When I look at these bizarre old drawings of whales, I’m almost tempted to talk about the even wilder whale tales from ancient and modern books.
Authors like Pliny, Purchas, Hackluyt, Harris, and Cuvier all wrote some incredible stories about them.
But I’ll skip all those old legends for now.
Only four accurate official sketches of the giant sperm whale have ever been published. Their creators are Colnett, Huggins, Frederick Cuvier, and Beale.
I already mentioned Colnett and Cuvier in the last chapter.
Huggins’ drawings are way better than theirs. But Beale’s work is easily the best of the four, by a huge margin.
Nearly all of Beale’s sperm whale illustrations are excellent. The only weak one is the middle whale in his second chapter’s three-figure pose set.
His frontispiece—showing small boats attacking a sperm whale—might make casual, sheltered readers doubt its truth.
But overall, it’s incredibly accurate and lifelike in every key detail.
J. Ross Browne’s sperm whale sketches have decent body outlines, but the engraving work is terrible. That’s no fault of his, though.
For right whale illustrations, Scoresby’s work is the best out there.
The only problem is his drawings are too small to give viewers a proper sense of the whale’s true size and presence.
He only ever drew one single whaling scene. That’s a real shame.
Well-drawn whaling scenes are the only way for people who’ve never hunted whales to picture what these living beasts actually look like out at sea.
All things considered, the finest depictions of whales and whaling scenes ever made are two large, expertly engraved French prints.
They’re based on paintings by an artist named Garnery. They aren’t perfect in every tiny detail, but they’re far better than any other artwork of their kind.
One print shows an attack on a sperm whale, the other an attack on a right whale.
The first print is breathtaking. A massive, powerful sperm whale surges up from the dark ocean depths right beneath a whaling boat.
Its back carries the shattered, splintered wreckage of the boat’s planks high into the air.
The boat’s bow is still half-intact, balanced perfectly on the whale’s massive spine.
In that split, impossible second frozen in the art, you can see a rower standing in the bow.
He’s half-covered by the whale’s furious, steaming spout, mid-leap as if jumping off a sheer cliff.
Every movement in the scene feels vivid and completely authentic.
A half-empty rope barrel floats on the foamy white sea. Broken harpoon poles bob sideways in the waves.
The heads of the swimming crew scatter around the whale, every face showing a different shade of terror.
Far in the dark, stormy distance, the whaling ship races toward the chaotic scene.
You could pick apart small anatomical flaws in the whale’s design, but there’s no point.
I could never create anything half so realistic and dynamic myself.
The second French print tells a completely different story.
A small whaling boat pulls up alongside a huge speeding right whale. The beast’s skin is covered in barnacles, its huge dark body draped in seaweed.
It rolls through the water like a moss-covered rockslide tumbling down Patagonia’s cliffs.
Its spouts shoot straight up, thick and black as soot. You’d swear there was a huge feast cooking inside the giant creature’s belly from all that billowing smoke.
Seabirds peck at tiny crabs, shellfish, and other small sea creatures that cling to the right whale’s foul back.
The thick-lipped sea giant barrels through the deep ocean, churning tons of white, frothy waves in its wake.
The tiny whaling boat rocks violently in the swells, like a tiny skiff caught right next to a steamship’s paddle wheels.
The foreground is pure chaos and raging motion.
In perfect artistic contrast, the background shows a glassy, calm stretch of ocean.
A nearby ship sits idle, its sails limp and drooping in the still air.
Beside it floats the lifeless body of a dead whale— a conquered fortress of the sea. A capture flag hangs lazily from a harpoon pole stuck straight in its spout hole.
I have no idea who the painter Garnery was.
But I’d bet everything I have that he either had firsthand whaling experience, or learned directly from seasoned whalers.
The French have always been masters at painting dynamic, action-filled scenes.
Look at all the art across Europe. No gallery matches the raw, living chaos of the battle paintings in Versailles’ grand hall.
Walking through that room feels like charging straight into France’s greatest battles.
Every sword glints like the northern lights. Kings and emperors on horseback surge forward like crowned centaurs charging into war.
Garnery’s sea battle paintings are more than worthy of hanging in that same hall.
The French have a natural gift for capturing the dramatic, picturesque beauty of chaotic scenes— and their whaling art proves it perfectly.
France has barely a tenth of England’s whaling experience, and not a thousandth of America’s.
Yet their artists created the only polished, vivid art that truly captures the real spirit of whale hunting for both English and American audiences.
Most English and American whale artists only bother with stiff, flat, mechanical outlines.
They draw empty side profiles of whales that have no more life or beauty than a plain sketch of a pyramid.
Even the famous, respected whaler Scoresby falls into this trap.
He drew one stiff full-body portrait of a Greenland whale, plus a few delicate tiny sketches of narwhals and porpoises.
Then he filled his pages with boring formal engravings of boat hooks, chopping knives, and grappling hooks.
He even detailed ninety-six magnified images of Arctic snowflakes, with the obsessive precision of a scientist.
I mean no disrespect to this great, experienced voyager— I hold him in high regard.
But it’s ridiculous that he documented every tiny snowflake in such detail, yet failed to capture the true living drama of whale hunts.
Besides Garnery’s masterpieces, there are two more noteworthy French whale engravings, signed by an artist named H. Durand.
The first one doesn’t quite fit the focus of this chapter, but it’s still worth talking about.
It shows a peaceful noon scene in the Pacific Islands.
A French whaling ship sits anchored near shore in dead calm weather, its crew lazily hauling fresh water onboard.
The ship’s loose sails and the long palm leaves in the background hang limp and motionless in the windless air.
It’s a beautiful, rare portrait of tough whalers enjoying a quiet, peaceful moment in the exotic East.
Durand’s second engraving is utterly different— full of urgent, chaotic action.
A whaling ship drifts on the open ocean, right in the middle of whale hunting territory, with a large right whale floating alongside it.
The ship leans toward the massive beast as if docking at a stone pier, mid-process of cutting up the whale’s body.
A small boat pushes off frantically from the busy ship, racing to chase more whales in the distance.
Harpoons and lances lie ready for immediate use.
Three rowers are just lifting the mast into its socket.
A sudden ocean swell tilts the small boat upward, rearing it half out of the water like a startled horse.
Thick smoke billows up from the ship, where the whale’s blubber is being boiled down— like smoke rising from a village full of blacksmith forges.
Upwind, a dark storm cloud looms, promising coming squalls and rain.
The approaching bad weather only makes the frantic sailors work faster and more urgently.