The Great Whale Robbery of Labrador

Basque whalers in the 1500s travelled to the very edge of their known universe in search of their gargantuan prey, and landed on the shores of a fog-shrouded bay in Labrador. In this unlikely setting, Canadiana revels in one of Canada's most absurd true crime stories: the tale of a Basque who stole from their rival, sparking a Spanish Supreme Court case that wouldn't be settled for nearly 20 years. Canadian & Spanish history collides in a tale that was forgotten for centuries…

Clarifications:

*There is a glaring mispronunciation in the episode that somehow slipped through months and months of pre and post-production. "Thule" is pronounced "Too-lee" or "Too-lay." We apologize profusely for this embarrassing error, and have no excuse for it.

*In the sequence of whale oil products, we listed candles, soap and paint. Sorry! This was an ERROR — one that we had actually corrected in the episode script, but on site we mistakenly recorded off the WRONG printed version! Whale oil was primarily used for machine lubrication. We didn't notice while editing, until we recently went to edit the French version of this episode (coming soon), which had been recorded on-site with the CORRECTED version: “manufacturing cloth and soap.”

*In the episode, we acknowledge that the Thule ancestors of the Inuit had been hunting sustainably for thousands of years before the Basques arrived. To say thousands is incorrect, as the ancestors of the present-day Inuit arrived in the Arctic roughly 500 years before, around 1050 CE. Newfoundland & Labrador were home to the Inuit, Innu, Mi’kmaq and Beothuk people long before the Basques arrived to hunt whales, but the Basques would have had minimal interaction with those inland and on the island of what is now known as Newfoundland.

*The demand for baleen/whalebone really only took off from the late 1500s; before then, the Basques were primarily returning to Europe with whale oil.

*Please note that “Torre” may be mispronounced (should be “t-OH-r-eh”)

16th Century Whaling:

Whaling in the 1500s was not for the faint of heart. As you see in this episode’s miniature recreations, whale hunters went out in crews of 7-8 men in mere row boats, called chalupas, which were only about 28 feet long. Once they managed to harpoon a whale, they would be dragged behind it with the rope attached, until the whale tired itself out. When it eventually succumbed to its injuries, the crew needed to row and tow an enormous whale back to their base (sometimes this required two chalupas in a train). It’s worth mentioning the captains may not have been on board the chalupas (though we’ve put them there for storytelling purposes).

Bowhead Whale Facts:

Bowhead whales have the largest mouth of any animal! Were once considered the same as a Right Whale, but are now a distinct species Were one of the earliest whaling targets, but a moratorium was passed to protect bowhead whales in 1996

Miniatures:

A SPECIAL THANKS to Ashley’s father, Mark Brook, who volunteered to design and build the miniature sets used to recreate the tale of the stolen whale!

Dr. Selma Barkham:

We mention this in the episode, but would like to reiterate: this story exists thanks to the intrepid Dr. Selma Barkham, a Canadian historian who unravelled the history of whaling in 16th century Labrador during the 1970s. Dr. Barkham was a widowed mother of four who taught herself Spanish before combing through Spanish archives for documents, including court records, in order to piece together this little-known part of Canadian history. Thanks to Barkham’s research, archeologists began to uncover artefacts in Red Bay in the 70s and 80s, and it is now a National Historic Site administered by Parks Canada!

Research Consultant:

A huge thank you to the incredibly helpful Dr. Michael Barkham, son of the late Dr. Selma Barkham, whom we interviewed for the hard-to-find details of this story!

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#history #canadianhistory #miniatures #whaling #documentary

TRANSCRIPT:

This is Red Bay, Labrador. Today, it's a tiny village of fewer than 200 people, tucked away in a natural harbour surrounded by the red granite cliffs that give it its name.

At first glance, it’s what you might expect from a small, northern fishing town. But if you know where to look, you'll find clues from its past: hints that this quiet hamlet was once a VERY different place.

These giant bones have been resting here for nearly 500 years — since the days when Red Bay was a bustling commercial hub that launched one of the world’s most gruesome industries.

These bones are whale bones. They belong to the titanic creatures who were hunted here centuries ago. They were left behind by some of the very first Europeans EVER to visit the place we now call Canada…

And they’re connected to one of the most bizarre heists in Canadian history.

This is the story of the stolen whale of Red Bay.

This is Canadiana.

The year is 1575. Elizabeth I sits on the English throne. The Black Death ravages Venice. Shakespeare is still a boy, yet to write a single play.

And here on the shores of Labrador, a crew of Basque sailors is on the hunt for a whale.

The Basques are one of Europe's oldest cultures — they've been living on what's now the border between France and Spain for thousands of years, long before those countries existed.

By the 1500s, they'd already been hunting whales for centuries. And when Europeans became aware of the vast continent to their west for the first time since the days of the Vikings, the Basques were among the first to strike out across the Atlantic.

Every spring, more than a thousand whalers like Captain Rezu would set sail from the Basque country to some of the richest whaling grounds on the planet.

This is the Strait of Belle Isle — a thin strip of water between Newfoundland and Labrador. Five centuries ago, it was filled with whales — they migrated through in vast numbers every summer and winter.

To the north, the Thule ancestors of the Inuit had been sustainably hunting whales for thousands of years, but when the Basques began arriving in the early 1500s, the newcomers were determined to carry it out on a much bigger scale.

In the decades to come, they would brave raging storms, fight off pirates and trade with Indigenous nations as they worked to establish a significant presence in these waters.

And they would succeed. The Basques built a whole series of whaling stations along the Strait of Belle Isle.

The biggest of them all was here at Red Bay. This is where Captain Rezu was based. And where, one November day, he and his men climbed into their small boats as they rowed out in search of one of the world's most lucrative quarries.

Whales were a gold mine. In the centuries to come, they would be used to make all kinds of products. The baleen was turned into whalebone corsets, collars, umbrellas, and countless other daily items. 

But in those early days, the Basques were really after the blubber. It could be rendered down into whale oil — used for manufacturing cloth, soap, and, most important of all… light.

Whale oil made a long-burning fuel used in lamps for 300 years — a longer period than kerosene, longer than we’ve even had lightbulbs. The light it cast helped drive the Industrial Revolution — strong and bright enough to allow people to work deep into the night.

Five centuries later, you can still find evidence of it here at Red Bay. These clay roof tiles are hundreds of years old. They're from the ovens the Basques used to boil the whale blubber down into oil, burning night and day — filthy and disgusting work that turned a tidy profit.

One really big whale could produce 100 barrels of oil — the season's wages for more than a dozen men. And Red Bay was producing much more than that: THOUSANDS of barrels were shipped off every year — with thousands more coming from the other neighbouring ports.

It was the first time IN HISTORY that whaling was carried out on an industrial scale. The whale business was big business. There were fortunes to be made here in Labrador.

And fortunes to be lost.

Captain Rezu’s crew found the gargantuan prey they were looking for on that November day in 1575: a bowhead whale, one of the most impressive animals on Earth.

Bowheads may very well be the longest living mammal; some live for more than 200 years. They can grow to be twice as long as a bus and weigh more than an airplane. And they're incredibly strong — with heads powerful enough to smash through the thick sea ice of the Arctic.

They were not easy to kill. It took Captain Rezu’s crew all day to chase down their prey, launching their harpoons into her flesh to slow her down before finishing her off with their lances.

It must have been a long and bloody battle. It wasn't until the very end of the day that they won their hard-fought prize.

But by then, the sky was growing dark. There wasn't enough time for the Basques to tow the massive carcass home to Red Bay.

So they decided to leave it in a nearby cove. 

They tied the great beast up as securely as they could and then rushed back home before night descended.

But when they came back later to claim their prize, they discovered the whale was GONE.

More than 450 years later, we still don't know all the details of what happened. But we DO know that the missing whale soon turned up in the possession of another Basque captain: Nicolás de la Torre.

Captain Rezu was furious. He was sure he'd been robbed. Torre’s men must have been lying in wait while Rezu’s men tied the whale up. Or stumbled across it and stolen it for themselves.

The accusation sparked an epic court battle. While Captain Rezu demanded compensation, de la Torre claimed the whale had slipped free of its ropes. He said his men had found it floating loose in the strait — so he was well within his rights to claim it.

The court case dragged on for nearly twenty years, going all the way up to the Spanish Supreme Court — the disputes of Labrador settled by judges thousands of kilometers away.

The case went on for so long that by the time a decision was finally handed down, both the captains were already dead.

Rezu had come to a bitter end. His ship was requisitioned by the king — instead of sailing to Labrador for another season of whaling, it was sent off to war as part of the Spanish Armada's doomed invasion of England.

Its captain didn't live to see that defeat. And so, it was left to the rivals' widows to carry on the feud.

It wasn't until 1593 that the court made its decision; it declared the whale had indeed been stolen. Today, no one's entirely sure if Captain de Rezu's wife ever got the 60 barrels of oil she was granted. But the case of Red Bay's infamous whale heist was finally closed.

By then, the seeds of Red Bay's decline had already been sown. Pirate attacks were becoming more common, there were violent clashes with the Inuit, and Rezu was far from the only Basque captain to lose his ship to the Spanish Armada.

But most telling: the whales were disappearing. They were overhunted to such an extent that today you'll find no bowheads swimming through these waters at all.

And so, after a century in Labrador, most Basques stopped sailing for the Strait of Belle Isle. Red Bay fell into ruins. And the memory of its time at the centre of the world’s whaling industry was gradually erased, nearly lost forever.

There WERE clues, though. Some scattered documents preserved in Spanish archives. Mysterious red tiles found in people's gardens. A shipwreck hidden beneath the waves. And the bones of the whales bleaching on the beach.

It wasn't until the 1970s that a Canadian historian, Dr. Selma Barkham, began putting the pieces together, digging through archives and the earth. And after 400 years, the stories of Red Bay came to life once again. Tales of great aquatic beasts, the lives of the whalers who hunted them… and one truly bizarre heist.