190 STRANDING OF A COMMON RORQUAL WHALE
The action of the Essex County Council in enforcing the
Bird Preservation Act and protecting the area of the coast1 has
done and is doing a great work for which all lovers of nature and
wild life must feel grateful, but constant vigilance is still needed,
and rigorous prosecution of offenders should be strictly enforced.
December 6th, 1899.
1 The County Council of Essex took action in this matter at the suggestions of the Essex
Field Club set out in a petition to the Council presented in the spring of 1895 (see text of
Petition with explanatory details, in Essex Naturalist, vol. ix., pp. 42-47). After con-
siderable delay, the order protecting the Shore-birds was issued by the Home Secretary on
February 6th, 1896, as mentioned in Mr. Champion B Russell's article, E.N., vol. ix., pp. 218-222.
The beneficent effects of this Order is shewn in the reports on the "Protection of Wild Birds
in Essex" in subsequent parts of our Journal.—Ed.
STRANDING OF A COMMON RORQUAL WHALE
IN THE THAMES AT NORTH WOOLWICH,
ESSEX.
ABOUT nine o'clock on the morning of Monday, the 27th
November last (1899), a great Whale appeared in the
Thames in the stretch of the river called Gallions Reach, which
runs from the Albert Docks to Barking Creek. Several tugs
went out to capture the animal. It is stated by the reporters
that for four hours the tugs chased the visitor from Trip Cock
Point to Silvertown Petroleum Works, and "the whale
responded by whisking her tail vigorously and drenching the
hunters with dirty Thames water." At last it was run ashore
near the ferry opposite the Pavilion Hotel, North Woolwich, and
there done to death, but not without a tremendous struggle.
One newspaper stated that the whale "gave a magnificent
spouting exhibition just before the end. Onlookers estimated the
spout of water at 40 or 50 feet high" (!)2 The whale was a
female, measuring 66 feet 7 inches long, with a girth of 33 feet,
and was estimated to weigh about 30 tons. On the Wednesday,
the mammal, which had been rapidly decomposing, burst, and
disclosed two calves. Some men slit the body open and delivered
the young ones, one living about 20 minutes and the other only
a very short time. During the night one was stolen, but one
remained on exhibition with its mother. It measured 17ft. gin.
with a girth of 7 feet.
The animal was announced in the papers as a "Bottle-nosed
Whale" but this was clearly an error, and in a letter Mr. R.
Lydekker, F.R.S., has kindly given us the correct name of the
species. Mr. Lydekker writes, "I myself went down to look at
2 As most of our readers know, this spout of "water" is in reality a column of air from
the lungs highly charged with vapour and possibly carrying up with it some of the water
surrounding the "blow-hole" of the whale should it spout from below the surface.