Whalers and Free Men: Life on Tasmania's Colonial Whaling Stations
Susan Lawrence
Australian Scholarly Publishing
ISBN 174097087X, rrp $34.95.
When the first British settlers arrived in Hobart there were so many
whales in the Derwent that it was dangerous to venture out in a small
boat. Whaling was the colony’s first and, for a time, most profitable
export industry. The men who hunted the whales were proud and known for
their bravery at sea and their rollicking shore leave. Their work was
dangerous, filthy and isolated, and it kept them away from home for months
at a time, living in small camps scattered along the coasts of Tasmania
and the adjacent mainland.
Within two generations the whales had been hunted to the brink of
extinction, the industry collapsed, and the whalers’ camps were abandoned
to the bush. One hundred and fifty years later, archaeologists located and
excavated two of those camps. This book is the story of what they found
and exploration of what the camps were like when the coastal waters
seethed with whales.
This book presents the results of excavations at two whaling stations in
Tasmania occupied in the 1820s-1840s. Written for a general audience,
it includes a history of the Tasmanian shore whaling industry and the
technology of shore whaling, and uses documentary records to understand
more about the stations' owners and the men who worked there. The
analysis of architectural and artefactual data from the sites sheds
light on the seasonal nature of the industry, the diet and dress of the
whalers, class structures on the stations, and the processes by which
goods were obtained and discarded by the men.
Susan Lawrence has worked in historical archaeology for nearly twenty
years. She is the author of Dolly’s Creek: An Archaeology of a Goldfields
Community (MUP) and editor of Archaeologies of the British and The
Archaeology of Whaling in Southern Australia and New Zealand. She is a
senior lecturer in archaeology at La Trobe University, Melbourne.
Further details: http://www.scholarly.info/
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