Kāpiti whaling economics
The book reports whaling remuneration through lay shares, including 1/18 for a headsman, 1/60 for a boat steerer and 1/100 for a common boatman. It attributes purchases of pork and flour and distributions of trade goods to Alexander Fraser’s 1840 Kāpiti account. It gives aggregate 1841 whaling output figures that require checking against the underlying original statistical source.
The costs behind the oil
Oil and whalebone were saleable outputs, but production figures alone conceal the expense and risk of obtaining them. A station needed boats, skilled headsmen, pulling hands, coopers, food, gear, barrels and freight. When whales became scarce, these commitments could remain even as the catch collapsed.
Alexander Fraser's Long Point accounts offer a rare financial view. Prickett reports five boats producing 44 tuns of oil and 57 hundredweight of whalebone in 1840, followed by six boats producing 172 tuns and eight tons of whalebone in 1841. In 1842, output fell to seven tuns and seven hundredweight. The figures are not a straightforward profit-and-loss statement, but they show the volatility of the business.
The accounts also record personnel and transactions with Sydney. This is why movements of boats and experienced workers matter: whaling was a network of commercial decisions, not a fixed series of isolated camps.
Sources: Nigel Prickett, The Archaeology of New Zealand Shore Whaling (2002), Kāpiti chapter, pp. 83–97 (especially Paremata, Tahoramaurea and Te Kahuoterangi); where specified, Whale Song, Kāpiti – Blood, Oil and Bone (2025). Interpretations and source limitations are distinguished in the text.
A business built on supplies
Whaling was not simply the pursuit of oil. Alexander Fraser’s 1840 trading figures record £394 in pork and £436 in flour. The same account lists 25 pairs of blankets, two kegs of tobacco and a hogshead of spirits supplied to Māori, valued together at more than £88.
Production and collapse
At Fraser’s Long Point operation, returns recorded 44 tuns of oil in 1840, 172 in 1841 and seven in 1842. The sharp change is a station-specific record and cannot alone establish the causes of the regional decline.
Explore connected books
Explore connected history
- A correspondent counts boats and oil at Kāpiti and Mana
- A quarrel over rations reaches the magistrates
- A whaling boom and a sudden collapse at Long Point
- Alexander Fraser 1840 station accounts
- Alexander Fraser testifies about Kāpiti whaling contracts
- The archaeology of New Zealand shore whaling
- 1839 whaling scale
- 1839 Kāpiti–Mana station grouping
- Archaeologist Nigel Prickett surveys Kāpiti whaling remains
- Fraser’s Long Point station: an account book opens a lost world