While the girls went shopping, my son James and I went after sperm whales.Cambridge is a long way from the sea, but it has its own whales. Most of them are in the University Zoology Department in Downing Street so we headed for there first. Unfortunately it was closed, but we took time to visit the fin whale that adorns the front of the building. I suppose the brutalist, concrete building was designed around the whale. Now the whale seems to be turning to concrete himself as the weather bleaches his framework.
We peeked through the museum's dusty windows to see stacks of crates. All of the stuffed animals and bones have been removed but whales and dolphins still hang from the ceiling. Through the grime, in an unlit room, it looked like the skeletons were swimming round in tank, like those poor orcas in American zoos.
There are two other mueums in Downing Street. The Sedgewick Museum has fossils and minerals, but no whales: the Anthropology Museum specialises in the Pacific Rim and has artefacts such as masks, totem poles and spears that relate to whales and whaling. I will spend a day there looking for whales in miniature.The Whipple Museum is about the Histrory of Science. I bet they have some lamps that used to run on whale oil, but we were distracted by stacks of ghoulish medical equipment. I have an excuse to go back there too. But our primary traget was to get to the Scott Polar Institute.
I have driven past it often, but only been in once. From the road you can see a sculpture of Peter Scott (Robert Falcon Scott's son) as a boy, made by his mother. (There is another one of Peter posing as Peter Pan in London's Hyde Park.) By the front door there is a sinister looking gun that looks more industrial than any I have seen; like a tractor part rather than a weapon. It is a harpoon gun from a whaling ship and was made in the 1940s. That means that it was still being used when I was a young man.Next to the gun there is a cauldron. It is not huge and could have been used to make witches' potions, or to boil up pig-swill on a farm, but it was actually kept on-board ships for rendering blubber. You can find them scattered around the old whaling stations such as the Falklands, Sychelles and South Georgia today. Imagine the thick, black, oily smoke generated by such a fire and the greasy chip-shop slime that would have adhered to the rails and discoloured the sails of whaling ships. Where would you get the wood to light a fire in any of those polar stations? You did not need to; whales and seals burn very well on their own.
Inside the Scott Polar Museum, white is the dominant colour. The current exhibition is about the Inuits and I found no reference to whales but I know they still hunt toothed whales using traditional kayaks. However, a modern Inuit hunt involves dorys with outboard motors and high-powerd rifles.There is a case of scrimshaw work (designs etched into the teeth of sperm whales) which I found hard to relate to any living creature. Unlike the Nantucket whaler-men who carved whales and sailing ships, our boys seemed to prefer to illustrate pretty ladies. May-be there was abetter market for them ashore?
