Whale tales resurface 50 years apart Accounts of ’04, ’54 capture excitement

I’m not superstitious, but stories about Jonah and Moby Dick long ago left me open to the magical qualities of whales. So after discovering two whale tales that occurred in Maine exactly 50 years apart beginning a century ago, I’ve been keeping an eye out for the creatures while driving along the Penobscot lately.

The first story began on a Saturday afternoon on April 16, 1904. On that day, a school of nine “grampus whales” showed up on a flood tide in the Pleasant River off Addison Point, a quiet fishing village in Washington County. When the tide went out, the whales had little room to maneuver.

Three newspaper accounts I found differ in some details, but I will let the correspondent for the Bangor Daily News, who fully captured the excitement of the moment, tell the story.

“All the inhabitants in that part of the county forgot about church [the next day] and turned out en masse with rifles and all sorts of tackle to corral a few of the monsters. For a few hours the air was filled with rope and smoke, and after things had cleared a bit it was found that two of the giants had been captured.

“One of them, the largest, was 24 feet in length and measured 15 feet around. His head was filled with 60 lead pellets, almost enough to stagger a sloop of war. The excited populace drew a barrel of blood from him. The second whale was smaller, but it was big enough to excite comment.

“This is the largest school of whales that has been reported off the coast for a long time, and that nine of them should shoot up Pleasant river is a thing unheard of,” wrote the reporter.

The Russo-Japanese War had been underway for months, heating up the imaginations of local newspaper readers. One grizzled fisherman at first thought the whales were “Roosian torpeddy bots.”

Another compared the shooting match, in which the more than 100 bullets fired by a small army of men and boys turned the blue water “dark with blood,” to “the 49th attack on Port Arthur,” a reference to the repeated Japanese attempts to take the Russian stronghold. “Only it isn’t as exciting,” he added.

Even back then, when killing a sea mammal for one’s use was hardly regarded as a morally questionable act, or even illegal, as it is today, the newspaper correspondent [or perhaps a rewrite man in distant Bangor] could not help feeling a little wistful over having injected so much wit into this tale of woe.

“The other whales slipped sadly down the river and at sundown were observed floating motionless on a quiet sea, brooding, probably on the mysteries of life,” he concluded his piece.

A shorter piece that appeared the next day in the Bangor Daily Commercial added that “the old arch kettles at Addison Point have been busy since Saturday at trying out blubber, and the smell of whales fills the atmosphere about the water front throughout the village.”

It continued, “It is a strange scene on the land and probably its like was never before seen in the State of Maine, and perhaps not in all North America.”

The second whale tale, which has an ending more in tune with modern sentiments, began half a century later on April 26, 1954, exactly 50 years ago today, when a single white whale swam up the Penobscot River to the Bangor salmon pool and began frolicking for thousands of onlookers in the days to come.

“At first mistaken for a white submarine, and a shark, porpoise, seal sturgeon, sea lion, halibut, dolphin and cod fish, the white creature that drew thousands of curiosity seekers to the riverbank was eventually determined to be a white beluga whale,” according to Bangor historian Dick Shaw.

“Things turned ugly after the white whale was joined by a companion and the crowds swelled even more. Desiring to destroy the nuisance but lacking the legal authority to do so within city limits, Bangor Police Chief John B. O’Toole turned the matter over to the Sea and Shore Fisheries Commission, which signed a death warrant for the mammals,” wrote Shaw. “The plan was thwarted by hundreds of concerned citizens who flooded the Police Department, Chamber of Commerce and the NEWS office with calls of protest.”

The whales, which may have been attracted up the river by the lure of smelts, left on May 2. Fifteen years later, Gerald Hausman wrote a whimsical children’s book, illustrated by Margot Apple, called “The Day the White Whales Came to Bangor.”

Hausman concluded, “…the white whales didn’t visit Bangor again for a long, long time. They were happier in the sea … where the heartbeat of a whale is heard over and over in the tiniest shell.”

Perhaps this week? Keep an eye out. It’s been 50 years.

Alas, Maine whale plan coordinator Laura Ludwig tells me that beluga whales are more threatened by human activity today than they were in 1954. She also explained that it’s more than likely the “grampus whales,” of 1904 were pilot or minke whales. A grampus or Risso’s dolphin is much smaller than the 24, 25 or 281/2 feet lengths stated in the varying newspaper accounts.

Wayne E. Reilly can be reached at wreilly@bangordailynews.net.