Whaling off Tasmania and Southern New Zealand

When he died in 1938, Captain William McKillop was recognised as the last surviving master mariner who had served on board an Australasian sail whaler.

However, his career had spanned many other phases, including sealing, whaling, fishing and coastal trading in his native New Zealand, and later out of Hobart, Tasmania, and in the final years of square-rigged sailing ships trading along the eastern seaboard.

McKillop’s reminiscences formed the basis for two books by the renowned Australian folklorist, Will Laws: Harpoons Ahoy! and Bill the Whaler.

Before those books were written, however, McKillop had dictated his memoirs to a colleague of the Tasmanian whaling enthusiast Dr William Crowther.

This book brings those memoirs, edited by New Zealand whaling and sealing authority Rhys Richards and Tasmanian maritime writer Graeme Broxam, to the public for the first time,bringing to life the last decades of whaling and seagoing trading voyages under sail in Australasia.