When Grays had a whale of a time by the Thames

Boning up on whales – Jonathan Catton and Simon Brinkley with the museum exhibit

This week in Down Memory Lane we recall the history of whales arriving in the Thames and washing ashore along the mudflats of Thurrock at Tilbury and Grays.

A kind donation last week to Thurrock Museum from a lady in Corringham of whale bones reminded me of the “great” whale at Grays Wharf, which was reported in the Illustrated London News on October 20, 1849.

The bones now in the museum consist of two vertebrae and three other bones not identified. They were collected around 1900, possibly from Thameshaven.

The Grays whale in 1849 was seen by men working for Mr Meeson, who ran a lime works in Grays. They first thought it was an upturned boat, but soon observed it plunging below the water and coming up again and realised it was a whale.

It was roped and dragged into Grays Wharf, where it was identified as a “finner” whale and was
measured at 58 feet long!

It was finished off with a sword, a screen was erected and the whale became an exhibit for a while at sixpence per person to see it.

The Lord Mayor of London, Sir James Duke, attended by the City Solicitor, came down by boat to claim the whale as he held the right as conservator of the river, but on arriving could smell the stench of the rotting carcass and returned without making a claim. The local prize was probably worth £150 in oil and bones, plus the exhibition fees, so many Grays men were happy with the outcome.

My photo of me and Simon Brinkley, the recently appointed historian apprentice at Thurrock Museum, shows the size of the whale bone soon to go on display. I promised Simon he would have a “whale of a time”...