It is 1803 and the first whaling ship to arrive in the Bay of Islands anchors off Russell. Little did anyone know just how crucial whaling was to become to the Far North and that Russell would become the major port of entry.
A staggering 3,000 whaling ships came here and at any one time there could be 25 ships in the bay each with 30 men on board, here to repair and reprovision and for the men to recuperate from long weeks at sea. The 'resting' sailors gave rise to the epithet Hell Hole of the Pacific as they dominated the town.
Local man, Lindsay Alexander, is an expert on whaling with a fount of fascinating historical facts to impart. He'll be one of the guides during the Walking Weekend in October and is a bit of an old salt himself. He's written two books on the subject, one of which was bought by the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC.
"Whale baleen was used in women's corsets and the whale oil used for lighting. The knowledge of the masses literally improved because they could read in better light. Russell was important to the industrial revolution because the whale oil powered heavy machinery. Whaling was not an irrelevant side show, it literally oiled the cogs of what we have now." Each 'mother' ship had four whale boats. The harpoonist would anchor his knee in a rounded gap near the bow for support called the clumsy cleat and today you can see where he would have stood in the whale boat housed in the Russell Museum. Around 40,000 of these boats were built and this museum boat is one of only six or seven remaining in the country.
Of the thousands of whaling ships built during the whaling century only one remains in the world. The Charles W Morgan last sailed into Russell in 1894 and is now being restored in the USA.
