Whaling Dry Dock; Departure; Norway; SS Southern Garden; Caripito; Trip South; Into Ice

The Southern Venturer heads from South Shields to the icy Antarctic seas for the start of the annual whaling season.

The Salvesens whale factory ship Southern Venturer is berthed in South Shields for its summer refit before sailing to Norway, Southern Guyana, and on into a Southern Ocean of floating icebergs. This rare footage by a young apprentice records the start of the whaling season, racing whale-catchers hunting with explosive harpoons, and buoy-boats towing in the kill to the huge factory ship. Here on the high seas the disturbingly gruesome flensing and butchering begins.

Guy Nettleship started his engineering apprenticeship with Scottish firm Christian Salvesen, once the largest whaling company in the world, attending both Gateshead Technical College and South Shields Marine College, and working at Middle Docks in South Shields. He made two films that record his first sea voyage on board the industrial-scale Southern Venturer in 1959, operated along with the Southern Harvester as the core of Antarctic whaling expeditions in the years 1950 - 1962. The Tyne and Tees were once centres of whaling ship construction and trade but Norwegian-British whaling came to an end in 1963.