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Liverpool and whaling

4 February 2008 by Stephen

painting of a black sailing ship with small details of whales being harpooned and seals being clubbed.

Success to the James of Liverpool

When I was a boy in the 1960s there were the enormous jaw bones of a whale forming garden gates at a pub in Frodsham overlooking the Mersey marshes. Doubtless the creature had been beached in the river, quite a common occurrence in the distant past.

Whaling ships once operated out of Liverpool but it was never a major industry in the port – at its height around 1788 there were 21 vessels registered as whalers. Today scant remains to remind us of this little-known period which ran parallel with the early growth of Liverpool. One place is Greenland Street, off Jamaica Street in the city centre. The waters off Greenland were among the places the Liverpool whalers hunted lucrative sperm whales and other species valuable for their oil-rich blubber and baleen – whalebone used for making ladies’ corsets (stays). It is likely that Greenland Street got its name because it housed the warehouses, counting houses and offices linked to the whaling industry.

The whalers would spend weeks and months hunting their prey. When they had killed a whale they would strip the carcass and store away the valuable products. Practically all of the whale could be used in one form or another: whale oil was used for lubricants, soap, candles, margarine and curing leather. Ambergris, a wax-like substance from the intestines of sperm whales, was used for perfumes. There were many stay-makers in Liverpool and whalebone was also used in the brush trade.

Seafarers would fill their leisure hours decorating whale teeth with intricate scrimshaw designs featuring ships and seascapes. 

At Merseyside Maritime Museum there is the only known painting of a Liverpool whaling ship, Success to the James of Liverpool. The James was originally a French ship that was seized by privateers in 1781. She made her first whaling voyage in 1800, going to Greenland every year until 1821. The anonymous artist shows a number of small boats in the water. In the bows of each stands a marksman armed with a harpoon to kill whales. Several whales are depicted, some spouting water from their blow-holes. To the right, a group of men are killing a seal on an ice floe. The tails of several seals can be seen in the icy sea.



  1. eddy jones says:

    When did the whaling ships stop coming to Liverpool as I think I can remember they were still around in the 1950’s cheers ewj

  2. Ben Whittaker says:

    Hi Eddy, I’m a Curator at the Maritime Museum. As you can see from the article, there was no whaling fleet operating out of Liverpool beyond 1830. I’m not aware of any whaling operation in the Port in the 1950’s, but its possible that some whaling ships not based in Liverpool may have used the port from time to time for repairs etc. Cheers, Ben

  3. David Railton says:

    I, also, remember the whaling ships in Liverpool Docks. Specifically in the late 1940s although I think they continued to come into the port until the 1950s. I remember as a very small child in about 1948 visiting a whaler in Liverpool Docks with my father. The whaling ships were owned by or operated by the Southern Whaling and Sealing Co Ltd, a subsidiary of Levers. Henry Tryer were appointed ship’s agents in 1921. By 1924 Tyrers were dealing with 16 of Southern Whaling’s vessels. The numbers of whalers handled by Tyrers decreased over the years. By the early 1940s Levers had sold Southern Whaling to Salvesens but there were still a few coming into the port each year until, I think, the 1950s. Many homes on Merseyside used to have a small memento of the Liverpool whalers from this period – a whales tooth. We used to have a few of them but unfortunatley after so many years they started to decay.

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