, in the author’s possession
11
Accompanied a letter from Ira Prammer to relatives, 1992
8
handle whale blubber, meat, and bones. There is a large difference between horses and
whale bones, which are much larger and stronger.
Sommermeyer dreamt up the factory ship idea when the Nikolai broke down in
1898 and had to be towed to Nagasaki for repairs by the Georgi with Sommermeyer on
board to oversee the repairs. Henry came to Nagasaki and was won over to the idea.
After learning in England and Norway that no such machinery could be built,
Sommermeyer went to Krupp in Essen and then to Danzig for the construction of the
necessary cooking and drying machinery he had invented. In modern factory ships, the
bones are cut short and cooked until they are quite soft. This was not done on the
Michael with the result that the machinery broke down at the end of the first – and lastseason. When the ship was ready for work in the East in 1903, it turned out not to have
been so necessary after all. For in the meantime the company had managed to procure a
ten-year licence on the Korean coast, where the whales could be handled. Whatever
promise the Michail showed was cut short by the 1904-05 war, but it served as a
forerunner of the next generation of factory ships. 12
Returning to St Petersburg, Sommermeyer hoped that Henry would restart his
business. In 1906 Henry arrived back in the capital. At first, both men hoped for
compensation for the lost fleet, compensation which the Japanese gave quickly to their
own citizens. But Henry’s fleet had been captured before the outbreak of hostilities, the
ministries dragged their feet partly because of the results of the 1905 revolution so no
compensation was ever given.
Sommermeyer later wrote a report about his machinery in which he did not admit
its failures. He returned to Germany, where he further developed his ideas about factory
ship machinery, designing and building the Hartmann apparatus, rotating cookers for
blubber and meat. The Norwegians modified these machines and called them Kvarner
cookers, which could cook up to 35 tons in 5 hours.13
“Count Keyserling could not afford after the war to obtain capital for a new fleet
of catchers. Instead, the station at Hajdamak was used for curing of herring a couple of
years, canning of fish etc. In May 1909 the General Meeting decided to go into
liquidation, which was finalized in 1912. Keyserling had then many years left of his 24
[21?] years license, and in 1903 [?] this was offered to the Norwegian whaling company
ANTARCTIC WHALING CO A/S for 100,000 krone, but the negotiations failed. A
major reason why was that Japan itself had developed a comprehensive modern whaling
just to be self-supplied with whale meat, and it would not be easy to [for] foreign nations
to sell the products to Japan.”14
12
13
14
Ibid
Linaae letter above
Quoted in Ibid
9