The
Norwegian tail grab or hval kla is another of the
inventions that made industrial whaling using factory ships and
slipways on those ships possible.
A dead whale could be taken to the slipway and a
line passed around it to start the process of winching it up the
slipway. But such a great weight and relatively thin lines could
cause problems, not the least of which was passing a strong enough
line around the whale to haul it up the slipway and then to be be easily
removed once on deck.
This claw was large enough and strong enough
(weighing several tons itself) to be able to "grab" hold
of the tail of the whale at the narrowest part or the
"small" fairly easily and haul it onto the flensing
deck. It could also be relatively easily taken off again once the
whale was in place, ready for the next one. No man had to enter
the dangerous zone of the slip way and ropes need not be handled
to haul the whale except from a distance.
The size of the grab can be seen by comparison
with the man in the last picture. Operating this contraption was
in itself a skilled job with the ship and whale moving with the
swell and waves and the grab itself suspended above the whale and
might be swinging in a rhythm of its own. At the crucial point,
the grab fully opened would be dropped onto the whale and with a
crash that could be heard throughout the whole ship would grab the
whale's tail, the winch attached to the rear end would pull and
the jaws would close together to bring the whale aboard.
Note in these pictures how the end parts of the
flukes of the whale have been removed, this was done by the catcher
boats immediately after the capture of the whale. It is sometimes
said that it was done superstitiously to prevent a dead whale that
had been inflated and buoyed and left for some time before
transport to the factory ship from somehow finning itself many
miles away. It probably also had a more practical use in that
whales were towed backwards to the factory ship by a rope placed
around the small, and intact flukes would act as a brake so
slowing this passage down. The flukes were not always cut in this
manner.
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