Captain Robert Duke, (1796-1845): A Biographical Case Study of Investment in the Colonial Whaling Industry

Apart from largely anecdotal accounts, remarkably little attention has been paid to the early history of the New South Wales whaling industry, or to its protagonists. Australian economic historians have virtually dismissed whaling, viewing it merely as a failed staple. As an irreplaceable resource, whale oil could not be considered a long-term staple. Nevertheless, it was so crucial for lubricating the engines of industrialisation that Britain, America and France wrestled for its control. A London clique of South Seas whaling investors viewed early attempts by colonial merchants to establish a local whaling industry as a direct threat. By the mid-1820s, Sydney merchants, Jones and Walker, buoyed by the cessation of a protective system of bounties, tonnage laws and tariffs favouring English whalers, had established a whaling fleet successfully operating out of Sydney. Other shipowners were soon emulating their strategy. Among these was a mariner, captain Robert Duke.