The blue whale, a living mammal and the largest of all living creatures, is accustomed to cover many thousands of miles across the world's oceans. The skeleton of an example of this species which now resides in the Russian Academy of Science in St. Petersburg has certainly travelled more miles by land, sea and waterway than any other cetacean remains.
From the moment it cast ashore in Ostend harbour in November 1827, the creature became a celebrity and attracted great crowds. The fishermen who had towed it from the North Sea were allowed to display it for a few days to raise money, after which the stench must have been hard to bear. After that, the carcase was bought by a local philanthropist Herman Kessels and a Dr. Dubar who superintended the dissecting out of the skeleton while the public gathered again to watch this procedure. The latter published a book with detailed drawings of the bones. A contemporary print shows this work at an advanced stage and depicts couples dancing a quadrille within the space made by the lower jaws laid on the ground, the skull being raised by a set of sheer legs. It became part of the festival to celebrate the birthday of Queen Wilhelmina on 18 November, and the whale was nominally presented to King Willem I of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands.
It was the intention to take the skeleton on tour and charge visitors for the privilege of seeing this monster of the deep which was a full 95 feet in length. A prefabricated wooden pavilion, pierced by windows to admit daylight, was built and used for the first time on the quayside in Ostend in April 1828 before proceeding to Ghent, Brussels, and Amsterdam, then Den Haag, Rotterdam, Dordrecht and Antwerp in its first year of peregrination. At Ghent a concert was held with the orchestra seated inside the rib cage, a performance which became a regular feature of its display. At other times the suspended platform was used as a lounge where visitors could sit at tables and browse through scientific books and albums of ephemera relating to the whale and its movements across Europe.
After exhibition in the Place de la Concorde in Paris, the skeleton was taken by sea to Bordeaux before arriving in England where the pavilion was set up in the Kings Mews, Charing Cross, in July 1831. Here the advertising literature incorrectly refers to it as a Greenland whale. Probably this was because the Right Whale was the type most familiar in Britain, thanks to the extensive Arctic whaling trade, but this was another kind of baleen whale, of the type described as rorquals.
Returning to Ostend, the skeleton was taken through Germany and Austria and further on to Prague where it is said to have been seen by more than 80,000 individuals, some two thirds of the city's population, and then on through Germany again. After that, the skeleton disappeared from view 1840−1842 until it arrived in Riga in July 1842. In Saint Petersburg, lighting was installed so that it could be viewed also in the evening. Then, surprisingly for such a celebrated specimen, the skeleton was unrecorded from 1844−53, though it may have been in the Crimea in 1852−1853. Later it was definitely in Kazan in 1856 where it was sold for 500 roubles and then sent to the Academy of Sciences, Saint Petersburg, which lacked the space for displaying it so the bones were put in store. The skeleton was erected in the local zoo in 1867 where it languished in increasing neglect before going back in store in 1889. However, having been seen by many thousands over a period of more than sixty tears, including many of the crowned heads of Europe, it was soon to regain its prestige. Articulated once again, it was hung in a new museum where Tsar Nicholas II, the court, ministers and members of the Academy took part in the opening ceremony in 1901, and its massive presence still dominates the hall.
The author of the book has previously published a series of volumes recording whalebones from around the world and his researches demonstrate the amazing hold that the remains of the great whales have on the imagination of the human population. Sometimes in the past considered the relicts of dragons or giants, cetacean bones made an impression on people everywhere from humble peasants to great princes. Even now when a whalebone arch or other cetacean structure is threatened with decay or clearance, there is generally a major effort by the local community to preserve it. To apply an overused word, whale remains are truly iconic and not only impress with their size and longevity but are embedded in our ancient history and the dim recesses of our folk memory.
The Ostend whale is an exemplar of such remains and despite the author's extensive travels and deep research it has still not revealed all its secrets, and we learn from a postscript that it went from London to Dublin before returning to the continent. There are suggestions it was sent to the USA during its ‘mystery period’ but no corroboration has yet been found. This volume is a fascinating guide to its travels, comprehensively referenced and of interest to cetologists, museologists, historians of popular entertainments, and anthropologists, and to anyone who has been excited by the sight of one of the great whales whether alive or dead.
