Brothers took whaling to new heights

While a huge range of individuals have helped form the New Zealand character it is our many industries which have built the nation we know today. In the very early days of European contact with New Zealand those industries exploited finite resources in a predictable boom and bust cycle. Our later industries were based on renewable resources and, because of our isolation from the rest of the world, relied on ingenuity, hard work and courage to be successful. Over the next few weeks we will look at the history of some of our more successful industries. The New Zealand whaling industry, one of our first exporters, followed a predictable boom and bust cycle. After about 50 years of unregulated hunting the resident whale populations, mostly bachelor sperm whales, had all but disappeared.

Southern right whales and humpback whales, which migrated through New Zealand coastal waters between the Southern Ocean and the mid Pacific twice a year, had also been greatly reduced by the mid-1840s.

In the early 1900s the few whalers left in the business, mostly around Cook Strait, were still using row boats and hand thrown harpoons to catch migrating whales.

These included descendants of Jack Guard and Jack Love who both left large extended families in the region.

Then in 1904 the industry was reinvigorated when new technology was introduced.

In that year Joe Perano was fishing in Cook Strait outside Cape Koamaru, when a pair of humpback whales suddenly rose up on either side of his boat, almost lifting the oars out of the rowlocks.

Rather than be intimidated by the huge creatures Joe decided to abandon fishing and take up whaling out of Tory Channel. In 1911 he was joined by Frank Carrick, Billy Gillice, John Jackson and George Baxter.

Between them they had three motor launches based at Yellerton, which gave them a big advantage over the last of Cook Strait rowboat whalers. In 1912 Joe Perano moved his whaling station to a more advantageous site at Tipi Bay.

By 1921 Joe Perano had given up active whaling, leaving his brother Charlie to carry on while he concentrated on developing farming property at Whekenui.

Three years later Joe Perano tried to return to the whaling business he had established but his brother was not keen on the idea.

Not one to give in easily Joe set up a new whaling station at Fishing Bay, in direct competition with his brother. From opposite sides of Tory Channel they raced each other in fast motor launches to be the first to harpoon migrating whales. The rivalry between the two brothers became so intense that in June 1927 the inevitable happened: there was a high-speed collision between competing whaling boats. The incident was eventually settled in court, with Joe Perano suing Charlie for damages and winning the case in November.

Later in 1927 Joe took over the Tipi Bay whaling station, including all its debts and two of its whale chasers, but did not operate a whaling station there. Rather, he concentrated on expanding and developing his new whaling station at Fishing Bay.

Another of Joe Perano’s brothers, Alf, was both master and engineer of the Waitohi, a steamship which Joe, Alf and Paul Brunsill built on a section adjoining the Perano family’s old Picton waterfront homestead. It was operated as a tugboat and for towing whales before it was replaced in 1929 by the Tuatea, bought by Alf Perano from the Union Steam Ship Company of New Zealand. This was used by the Perano family for more than 30 years to pull whales from the open waters of Cook Strait and up Tory Channel to the factory in Fishing Bay. J. A. Perano and Company bought the vessel from Alf in 1945. With Picton as its home port, the 112-ton Tuatea became synonymous with whaling, and was readily identified by most Picton inhabitants for many years.

Joe Perano’s Fishing Bay whaling station became a small community in its own right. Up to 32 whalers lived there with their families throughout each winter whaling season. During the Second World War a complete army camp housing 60 soldiers sprang up on Perano’s Whekenui farm, which was adjacent to his Fishing Bay station. Joe Perano was credited with many modern innovations to the New Zealand whaling industry, including constructing the first power-driven whale chaser in New Zealand, being the first whaling operator in New Zealand to use explosive harpoons, introducing the electric harpoon to New Zealand, and equipping his whale chasers, mother ship and shore stations with radio telephones in 1936.

In 1951, at the age of 74, Joe Perano died and was survived by his wife, Pattie, and two sons who kept the business going.

By the early 1960s Russian whalers were operating huge factory ships in the Antarctic and the whale populations declined even further.

The last whale caught for J. A. Perano and Company was killed on December 21 1964, off Kaikoura, at a time when the business was being run by Joe Perano’s sons, Gilbert and Joseph. This was the last whale harpooned in New Zealand waters from a New Zealand ship, and the killing ended more than 170 years of New Zealand whaling. The last whaling station, just inside Tory Channel, has been restored as a memorial to the men who operated it.

Sperm, humpback and southern right whales have yet to return to their former numbers but the industry on which they were based laid the foundations of ship building and farming in many coastal regions. In the mid-1980s a descendant of Jacky Guard, was still building clinker row boats in Havelock with traditional hand tools.

The rivalry between the two brothers became so intense that in June 1927 the inevitable happened: there was a highspeed collision between competing whaling boats.