ISSN 1035-3127
We publish quality short stories, poetry, extracts from forthcoming novels, and articles and essays on topics of social, environmental and cultural significance. |
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Summer 2004 Contents page | Editorial | Reviews | Fiction | Essays | Poetry
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This painting is by William Duke, an Irish immigrant carpenter turned theatrical 'scenic artist'. Duke also carved and decorated figureheads, painted ship portraits and whaling scenes in oil and produced a popular series of whale-hunt lithographs; he is one the best of Australia's early maritime painters. Source: Island n.99, Summer 2004: Van Diemen’s Land – David Hansen p.46: Offshore whaling is packed with narrative incident. Ten whaleboats are at work in the foreground: two have been overturned, and another two seem doomed, while members of their crews are either clutching desperately to their hulls or leaping, swimming or being dragged by their mates to safety. The whales are faring just as badly, the two nearest rolling in their death throes, blood foaming from their blowholes. On the Aladdin, a corpse is already strung up amidships, a pair of flensers at work slicing off the bloody blubber. Despite the theatricality of Offshore whaling and its suspicious resemblance to Edward Dodge’s wood engraving Whaling off Tahiti (Duke was a shameless copyist), the work may have a documentary, historical basis. The Aladdin spent most of 1848 at sea, while the Jane made a shorter voyage (her first as a whaler) between 28 March and 3 October. The two vessels were therefore at sea simultaneously, and may very well have encountered this sizeable pod of sperm whales together.
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