The captains of whaling ships generally kept detailed logs of the whales that they saw and captured. These have been invaluable to scientists trying to calculate the populations sizes and age structures of whales in times past.

This page for June 5th 1852 is from the log of the Peterhead whaling ship Eclipse. This extract describes the chasing and striking of a small group of whales. The successful capture of a whale was always accompanied with the drawing of a whale's fluke. The drawing of a half fluke represented an unsuccessful strike or a whale shared with another ship. In one attempt, recorded here, harpooner Alex Watt and his crew almost lost their boat as their whale dived and took a line away. One whale is recorded as measuring 6ft 6ins (2 meters). This would have been the length of the whalebone in its mouth, the whale would have been about 15 meters long.

©SCRAN/Aberdeenshire Council
Log of the whaler Eclipse

In 1852 the Eclipse was whaling in the Greenland sea under the command of Captain John Gray (Sen.). Their harvest for the season was 5 whales and 2925 seals. Captain Gray, was one of Peterhead's most celebrated 19th century Arctic navigators. He commanded the Active from 1826-27, the Alpheus in 1828 and the Eclipse from 1836-56. In this portrait he is holding a leather and brass telescope, he was awarded for saving the crew of the stricken ship Perseverance at the Greenland Sea whaling in 1840.

©SCRAN/Aberdeenshire Council.
John Gray (Sen.)