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The Fraternity of Masters and
Seamen in Dundee
Archivist’s Discoveries and Stories
August 2015
#15/15
I resume my story of Captain Alexander Fairweather after he returned from Svalbard at the
end of 1873. The whaler Active was his next command in 1874. By no means a new ship, she
was built as a sailing ship some 22 years earlier in 1852 and was originally in the Peterhead
fleet. Steam engines were installed in about 1870 and upgraded in 1873 shortly before she
joined the Dundee register in 1874 under the ownership of the Tay Whale Fishing Company.
Alexander served his owners well and had some large catches, 25 whales on his first voyage
in 1874 is a good example and in his later career he became known as the man who was the
mortal enemy of the whale.
At the end of the 1878 season he left the Active and joined Our Queen, a ship belonging to
the same company, She too was built as a sailing ship in Liverpool in 1860 and was first
registered in Dundee in 1874. In the latter part of 1878 it was decided to fit her with a steam
engine and this was done by Gourlay Brothers in Dundee ready for the 1879 season. She
made a successful sealing trip to the Greenland Sea and was refitted for whaling on her return
to Dundee. Next she set off for the Davis Straits where Captain Fairweather caught 14 whales
and was carrying 120 tons of whale oil, 6 tons of baleen (the plates suspended from a whale’s
upper jaws. Ed.), 2,500 seals and 36 tons of seal oil and about to return to Dundee when she
was caught and crushed between two ice fields on the 18th of July 1879, the ice broke her in
half and the crew barely had time to scramble clear before she sank. Fortunately there were
no casualties.
Alexander had spent nearly six years in the employ of the Tay Whale Fishing Company when
he lost the Our Queen. Both his whaler commands had been converted sailing ships and his
next command was the William Stephens owned Aurora. Built at the end of 1876 by
Alexander Stevens and Son in Dundee (William Stephens was the son of Alexander Stephens
the ship builder), she was state of the art in whaler terms. Just over 165 feet long she was
powered by a 98 horsepower steam engine. Alexander proved his new employers faith in him
by delivering 20 whales, 190 tons of whale oil, eight tons of baleen, 12,999 seals and 170
tons of seal oil during 1880. His voyages of 1881 and 1882 were no less successful.
It is perhaps more than coincidence that his younger brother James was given his first
command by the Tay Whale Fishing Company of its whaler Active when Alexander left her
to take command of Our Queen at the end of 1878. James remained with Active until the end
of the 1881 season. Alexander had already joined Alexander Stephens in 1880 as mentioned
earlier and his employer added to his fleet by launching the Thetis in 1881. James joined the
Thetis as her captain in 1882 and one has to wonder whether Alexander used his undeniable
influence on his employer to have them head-hunt James to take command of their newest
ship. What followed was, when looked back at now 130 years later, almost a case of the
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Fairweather boys dominating the command of Alexander Stephens’s best ships, Alexander
looked upon them as indispensible, such was their contribution to the prosperity of his
company. Not only was their experience of the Arctic fishing grounds almost without equal,
their knowledge of the exploration and political activities west of Greenland was thorough, a
fact that would enhance the coffers of Stephens even more. However more of that later.
Meantime, after spending a year on the Thetis, James swapped ships with his elder brother
and took command of the Aurora in 1883 where he was to spend his next five years to 1888.
Alexander’s time as captain of the Thetis from 1883 to 1884 was productive and in 1883 her
catch is recorded as being 25,000 seals, 5 whales, 700 porpoises and 2 bears when working
from Newfoundland.
At this point Alexander’s career history is open to interpretation and what follows is my
interpretation of events. During his time as master of the Aurora from 1880 to 1882,
Alexander would have been aware that an International Polar Expedition into the Canadian
Arctic led by a Lt. Adolphus Greely had been promoted by the US Army Signal Corps as part
of the First International Polar Year to establish a meteorological observation station, collect
astronomical data and polar magnetic data. The Expedition, made up of 21 officers and men,
set out on the ship Proteus and reached St John’s in Newfoundland in early July 1881, she
then headed north up the Labrador Sea into the Davis Strait then through Baffin Bay before
entering Nares Strait where Greely took his ship to the north and east along the Strait before
entering Lady Franklin Bay at the north east end of Ellesmere Island on the 11th of August
1881, where he established his base on the northern shore of the bay and named it Fort
Conger after a US Senator who had supported the expedition. Over the following months
much scientific and exploration works were undertaken including a new ‘fartherest north’
record where two of the members of the expedition reached 83° 24’ N. A supply ship was
expected during the summer of 1882 but it was cut off by ice and weather and only got as far
as Smith Sound in August where it left some supplies then returned to Newfoundland where
the remainder of the supplies were discharged to be delivered the following year in 1883.
Now, it is known that the Proteus tried a new rescue attempt in 1883 when the Thetis, now
commanded by Alexander, may have been in the vicinity of Smith Sound and assisted the
Proteus in her attempt to reach Greely. The attempt was a disaster and Proteus was crushed
by the ice and sank. Thetis returned to Dundee at the end of the season. Now Greely and his
men were in deep trouble, unable to get any new supplies and their own running low, Greely
decided to head south with his crew to try to reach Cape Sabine where Proteus had been able
to land a very small amount the year earlier. When they did arrive at Cape Sabine the season
was too far advanced and Greely was forced into having to winter there. The fate of Greely
and his men is a harrowing tale to be told elsewhere.
It was in 1883 that the US Government pledged to make every effort to rescue Greely and his
men and appointed its Secretary of the Navy, William E Chandler, to plan and pursue the
rescue using every resource available to him. Suitable ships were urgently required and it was
in February 1884 that Alexander Stephen & Son sold their Thetis to the US Government to be
used as one of the relief ships to rescue the lost Greely Expedition. It is highly likely that
Captain Alexander Fairweather played a pivotal role in the negotiations between Stephen and
the US Government on the sale of the Thetis. The reports of the proceeds of the sale range
from between £27,000 and £31,000; whatever the true figure was is of little consequence,
except one must assume that Alexander Stephen was highly delighted by the outcome, so
much so that he immediately appointed Captain Alexander Fairweather to supervise the
building of his greatest and last whaler, the Terra Nova.
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Four ships took part in the rescue of the members of the Greely Expedition in 1884 and these
were the Alert, Bear, Thetis and Loch Garry. They reached Greely’s camp on the 22nd of June
to find that only seven men had survived the winter including Lt Greely himself.
Lady Franklin Bay
Ellesmere
Island
Route of the Greely
Expedition 1881
Newfoundland
Under Alexander’s command the Terra Nova provided Alexander Stephen & Sons with a
handsome return every year during his tenure and perhaps it caused a little surprise when, at
the end of 1888, Alexander decided he had had enough of the harsh Arctic life he had lead for
some years past and gave up his command of the Terra Nova to put his feet up ashore. Given
he was only 43 years old at the most when he came ashore at the end of 1888, it is hard to
imagine someone of his undoubted energy and ability being content just to watch the world
go by. It is not until the beginning of 1891 that his name comes to the fore again, this time
linked to a whaling ship named the Balaena. The Balaena was built in Norway in 1872 and
brought to Dundee in 1890, first appearing in the Dundee Registry in 1891. I have said earlier
that after he left Alexander Stephen’s employ he intended to put his feet up ashore and while
that might have been the case in the early days of 1899, it is likely he became active in
pursuing another one of his ambitions, that of owning his own ship. He would have known
Captain William Adams, the well-known Dundee whaling Captain, who had fulfilled his
dream of owning his own ship when he bought the Maud in 1884 and converted her from a
sailing ship to a steam whaler. Captain Adams commanded his own ship up to his untimely
death in 1890 and there must have been occasions before 1890 when William and Alexander,
some nine years his junior, would have met and exchanged stories over a glass or three. It is
said that Alexander and some friends got together and bought the Balaena but to date I can
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find no direct evidence of this, however, it appears that Robert Kinnes was the owner of the
Balaena and had brought her to Dundee in 1890, which nicely brings me to the next episode
in the life of Alexander Fairweather.
By the year 1890 the Arctic regions frequented by the Dundee whalers to their great success
and wealth creation for local owners, particularly since about 1850, were providing less and
less resources to support the all mighty jute industry in Dundee. Robert Kinnes was a selfmade ship manager and owner who had become one of the dominating names in the whaling
industry, first becoming manager of the Tay Whale Fishing Company in the 1880s and later
its owner. His is another story and well worth the telling in another issue. However, it was he
along with other local businessmen who resolved to test the famous Scottish explorer, James
Clark Ross’s reports of ‘great numbers of the largest sized black whales’ during his
expeditions to the Antarctic in 1839 and 1843. It was decided that the Balaena under Captain
Alexander Fairweather; the Active, commanded by Captain Thomas Robertson; Polar Star,
commanded by Captain James Davidson and Diana, commanded by Captain Robert
Davidson should be sent to the Antarctic. So it was on the 9th of September 1892 that the
ships left Dundee for the far-off Antarctic. Malcolm Archibald in his book The Dundee
Whaling Fleet. Ships, Masters and Men, devotes a chapter, The Last Hurrah: The Dundee
Antarctic Expedition, to this adventure and I am truly grateful to him for allowing me to use
much of his material here and I recommend his book to all who wish to keep Dundee’s
maritime heritage alive.
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The expedition was not a success in so far as finding whales was concerned but in exploration
terms one would have to say that it was a success. Its success in that regard was due to the
navigational talents of the captains involved who helped discover lands then as yet unknown.
The expedition based itself in South Georgia and set about covering the voyage costs by
catching seals, Balaena catching some 5,200 with 180 tons of blubber. The expedition is
marked to this day by the names of the places explored mirroring where the ships came from,
their names and the names of those involved. Kinnes; Gibson Bay; Cape Alexander; Dundee
Island: Firth of Tay: Active Sound; to name but few of the marks left behind when the ships
returned in 1893. The Baleana arrived back in Camperdown Dock, Dundee, on the 30th of
May 1893. There was little harmony between the professional seamen and the scientists who
went together to the Antarctic, mainly possibly because one was there for future gain while
the other was intent on discovery.
It was on the 11th of August 1893 that the owners and shareholders involved in the Arctic
Expedition met in Mathers Hotel in Dundee, where, after a short discussion, they decided not
to send any more ships south. With hindsight one must ask the question whether those who
were part of the Dundee Whaling Industry at the time lacked a little courage to invest in
ships and equipment that were fit and able to fish for whales in the Antarctic. The size of the
creatures down there alone meant that the traditional Dundee whaler was too small for the
task and hand thrown harpoons were but bee stings to the Antarctic whale. It was the
Norwegians that took up the Antarctic gauntlet and developed ships and equipment that
provided them with success for many years to come. Although whaling continued out of
Dundee, it did so with ever decreasing success never to return to the glory days of the 1860s,
70s and 80s.
Captain Alexander Fairweather of the Baleana, lives on. Wikipedia contains the following:
Cape Fairweather is a cape 705 metres high (2,310 feet), which is ice covered except for
rocky exposures along its southeast and east sides, lying midway between Drygalski Glacier
and Evans Glasier on the east coast of Graham Island and dividing Nordenskjold Coast from
Oscar II Coast. It was charted in 1947 by the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey, who
named it for Alexander Fairweather, captain of the Dundee whaler ‘Balaena’ which operated
along the northeast coast of the Antarctic Peninsula in 1892/3.
Alexander continued his command of the Balaena, fishing in the northern waters he knew so
well, but, sadly his life was cut short and he died on board the Balaena on the 30th of May
1896 just off Spitzbergen where he had first made his name 23 years before.
It is appropriate I record the old whaling song here.
The “Balaena”
The noble fleet of whalers went sailing from Dundee,
Well-manned by British sailors to work upon the sea.
On the Western Ocean passage none with them can compare,
But the smartest ship to make this trip is Balaena, I declare.
Chorus. (After each verse)
Oh, the wind is on her quarter, her engines working free,
There’s not another whaler that sails out of Dundee.
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Can beat the old Balaena, she needs no trial run,
And we challenge all, both great and small, from Dundee to St. John.
It happened on a Tuesday, three days out of Dundee,
The gale took off her quarter boat and a couple of men, you see.
It battered all her bulwarks, and her stanchions and her rails,
And left the old Balaena, boys, a-frothing in the gale.
Chorus.
Bold Jackman cut his canvas and he fairly raised his steam,
And Captain Guy wit Erin Boy was ploughing through the stream
And the noble Terra Nova, her boilers nearly burst,
And still at the old whaling grounds, Balaena got there first.
Chorus.
And now the seasons over and the ship half-full of oil,
Our flying jib-boom points for home towards our native soil.
And when that we have landed, boys, where the rum is very cheap,
We’ll drink success to the skippers health for getting us o’er the deep.
Chorus.
©
John J Watson
Broughty Ferry
August 2015