An echo of our whaling past

From my office window I look out over somebody's back green ... and set at the corner of that green is this big grey object which looks like it is a dead tree being propped up by an old garden roller ... its no tree ... its the jawbone of a whale.

Aberdeen and Peterhead (like Dundee) were once big whaling ports ... until they'd killed all the whales ... and when they were gone, the whalers went. There's a lesson there I think.

So how does a whale's jaw bone end up in a back green in Gilcomston ?

Supposedly, a former occupant of one of the houses here was Captain of a whaler and he brought this jawbone back as a souvenir ... that's according to some of the guys in the office.

Whaling is long in the past.

Mental leap time here ... connections Whaling - Greenpeace - Aberdeen

Did you know that the vessel that eventually went on to become Greenpeace's Rainbow Warrior (in 1978) was built by Hall Russell in Aberdeen in 1955 ? Sadly this vessel was blown up by the French secret service in Auckland, NZ on 10th July 1985 - with the loss of one crewman - while on a mission to monitor nuclear weapons tests.