BOOKS: New book on Mayo’s whaling past to be launched in Castlebar tomorrow evening

A chance conversation at Blacksod lighthouse opened the door to a fascinating journey of discovery for renowned writer Alice Kinsella that has culminated in a spellbinding book, ‘Wake of the Whale’, co-authored with her partner, Daniel Wade.
It was at the lighthouse that Kinsella first discovered there were whaling stations in the area, and that almost 1,000 whales were killed in Mayo waters.
It is a little-known fact that from 1908–1922, two Norwegian-owned whaling stations operated in this corner of Mayo, not far from the area that would be at the heart of the Corrib gas controversy a century later.
“I’ve lived in Mayo almost all of my life and I had no idea,” Alice admits. “I felt, and still feel, that Mayo is an underrated place. That there’s so much history in every corner. I was sure you could tell the history of Ireland just looking at Mayo. I couldn’t understand why something as unlikely as a whaling station was not in every national history book. Then, as I say in the book, it became a sort of obsession.”
‘Wake of the Whale’ is a genre-blurring book that blends history, poetry and documentary. Kinsella and Wade explore the history of the two whaling stations and ask the pivotal question: Are the attitudes that brought whales to the brink of extinction now threatening our own?
Kinsella and Wade embody the voices of two characters in the book. Kinsella is Watcher, Wade is Mariner.
Watcher has lived in Mayo most of her life. When she stumbles upon the history of the whaling stations she becomes, like many before her, obsessed with the whales. Reflecting on colonialism and the climate crisis, she asks, what is it that makes the men hunt them?
Mariner tries to answer this question. Through poetry influenced by medieval sagas and sea shanties alike, he tells the story not just of one whaling voyage but of the history of commercial whaling itself. He endeavours to give voice to the working Irish men of a community since dissolved.
Together the authors weave a conversation that challenges our deeply ingrained assumptions about human, and animal, nature.

Two voices
For Kinsella, the impulse to pursue the theme was driven by two goals. “Personally, I’d wanted to commit my energy to two things outside my own family: where we live and the climate,” she explains.
“They’re all the same thing, really, a love for my family, our county, the environment of the world which is our home. Intersecting and connecting spheres of care. So writing a book that was about both Mayo and the climate crisis was a project of love for me.”
She soon found that her own perspective would not be enough to do the topic justice, however.
“After a few months I was aware that this was not a book I could write alone as a woman. Not just a woman, but someone who’s never eaten animals, never mind wanted to harpoon one. I’d never hunted, never felt that urge or pressure. I needed someone who would sympathise with all the working men, who wasn’t all that bothered about the whales themselves.”
So she spoke with her partner, Daniel Wade, also a writer, about co-authoring the book. He was instantly hooked.
“For me, it was the innately compelling subject matter of the two whaling stations operating off the western Irish coast,” Wade reveals. “I’ve always written about the sea, about Ireland’s extensive maritime history and state as an island nation, and yet somehow, the Inishkea and Blacksod stations had eluded me. I’m a blow-in, I’m from Dublin and had to quickly adapt to its [the Mullet Peninsula’s] rhythms. I’ve often heard it referred to as ‘the last frontier’ – this rocky peninsula on Ireland’s west coast, overlooking Blacksod Bay and eternally pounded by the Atlantic.”

Epic and tragic
The whaling stations were located on the mainland, at Ardelly Point, near Blacksod, and at Rusheen, a tidal island off Inishkea South. Norwegian companies operated them with a mixture of local and Norwegian workers.
A reported 894 whales were killed during the operation of both stations. That figure does not account for the whales that were struck, died and sank without being captured. Mayo-based cetologist and consultant ecologist Conor Ryan estimates the number to be closer to a thousand.
For Kinsella and Wade, the physical signs of the old whaling industry that still remain, coupled with the evocative majesty of the surrounding environment, made writing the book an imperative.
“When Alice and myself finally voyaged out to Inishkea from Blacksod Bay and saw the rust-encrusted remnants of the station’s machinery on the Rusheen islet, it hardly needed to be said that we’d write something about it, come hell or high water,” says Wade.
“The sense of history and the sheer wildness of the landscape – the abandoned houses, the Atlantic’s wonderous magnitude, Achill Island and the way it invokes a sleeping volcano across the bay, the knowledge that whales continued to range its depths despite humanity’s best efforts to render them extinct – not to mention the labour history that went on at the station.
“The station on Inishkea in a way became emblematic for the entire history of commercial whaling and its ramifications – a history that was both epic in scope and tragic in depth.”

‘Like no other book’
‘Wake of the Whale’ has already garnered significant praise.
Renowned English author and broadcaster Philip Hoare, author of the seminal ‘Leviathan, or The Whale’, described it as ‘an utterly brilliant and visual-physical-poetical exploration of the fate and mortal beauty of the whale in Irish waters’.
He added: “All the pity and majesty of their existence, and ours, is laid bare in Alice Kinsella’s dreamlike work which, like Melville’s Moby-Dick before it, defies all description and arouses the deepest empathy.”
Anja Murray, author of ‘The Wild Embrace’, characterises the book as ‘a lucid and enthralling exploration of whales and whaling, while also a poetic, personal journey’.
“Wake of the Whale is like no other book. Unpredictable and exciting as the sea, the pages permeate every aspect of our culture, personal and political. Reading it is like being in an enchanted dream. This is an important, enthralling and genre-bending book,” she said.
Plans are also advancing for a live show format for ‘Wake of the Whale’, with a rehearsed reading by the authors (directed by Sarah O’Toole) scheduled to take place in Westport on October 23 as part of the Westival festival of music and the arts.
The book will be launched officially tomorrow evening (Wednesday), October 9, at the Wild Atlantic Words Literary Festival Dome at the rear of Bridge St bar, Castlebar, at 7pm.

• ‘Wake of the Whale’, by Alice Kinsella and Daniel Wade, is on sale in all good bookshops and online via mayobooks.ie.