The ‘Tay Whale’, which afforded so much sport to the Philistines while in life, bids fair to yield even a greater measure of entertainment now that it is only a carcase. After having been publicly exhibited in Dundee and Aberdeen, the unwieldy monster has been brought to Glasgow, and for the next few days it will be on view . . . On arrival at College Station this morning, the whale was placed on a large carriage specially constructed for the purpose. The carriage, drawn by 30 or 40 horses, proceeded along Ingram Street . . .
Glasgow newspaper report, February 1884
After Aberdeen, the whole circus packed up and headed for Glasgow, where, as the above newspaper extract suggests, cynicism was rife. Yet another carriage ‘specially constructed for the purpose’ was made available – the third, and there must have been two more in Liverpool and Manchester. Its arrival in Glasgow was greeted with less than open arms, and the local press’s attitude centred pretty specifically on hygiene. One mightily relieved reporter anticipated its arrival thus: ‘We are assured that the preservation of the carcase has been so satisfactory that there is now no trace of an unpleasant odour, and that the most delicate or sensitive individual may visit the blubbery cetacean without fear of being distressed.’
So that’s all right then. We wouldn’t want delicate and sensitive Glaswegian souls being distressed. And there was surely not much chance now of further distressing the whale. Nothing untoward could happen to it now, no further indignities could be heaped on its monstrous reputation; surely there were no more indignities left to heap. But then, on 8 February, the man from the Advertiser on an away-day to Glasgow, stumbled on this:
THE TAY WHALE
ASTOUNDING DISCOVERY!
A MAN FOUND IN THE STOMACH!
(By Extra Special Wire)
Glasgow, 2p.m.
Extraordinary excitement prevails in Glasgow owing to the discovery this forenoon of a live man in the stomach of the Tay whale. The stomach, and over three tons of intestines were sent from Aberdeen a week ago under the direction of Professor Struthers, but it was only today that preparations had been completed for the opening of the stomach. A number of the University Professors and other scientific gentlemen were present by invitation, as also several clergymen and prominent citizens. About noon a large incision was made, and the stomach partially opened, when something in the nature of a solid obstruction was encountered. Curiosity changed into utter amazement when, on the incision being enlarged and the upper portions of the stomach being carefully drawn back, the obstruction was found to be a human being, lying in an easy position, as in sleep, with the body bent; with the right arm, which was underneath, doubled at the elbow; and the side of the nose resting on the forefinger. It was supposed at first that the man was dead, but on closer investigation by the medical men present it was discovered that he was actually alive, but in a torpid or comatose state resembling catalepsy. Besides the man, the stomach contained scores of dead herring and sprats, and several articles of different kinds, including a large pocket-book and the glass funnel of an oil lamp (blackened with smoke) exactly similar to those used in the Tay Ferry steamers.
It was thought prudent not to extricate the sleeping figure until the procurator-fiscal could be summoned; but attempts were made to waken him up by shouting. The Rev. John Smith, who was present, succeeded, with the assistance of two other gentlemen, in so bending over as to get his mouth close to the sleeper’s ear; but though he shouted at the pitch of his voice, not the slightest effect was produced . . .
So far, so very bizarre, but then the Rev. Mr Smith took leave of his senses:
Mr Smith expressed his conviction in the most solemn and emphatic manner, that the man was no other than the prophet Jonah, and that the whale and the unfaithful prophet had both been preserved miraculously, and been directed to these shores as a triumphant refutation of modern scepticism.
You can almost hear the whale groaning, ‘Why me, God?’
The astounding bit about what followed is that several people in the assembled multitude actually took issue with the Rev. Smith on matters of biblical accuracy rather than convulsing into helpless laughter then having him incarcerated as an irredeemable lunatic. They pointed out that the whale that ate Jonah then vomited him out onto dry land. Don’t think Mr Smith hadn’t seen that one coming. Jonah, he said, must have deserted his post again and been swallowed again.
He appealed, somewhat excitedly, to all present, whether there was any record either in the Bible or in natural history of any other whale having a throat large enough to swallow a man, except the one that swallowed Jonah. It had been specially created to swallow him when he was refusing to attend to his duty, and was no doubt kept in readiness to swallow him in like circumstances again.
Alas for Mr Smith’s revisionist theories of both the Bible story and the natural world that had apparently sustained a whale (and Jonah) for the better part of 2,000 years so that God in His wisdom might spectacularly confound his doubting Thomases, the sleeper was recognised as a tramp and general pain-in-the-arse who haunted the Tay Ferries that plied between Dundee and Newport.
At this moment, Mr William Sanderson, of Newport, Fife, who had been superintending the exhibition of the outer carcase of the whale, having heard of the extraordinary discovery that had been made, arrived, and no sooner saw the sleeper than he declared, to the astonishment of all present, that it was a gentleman from his own part of the country, unpopularly known as the Autocrat of the Tay Ferries. He knew the face perfectly. He was prepared to take affidavit that this was the man.
So not Jonah, then. Damn.
Several men contradicted Mr Sanderson and suggested that the pocketbook might identify the man, although why they thought the book might be a more reliable source than Mr Sanderson is not explained. The man from the Advertiser was now clearly beginning to enjoy himself.
On the pocket book being opened it was found to contain a large number of musty papers which did not appear to have been touched in a long time. As the first scrap was being opened, the Rev. Mr Smith, who adhered firmly to his conviction that the man was Jonah, expressed his opinion from the faded appearance of the paper, that it would prove to be a Tarshish or Nineveh bank-note. On closer examination, however, it was found to be an account for ‘ten gallons of inferior oil for saloon’. A note in the corner of this account read as follows: ‘This kind has a very bad smell, but is one ha’penny per gallon cheaper.’
The next thing brought out was a printed slip, containing maxims and mottoes such as ‘How not to do it’, ‘Procrastination is the soul of business’, and ‘Never do tomorrow what you can let alone today’. There was also a tract entitled ‘Official indifference a saving grace’. Several little scraps of manuscript were next brought out. On these being carefully unfolded, it was found that most of them had headings as of topics to write about or consider. Amongst these were the following: ‘Patience a valuable virtue – ferry – for the public’, ‘How to sit upon other Ferry Trustees’, ‘How best to provoke patient people’, ‘How to keep saloon passengers from knowing when the gangway is down’, ‘How to attain the maximum of smell with the minimum of speed’. There were also some jottings under the heading, ‘Advantages of carrying people and cattle in the same boat’ . . . The only other contents were letters, all of which were found to be complaints. Several were dated months, even years ago. None of them seemed to have been opened.
LATER DETAILS, 3 P.M.
The question of identification being still unsettled, a messenger has been sent off to wire Dundee and Newport. The opinion of some is that the pocket-book may have no connection with the man, and may have been swallowed by the whale at a different time and place. Mr Sanderson, however, adheres to his first assertion . . .
You had a feeling he would, didn’t you?
Meantime, more vigorous efforts have been made to get the sleeper roused. Two powerful batteries of sixteen horse power have been applied, but without producing the slightest effect. The doctors have made a further examination and report that the structure and condition of the sleeper are both remarkable. The pulsation and everything else is exceptionally slow; and the bump of Aggravativeness covers the entire area usually occupied by the moral faculties. Guns are to be fired this afternoon close to the exposed ear; but the doctors doubt if they will produce any movement or response.
They didn’t. And there, infuriatingly, the sleeper vanishes from the story, his fate unrecorded. Perhaps the guns fired close to his exposed ear were poorly aligned and shot him in the head by mistake? A centenary leaflet produced by Dundee Art Galleries and Museums in 1984 simply notes that ‘although some commentators claimed the man to be a modern Jonah, and a sign from God, a Newport man recognised the sleeper as a tramp who regularly frequented the Tay Ferries. It was presumed that he had crawled into the whale’s mouth while it had been stationary at a railway yard in Dundee in transit.’
But that won’t do. The stomach was removed at Greasy Johnny’s yard on 25 January and popped into a barrel to be freighted to Aberdeen, barrels having been established as the means by which body parts were freighted. By the time the stomach was opened in Glasgow, on February 8, the tramp had been inside the stomach for at least a fortnight. But how did he manage to enter the stomach in the first place, bearing in mind that the professors had to cut it open to reveal the contents? Did he enter the whale’s mouth when it first came home to Dundee (as so many others did to have their photographs taken) and just kept going to find somewhere warm? Or did he fall off the ferry into the Tay while the whale was still alive just as the whale was passing with its mouth open? Good heavens, the poor fellow could have been harpooned in there! Now that would have been a truly remarkable way to die.
They mystery died with the tramp, and the tramp almost certainly died within a day or two of his discovery, and however he died it was a truly remarkable death.
Yet the incident has its echoes elsewhere in the history of whaling. David Jones notes in his book, simply called Whales:
In 1891 a whaler, James Bartley, published his first-hand account of how a whale saved him – albeit the hard way – from drowning. According to Bartley, he fell overboard and hadn’t even hit the water before a sperm whale swallowed him. Bartley’s shipmates caught the whale within the hour and began butchering it. When they cut open the stomach, out spilled Bartley, his hair and skin bleached a deathly white by the whale’s gastric juices. After two weeks in a coma, Bartley made a complete recovery but stayed an albino for the rest of his days. Most authorities today dismiss the account as a hoax, arguing it would be impossible for a person to survive more than a few minutes in a whale’s stomach.
Perhaps that explains the Tay Whale sleeper too – a hoax. Perhaps the subsequent newspaper silence reflects embarrassment – they were hoodwinked and they didn’t like it. Perhaps it really happened and perhaps (the smell apart) the stomach of a dead whale is a warm and comparatively comfortable bivvy, especially for a tramp on a cold January night. Maybe he too recovered after a couple of weeks in a coma to haunt the Fifies (which is how all Dundee affectionately referred to the Tay Ferries right up to the days of their demise in the 1960s, when the road bridge rendered them redundant) with his ghostly whale-pallor for years to come. But I think we would have heard.
The rest of the whale’s tour – to Manchester and Liverpool – passed off without drama. It was finally transported back to Aberdeen, where the skull and remaining bones were removed (it took six men to carry the skull), the skeleton’s component parts were reunited, cleaned and generally made acceptable for public consumption, transported back to Dundee where they were delivered to the city’s Albert Institute museum (subsequently the McManus Galleries) and reassembled in the right order, and put on more or less permanent display. More or less permanent, because in 1983 the skeleton was moved a few hundred yards to the smaller Barrack Street museum, but not before several Dundee councillors had protested at the cost of moving a heap of old bones, and one suggested having it ground down to make dog food as a means of recouping some of the expense it had incurred over the years. Fifteen years later it returned to the McManus, and as I write, the McManus Galleries are being refurbished (the whale will form the centrepiece of a new exhibit on Dundee at work) and the skeleton is being stored in pieces in various parts of the city, and that, too, has happened before. It never was allowed to rest in peace.
In the intervening 125 years, public attitudes to whales and whaling have been transformed. The fate of the Tay Whale was a product of its time, even though many of those who saw it alive would rather it had stayed that way. The Victorians’ attitude to nature was one of subjugation; to command it, kill it, skin it, stuff it, mount it and show it off, or if it was to be spared, then it was to live in zoos, in circuses, and commanded to do tricks. Greasy Johnny was the archetypal Victorian ringmaster. His next venture into the business was announced in a newspaper advertisement in 1886:
LAST WEEK OF THE BEARS!
Positively closing on Saturday 6th February
TO BE SEEN ALIVE
AT COMMERCIAL STREET (top of Seagate)
THE THREE LARGEST POLAR BEARS
EVER IMPORTED FROM THE ARCTIC REGIONS
These Beautiful Animals, which are as White as the driven Snow, were brought to Dundee by the Brothers, Captains Fairweather, in the whale ships ‘Arctic’ and ‘Terra Nova’, and will be Exhibited here for a few days only, previously to being sent to the Zoological Gardens, Dublin. Mr Woods, wishing the inhabitants of Dundee to have an opportunity of seeing them, has decided to make the Price of Admission merely nominal. ONLY 2d.
On view from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m.
The other notable characteristic of Victorian attitudes to wild animals is, alas, not yet wholly extinct in Scotland. It is that if one species of nature was found to conflict with the vested interests of people’s pursuit of another species of nature, then the one interfering species was eradicated – the eagle that hunted over the grouse moor, for example, could not be permitted to kill grouse. It had to be killed so that the people could kill the grouse.
I believe that in the Victorian era we grew retarded as a race because of that perverse relationship with nature. It feels now – some of the time at least – as if we have begun to reverse the process, as if we are taking the first tentative steps across a bridge, a bridge that reconnects us with all the possibilities of nature, not just the ones we find convenient; a bridge that reconnects us with who and what we used to be and with who and what we should have remained all along. There are an infinite number of steps on that bridge, and it may yet break with the weight of expectation on it. Yet we heal as we cross, and as we heal, nature heals.
Beyond the bridge’s further end there are well-wooded mountains, clear rivers and unpolluted seas. If my forebears in Dundee had admired the Tay Whale when it turned up, and watched sorrowfully when it left but felt gratitude for his visit, then it could have been alive to see the first steps along the bridge, alive and singing as it travelled the oceans of the world.