Whaling in Australia

Whaling in Australia commenced in 1791 when two of the ships which had brought convicts and free settlers to the penal colony of New South Wales (Australia) as part of the Third Fleet engaged in whaling and seal hunting activities before returning to England. The main varieties of whales hunted were humpback, blue, right and sperm whales.

In 1979 Australia terminated whaling and committed to whale protection.

There is no record of Australian Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people traditionally hunting whales, although it is said that Aboriginal people did hunt with killer whales, in stories recounted at the Eden Killer Whale Museum. Aboriginal people were employed as boat crew by some whaling masters.

In 1791, Captain Thomas Melvill commanded the Britannia, one of 11 ships that departed from Plymouth in the United Kingdom 27 March 1791 as part of the Third Fleet, bound for the Sydney penal settlement. Leaving Port Jackson in November 1791, Captain Eber Bunker of the William and Ann and Captain Thomas Melvill of Britannia led the first whaling expedition in Australian waters. Britannia, became the first ship to take sperm whales on the Australian coast. Melvill was presented with a Silver Cup with the inscription:

The gift of His Excellency, Arthur Phillips, Esq.,Captain-General and Governor-in-Chief of His Majesty's Territory of New South Wales and its Dependencies, to Thomas Melvill,Commander of the Britannia, for killing a Spermaceti Whale on the 26 th October 1791. Being the first of its kind taken on this coast since the Colony was established.

By this time Melvill had become a valuable man, the one whaling captain knowing most of the new whaling opportunities in the Pacific, both by Peru and near Sydney. He was an experienced commander - one account describes him as experienced in that he had rounded Cape Horn a number of times. He thus helped established a whale fishery off the coast of Peru. Enderby's ships Speedy, Britannia and Ocean constantly sailed from Port Jackson whaling.

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