Bristow Photos

[Dave Ed]

WHALING - WHERE IT ALL BEGAN.

A little Bristow history......



The Antarctic whaling operations provided some invaluable experience for Alan Bristow himself and for some of his ablest lieutenants, most notably Alan Green who eventually became Sales Director of Bristow Helicopters, Clive Wright who became Regional Manager in the seventies and John Cameron who became Aircrew Appointments Officer.




The snippets in this post are reproduced from Peter Pugh's unpublished draft manuscript about Bristows and have been tidied up and edited for internet readability.


A year on whaling operations was divided into three phases. The first was from July to September when the S55 Mk1 Whirlwind helicopters were prepared for the whaling season and when the newly recruited pilots were trained. The second was the whaling season itself which lasted (including the journey to the Antarctic and back) from September to April. Finally there was the two months leave.



The two whaling factory ships used by Christian Salvesen(the Scottish company involved in whaling) were the Southern Harvester and the Southern Venturer. These ships were purpose built for both whaling and operating in the Antarctic and were noisy, smelly, uncomfortable and claustrophobic. Furthermore the flight deck was really too small, certainly for the Whirlwinds.



The factory ships had a displacement of around a hundred thousand tons which was considered large in their day. In essence, the bottom of the ship was a tanker with a factory built on top, on top of which was the flensing deck and built on that level would be the forward bridge structure which also contained officers' cabins, galleys and ship's dining areas. Amidships was a structure which ran across the main flensing deck, containing two sixty ton winches and was known as Hell's Gate. Aft was the main accommodation of three storeys consisting of accommodation for the crew, ship's engineers and helicopter personnel. On top of this accommodation were two funnels, side by side, with the helicopter hangar in between and the helideck aft of this and over the accommodation block at the stern of the ship. From the helideck to the sea was sixty feet and the ship when loaded drew sixty nine feet of water.

The aft accommodation was split by a large tunnel that led up from the sea to the aft flensing deck and it was up this tunnel that the whale carcasses were hauled to be cut up and fed through ports to the factory below. Conditions in the aft accommodation were extremely noisy, as a whale was hauled up every half an hour, and unbelievably smelly, as the whales, used as fenders, began to rot!
John Cameron remembered it vividly, " The smell was so powerful you couldn't even entice an "Airwick" out of its bottle."

The catchers were mainly ex-German navy submarine hunters, part of the reparations from the Second World War. They weighed in at fifteen hundred tons and could steam at seventeen knots and were ideally suited to the job as hunting whales was not dissimilar to hunting submarines.



The harpoon gun, invented by a Norwegian during the Second World War was the key to the whaling industry. The gun fired a harpoon which carried an explosive warhead and attached to the harpoon was a rope which ran through shackles and was routed to a clutched winch.

The Salvesen ships mainly hunted Balaena whales and operations were similar to antisubmarine warfare. The corvettes were stretched out to cover the maximum sea area and the helicopters were deployed to search a gap or take over on the wings. Flying would begin at first light.





The day began in darkness, when both pilots and engineers would muster on the helideck to pull the helicopter out of the hangar on to a turntable in the middle of the flight deck. As the hangar was too narrow to take two Whirlwinds with floats fitted, the helicopter was wheeled on a jack-up jury rig. The helicopter would be lashed to the turntable, the floats fitted and the jury rig jacked down and removed. Once the rotor blades were unfolded the pilots went off to get some breakfast while the engineers carried out pre-flight checks and refuelled.

The operational pilots got dressed in their survival suits and started up the aircraft. Performance in accordance with the Flight Manual was not really practical ; the pilots stuffed the aircraft with as much fuel as they thought they could carry often departing 300lbs over max gross weight. If necessary the ship was turned to give a relative wind of 45 degrees port or starboard. On the deck the rotor blades were lower than the level of the life boats and davits, which had to be cleared on lift-off. The technique in these piston enginned machines was, after cockpit checks had been completed, reduce rotor RPM to ground idle for a few seconds then increase throttle and power, lift off and go, making as little cyclic and pedal inputs as possible. Having cleared the deck dive toward the sea to build up speed and translational lift and you were on your way.



Once airborne the pilots looked for the "slick" which was the name given to the the give-away circles left by the whales tails as they returned to depth after surfacing to blow.