Rosetta Head whaling station site and well at Encounter Bay on South Australian heritage list as founding industry
This 1837 lithograph, attributed to Robert Peterson, master of the Solway, shows (from top) the South Australian, Solway and John Pirie vessels in South Australia's Encounter Bay with the new Rosetta Head whaling station in the top red circle. Inset: A modern Rosetta Head whaling motif and the whaling station's well (bottom right) as originally discovered.
Main image courtesy National Library of Australia
The 19th Century Rosetta Head Well and South Australian Company whaling station site at Encounter Bay, south of Adelaide, were placed on South Australian heritage register as making a “notable contribution to the fledgling colony’s economic development”.
The site, from 1837, also had the potential for archaeological evidence of early contact between the Ramindjeri people who made up part of the boat crews and workforce with European whalers. One 16 whaling stations set up between 1836 and the 1840s along the South Australia coast, the Rosetta Head Well and Whaling Station was the longest-running until 1851.
In 1835, the South Australian Company had been formed by Scottish financier George Fife Angas as part of building a new colony under terms of the South Australia Act 1834. The company prospectus highlighted pursuing whale, seal and other fisheries, and the culling of fish for export. Whaling was a hugely important international industry because oil sourced from the whale head or from rendered blubber was used for lamp oil or to make candles. Burnt whale bone was used to produce porcelain and steel, and other parts for umbrellas, corsets and industrial brushes.
In late 1836, the South Australian Company, led by colonial manager Samuel Stephens, a relation of Angas, chose Rosetta Head – named after Angas’s wife – as its first official site for a whaling station. A brick-lined well was dug close to the later Whaler’s Inn. In 1836, the company bought HMS Swallow, rerigging it as a barque and renaming it South Australian to transport settlers to the new province before being used for whaling.
In February 1837, the brig John Pirie, under master John Martin of the South Australian Company, sailed into Encounter Bay to start the whaling station at Rosetta Head. After the South Australian arrived, its captain Allen, had difficulty finding enough experienced whaling crew, so the ship was used to transport crew, livestock and provisions from Kangaroo Island to Rosetta Head in readiness for shore-based whaling.
In May 1837, Allen was ordered to refit the barque as an offshore whale processing platform or cutting-in vessel. Ephemeral structures were erected to process the whale blubber for oil and to house the men working the station. Rosetta Head whaling station used three main locations: the whale lookout on The Bluff, land that later became Franklin Parade to house whalers and their families, and a low-lying area between the shore and the bank – later the Franklin Parade carpark – for processing whales and for the blacksmith building and stone store.
In its first year, more than 200 tons of whale oil were exported from the Rosetta Head station run by managers hired and fired by Samuel Stephens. The South Australian was anchored in Rosetta Cove for cutting in when the newly-slaughtered whale would be towed alongside for blubber to be cut from the animal and into smaller portions ready for processing (rendering) in the trypots.
After its last round-trip voyage to Kangaroo Island in 1837, now under of captain J.B.T .MacFarlane, the South Australian arrived back at Encounter Bay, the crew prepared the whaling station’s produce (200 barrels of whale oil; 10 tons of whale bone) for shipment aboard the ship Solway, another company vessel. In December 1837, a strong south-easterly gale caused the South Australian to run aground in the shallows about 300 metres out from the Fountain Inn.
After the South Australian was wrecked, a new a floating barge was used for cutting-in and shears, a tripod of wooden poles driven into the seabed. In April 1837, whaling at Encounter Bay entered a dramatic new phase of rivalry when captain John Blenkinsopp from Sydney defied earlier warnings by Stephens to stay clear of Encounter Bay, and set up a second whaling station at nearby Police Point.