Foodways on two colonial whaling stations: archaeological and historical evidence for diet in nineteenth-century Tasmania.

Food is of central importance to culture. Its nutritional properties sustain life while the acquisition, preparation and consumption of food represent significant amounts of time and economic activity. Symbolically, the rituals and meanings surrounding food are among the most powerful in any culture. (1) Despite the cultural importance of food, the study of colonial Australian diet and foodways, or how food was prepared, served, and consumed, has not received a great deal of attention. With a few notable exceptions, (2) historians and historical archaeologists have generally ignored questions regarding food in favour of other subjects. The wealth of data on colonial foodways which exists in archives and archaeological sites remains largely unexplored. The aim of the present study is to contribute to understandings of food in colonial Australia by analysing documentary and archaeological evidence of diet at two archaeological sites in Tasmania. Evidence concerning these sites, both shore whaling stations occupied in the 1830s and 1840s, has the potential to shed light on what was eaten there but also on broader issues including the availability of various edible commodities in the colony, mechanisms by which foodstuffs were produced and distributed, inter-colonial and overseas trade, tradition and innovation in colonial food practices, and the particular circumstances of land-based maritime industries.

The impetus for this study comes from the recovery of large quantities of food-related items during the archaeological excavation of whaling stations at Adventure Bay, Bruny Island, and Lagoon Bay, Forestier Peninsula (Figure 1). Artefacts included animal bones--the debris from countless meals eaten at the sites--as well as broken pieces of bottles and jars and wooden casks that had once contained food and drink, and fragments of the china dishes and glassware that had been used to set the tables. While documentary information on the lives of shore whalers is not plentiful, these two sites are better served than many because the papers of Captain James Kelly, the man who owned both stations, have been preserved in the Crowther Collection in the State Library of Tasmania. This has led to a rare opportunity to assess not only what was being purchased for the stations but also what was actually being consumed there.

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Background

In nineteenth century Van Diemen's Land the whaling industry was of considerable economic and social importance. (3) The sale of whale oil and baleen (strips of keratinous tissue from the mouth of the whale, used in corset manufacture and other applications) was the colony's largest source of export income in the 1830s, while many of the colony's leading business figures were men with connections to whaling and related maritime industries. Whaling entrepreneurs like James Kelly were responsible for establishing the Hobart Regatta and for developing the shipping facilities around Salamanca Place. As one of the few industries forbidden by law to use convict labour, whaling provided a source of employment for freeborn colonial youth. Until bankrupted by the economic collapse of the 1840s and the near-eradication of the herds of southern right whales, Kelly was at the forefront of these activities. The stations at Adventure Bay and Lagoon Bay were but two of his many enterprises which included farms, blocks of land and commercial properties in central Hobart, a string of whaling stations in Van Diemen's Land, and a fleet of ships that hunted whales off New Zealand, New South Wales and Victoria and carried the products to London for sale.

Shore whaling provided a lucrative source of income for colonial entrepreneurs because it required less initial capital than other forms of maritime activity and it produced a rapid return on investment. It centred on hunting the southern right whale (Balaena glacialis), a species which migrated through the shallow coastal waters of southern Australia during the winter months. Men made camps in the sheltered coves where the whales fed and the crews could put out from shore in open boats, kill the whales, and bring the carcasses back to shore for processing. The whale crews and their supplies were taken to the stations by ship at the beginning of the season and they and the oil and whalebone picked up again several months later when the season was finished. Over the winter months crews of up to thirty men lived in timber barracks with stone fireplaces, spending most of their days at sea. When whales were taken the blubber was stripped and then melted in large iron cauldrons (trypots) placed on brick and stone hearths built above the high tide mark.

While whaling of this kind took place around the Australian coast from Western Australia to New South Wales, archaeological evidence is particularly abundant in Tasmania. (4) The two sites discussed here, at Adventure Bay and Lagoon Bay, were both owned by Kelly in partnership with other Hobart businessmen. (5) Kelly had been involved in sealing and whaling for a decade before he went into business with Thomas Lucas at Adventure Bay in 1829. Lucas, another Hobart business owner, had been whaling there since 1825, possibly from ships moored in the bay. The opening of the shore station was the beginning of a partnership with Kelly that lasted into the mid-1830s and included the joint ownership of a brig, the Mary and Elizabeth, and the license to a whaling station near Kelly's farm on the northern end of Bruny Island. When the partnership with Lucas was dissolved Kelly obtained financial backing from Thomas Hewitt, the colonial agent for the London firm of John Gore and Co., and a major source of English capital in the colony. Kelly had a long relationship both with Hewitt's firm, which acted as Kelly's agent in London, and with Hewitt himself. In the 1830s and 1840s the two men jointly owned a variety of ships, including the Amity and the Prince of Denmark. The two took up leases for whaling stations first at Recherche Bay and then at Lagoon Bay and Gardener's Bay on the Forestier Peninsula.

The site on Bruny Island is located on the south-eastern tip of Adventure Bay. In the 1820s and 1830s the station was part of the small but flourishing community of Cooktown, a collection of four shore whaling stations arrayed along the southern shore of the bay. Home to between eighty and ninety men during the winter whaling season, the settlement was accessible only by sea. However, this did not mean it was isolated, as the bay faced the main sea road up the Derwent to Hobart. In 1837 James Kelly and Richard Pybus wrote of `the great traffic by boats from thirty to forty in number daily to and fro passing the island'. (6) Although a road now reaches the township of Adventure Bay, the former whaling stations on the south shore are still accessible only by small boat or along a narrow coastal track. Kelly and Lucas' station, which operated from at least 1829 until approximately 1841, is located on a series of shallow terraces rising above a narrow cobbled beach (Figure 2). The lower terraces nearest the beach are open and grassy while those behind are covered in a dry forest of melaleuca and other eucalypts. Excavations at the site were carried out in 1997, and uncovered the remains of the tryworks, the crew barracks, and the quarters of the senior headsman who managed the station. (7) Artefacts were recovered from shallow scatters of refuse inside and outside the buildings.

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The site at Lagoon Bay was more isolated in the past and continues to be so today. Located on private land, there has never been road access to the site. Access has always been by sea, but it is more distant from Hobart than is Adventure Bay, as the site is on the east coast of the Forestier Penninsula. The establishment of the station in 1838 brought Kelly and Hewitt into conflict with Dr. Alexander Imlay, the brother of Peter and George Imlay of Twofold Bay and another prominent whaler and entrepreneur. Imlay had recently purchased a farm with frontage on Lagoon Bay in order to establish his own whaling station, and although he protested about his new neighbours, his claims were over-ruled and the station remained. More problematic was the proximity to Port Arthur, and in 1842 the government forced the closure of all whaling stations on the peninsula. (8) Kelly and Hewitt again applied for a three year lease in 1848, and archaeological evidence indicates that the station was re-occupied for at least one more season at that time. The station tryworks and boatsheds are in a small cove opening to the north-east with the crew …