Sorry to spout on...

‘Yes, a whale carcass did tour Britain,’ says Andrea Bergg, answering the extraordinary question posed in Memories 91. “I saw it and have recounted the tale many times to my children and grandchildren as it made such an unforgettable impression on me.”

AND it was not only Andrea who witnessed the unforgettable whale. The trail extends from Libya to London, from Darlington to Durham, from the mid-1950s to the early-1970s.

B Brown saw it somewhere in Darlington. Unfortunately, he didn’t send in his address but he did send in a copy of a leaflet he was given when the whale visited Darlington in the 1950s.

It reveals that, remarkably, the dead whale that toured Europe on a gigantic low loader was a “cultural and educational exhibition” sponsored by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

With the University of Oslo, the WWF meticulously planned to capture and kill a giant fin whale off the coast of Norway.

“The engines of the strong and fast hunting boats roared,” says the leaflet with words unlikely to be used by today’s conservationists.

“The hunters took direction and ploughed at powerful speed through white-crowned waves of the icy northern waters.”

The leaflet is not dated, but the hunt seems to have taken place on September 11, 1952 or 1953.

“The heavy harpoon, made of wrought iron and with an explosive grenade screwed on its point, had been placed in the harpoon-gun,” says the leaflet. “The strong nylon rope was nearby carefully rolled.

“16.09: The whale swims near the surface. From time to time his massive blueblack appears out of the high waves. Carefully, our gunner takes aim, waiting for a shot at close range.

“16.11: Now! The whale is hit and dispatched in a quick and humane manner.”

The hunting boats, towing the poor dead whale, sped back to a whaling factory where scientists raced against time to replace the whale’s 7,000 litres of blood with the same amount of formalin preservative.

“Entrails have to be cut out, including the liver which weighs about 12,000lb (equivalent to six standard cars), and the tongue weighing 4,800lb, or nearly as heavy as three standard cars,” says the leaflet.

A refrigeration system was then inserted into the belly of the whale and, named Jonas or Jonah, it went on display in Oslo before being loaded onto a lorry and touring Europe.

Andrea, who now lives in Newton Aycliffe , saw the 60ft leviathan in York in 1953 or 1954. “The trailer was parked in St George’s Field, near the swimming baths, and was bigger than anyone had ever seen.

“The whale did smell but the man in charge said this was the grease they had covered the whale with in order to preserve it.

“Its mouth was propped open with a long wooden pole so you could easily see inside. To me, at that age, it seemed like a huge cave with a sort of frill round it – I remember we were told that the frill allowed the whale to sift its food.”

Andrea has a brilliant memory, for the leaflet explains: “The mouth contains hundreds of baleenplates… which filter its food from the water.”

Andrea says: “It has stayed in my memory probably because of its huge size to a little girl and the fact that my mother told us that this was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see a whale.

“I have been lucky enough to see whales in their natural habitat since, and although inspiring, they have never filled me with such unforgettable awe as the one in St George’s Field.”

So where else did Jonah go?

Cliff Tunstall was one of 18 pupils at Baldersdale school up Teesdale.

“A year or two before I left school in 1955, we stopped off on our annual outing to Redcar to see the whale in either Darlington or Stockton,” he says.

“I remember it being 60 feet long and weighing 60 tons.”

Alan Dixon saw the whale at about the same time in Darlington. “I am fairly sure it was in a gap between buildings on the north side of Bondgate,” he says.

Were there one or two Jonahs? After a cluster of sightings in the 1950s the whale trail goes cold until 1971 or 1972, when Bill Bartle of Barnard Castle , a newlyqualified teacher, took a carload of Peterlee children to see it.

“It was a 70ft (ish) blue whale, and you could look inside it, but not go in,” he says. As far as I can recall, it was displayed either at County Hall, or on waste ground where the Gala Theatre is now.”

The early-1970s whale also pitched up in Bishop Auckland Market Place. “It wasn’t what I expected – just a carcass, really,” says Janice Dart, who was 12 at the time.

“I thought it would be the real thing.”

June Howell and her husband, Ronnie, took their children to see it. “It was covered in tarpaulin and when they uncovered it, it was absolutely huge,” she says. “I can’t remember having to pay anything to see it. The children were absolutely awestruck.”

Peter Trenholm says the Bishop Auckland visit made it onto local TV.

“It was shown on Look North, and the clip was filmed when I was looking at the whale and I was on TV briefly.”

This may well have been Jonah the whale’s swansong: there are reports that in the early-1970s, a whale’s travelling carcass was disposed of in a National Coal Board furnace in Barnsley.

‘I SAW the whale!”

proclaims Gillian Banks, in Durham City. Gillian was born in Sheffield where Jonah appeared on his lorry on a bomb site in the city centre in the early 1950s.

“My mum told me that the huge whiskers inside its mouth were for straining the small fishes that were its food,” she says, which is the same detailed memory that Andrea Bergg has.

Therefore, we may today scoff at the primitiveness of dragging a carcass around the country in the name of “education”, but it really did work.

“I used to tell my children about going to see the whale and I think they thought it a likely story,” says Gillian.

“Perhaps they will believe me now.”

PERHAPS there was a pod of dead Norwegian whales on tour. Roland Stockdale, of Newton Aycliffe, was serving in the Royal Engineers in Benghazi, in Libya, in 1955- 56, when he encountered one.

“I think it was a sperm whale, it was only 30ft long,”he says, “and it smelt of formalin.”

He still has his ticket, printed in Arabic and French – “la baleine geante”– to see the giant whale.

Presumably the Norwegian exhibition – “Exposition Norvegienne” – was on a tour of former French colonies in North Africa like Tunisia and Algeria.

“It cost us 50 francs to get in – about 5p or 10p, but I think there were only two of us present,” he says.

MANY people have mentioned that today’s main picture of a man on the low-loader next to Jonah looks familiar.

It was a souvenir postcard that was probably sold by the man on Jonah’s lowloader.

Our copy comes from John Phelan’s collection in Howden-le-Wear.“On the back, my mother has written ‘Saturday April 10th 1954 London. Wembley.

Bishop Auckland v Crook 2- 2’,” says John.

The Phelan family and their next door neighbours, the Martins, had gone to Wembley to see the FA Amateur Cup final – a tie that took two replays before Crook Town ran out winners.

It was probably the support of young John’s yellow jumper with “Crook”

in black, knitted by his mother, that gave them the winning edge.

“Although it is some 58 years ago, and I was only four, I can remember going down on the train, sitting at the front and looking out of the windows as we went through London,” he says.

“I remember the escalators because, coming from Crook, I’d never seen escalators before, and, somewhere in the back of my mind, I can remember being on a hill or a stand and seeing this giant whale.”

And the match?

“All I can remember about that is the trainer coming on to the pitch a lot of times because there were so many injuries – the players really went at it.”

•   With thanks to everyone who has contributed, including former Darlington mayor Tony Richmond who set us off on the wild whale chase. Do you have any whale memories?
•   More from the funny old world of the Phelans over