Ambergris Pays no Dividends
Lost Romance of a Strange Substance

By … Ronald McIntosh

Beachcombing, in spite of the vivid pen-pictures that have been painted of idle and dissolute wastrels in the South Sea islands, was not always a profession to be looked down upon. Indeed, on some occasions in very recent years, even the most respectable people have been known to indulge in it, and little wonder, when by a lucky turn of the wheel of fortune a wet, evil-smelling mess of flotsam cast upon a coastal beach might prove to be ambergris, bringing to its lucky finder a financial return of several thousand pounds.

In this country in recent years small fortunes have been made by those who were able to recognise this strange substance when they saw it. In 1929, for example, no less than £25,000 worth of ambergris was discovered on New Zealand beaches alone, including two pieces bringing returns of £7,900 and £8,000 respectively.

As the sale of ambergris is a matter of bargaining, and as a little of it goes a very long way industrially, big finds in the past have severely depressed the market, and although at times the substance was worth its weight in gold, there were often occasions when finders were disappointed in the financial returns their discoveries brought them.

Although ambergris has been known and prized all over the world for many centuries—its very name shows that it was once suspected of being a form of amber—it was not until whaling became an established industry that its true nature was realised, although the fact that it could be found only in places like. Bahama, on the coasts of Brazil, Madagascar, Africa, the East Indies, China, Japan and the Molucca Islands, places where the whale was common, should have given an earlier clue.

It is now known that ambergris is produced in the sperm whale, possibly solely in the male, and then only at the time when the mammal is feeding upon one of its favourite dainties, the squid or cuttle-fish. Numbers of the horny beaks of the cuttle-fish are found embedded in ambergris, and the generally accepted explanation is that the irritation caused by these indigestible beaks causes a growth in the whale's stomach which normally is got rid of by the processes of nature.

Ambergris, for this reason, is to be picked up principally on those coasts which lie close to the feeding grounds of the sperm whale. The western coast of New Zealand has therefore been the scene of many rich finds, but nowhere does the substance occur more frequently than on Stewart Island, where the beaches of Doughboy Bay, Mason's Bay, Little Hellfire and Big Hellfire are favourite hunting grounds, being exposed to the fury of wind and sea when the roaring southerlies sweep up from the home of the whales—the ice barrier and the Ross Sea. Many notable finds have been made in these localities, chief of which, perhaps, was that of Mr. John Leask, who kicked a boulder buried in the sand at Mason's Bay and found it to be a lump of ambergris weighing 2,000 oz.

Stewart Island's most notable character, Adam Adamson, a dour Scot, lived a hermit-like and Spartan existence in a beach cave, making an excellent profit from his many finds. He knew more about the properties and peculiarities of ambergris than did any man in the Dominion. Not only page 50 did he systematically scour the surface of the beaches, but he diverted creeks by damming them with wreckage, so that sandhills were quickly scoured out for him to expose deposits long hidden beneath.

That such activities were profitable is revealed in the story of one beachcomber who spent six months working in that locality and was then able to retire on a permanent income of £800 a year as a result of his exertions. Practically every Stewart Islander has a piece of ambergris, and the menfolk keep it in their tobacco pouches, claiming that it gives the tobacco a distinctive flavour and aroma.

Professional miners and beachcombers in the Dominion have, on the whole, done better than the gold speckers of Victoria. The combers are able to class pieces at a glance, and unmatured lumps, whether they be ounces or pounds in weight, are “graved” in specially prepared plots to age and increase in value. Living close to their fields, these men searched the beaches daily, missing very few specks of ambergris and rejecting such obvious traps for the uninitiated as pieces of putrified fat cast overboard from ships’ galleys.

In the Chatham Islands one comber carried his system so far that he was able to train his dog to scent ambergris hidden in the seaweed on the beach. He rode along the beach on horseback and when the dog stopped to sniff in a likely spot his master investigated, often with satisfactory results.

Owing probably to variations in food and the temperature of the water, the quality of ambergris varies according to the part of the world the sperm whale was living in at the time of the formation of the growth. White ambergris, which has had long exposure to sun and sea, is considered the finest, but it is comparatively rare and is found only in small pieces, the largest on record weighing only 20 oz.

The usual fine quality is silver-grey or pale green in colour, and in normal times the best of this was worth its weight in gold. In the less valuable varieties the colour ranges from reddish through dark grey and brown, sometimes mottled, to black, which is the poorest and least valuable.

In general the odour is distinctive but difficult to define. It has been described as musty, musky and earthy. In the finer qualities it is not unpleasant and is faintly reminiscent of the sea. It was the characteristic musky odour, many years ago, which drew an expert's attention to the caulking of a hut on Ninety Mile Beach. He discovered that the owner had caulked his log hut with the substance, unaware that it was ambergris, which at that time had a very high value.

Normally the samples of ambergris which are offered to dealers are parcels of mixed qualities, in a dirty and sometimes wet condition, and the estimation of their value is therefore difficult. The purchase of a large lump, the dealer knows from experience, is a hazardous speculation. The most valuable part of a large mass is the heart, or core, and this is always surrounded by a stratified crust of varying thickness. Pockets of inferior black quality are inevitable.

Usually damp on the outside and always damp in the middle, there is generally a loss of up to 25 per cent, by shrinkage in treatment. Buyers of such parcels are therefore difficult to find, as only experience can make such purchases possible, and experience is an expensive thing to buy when one is dealing in a substance as precious as gold.

Although there have been many notable finds, the best of recent years was undoubtedly that of the Subritzky brothers, who, while walking on a beach near Kaipara Heads in January, 1929, discovered a mass weighing 272 lb. Although it was of inferior grade and sold at the then low price of under £2 an ounce it netted for its fortunate discoverers the handsome return of £8,000.

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The romance of ambergris has its bad luck stories as well. A horseman was riding along Otara Beach, Southland; a few years ago when his horse shied at a large piece of blackish material. He urged his mount on, to learn to his dismay a few days later that the lump was ambergris, destined to bring £7,000 to its subsequent finder.

An even more bitter disillusionment fell to the lot of a Dargaville resident, who came upon the carcase of a stranded whale. Keeping his discovery secret, he returned to the scene at dead of night, equipped with horse, cart and suitable tools. He dissected the whale and bore off in triumph a portion of its anatomy—only to learn later that the substance he had extracted was not ambergris.

The experts in London are quite accustomed to such “discoveries.” They have been bombarded with samples of spermaceti, gum, wax, and other unidentifiable substances. One find which was lodged for a time in the strong-room of a Napier bank for safe keeping before being sent Home was subsequently described by an authority as “a poor sample of lowgrade tallow in an advanced stage of decomposition.”

For every piece of ambergris that is collected on beaches hundreds must disintegrate or remain undiscovered. Apart from a few exceptions, the big finds are all the products of the whaling stations where the sperm whale is caught and cut up.

What was perhaps the greatest find of all time was made in New Zealand waters in 1912, but its exact value was never ascertained, for the discoverer, knowing that such a large quantity would never command its true value and would glut the market for many years to come, wisely split it up into small lots. The whale chaser Campbell, attached to the factory ship Mimosa, was anchored in Cuttle Cove, Chalky Sound, when a sick sperm whale was sighted. A three days’ chase ended with the harpooning of the whale, which, when opened, proved to be full of ambergris. The total value of this find has been variously estimated as being from £300,000 to £1,000,000, and a lump of 336 lb, which was brought to Bluff and despatched to the United Kingdom for sale realised the record price of over £65,000.

The luckiest find of all, although not the most valuable, was that of the skipper of a trading schooner in the Hawaiian Group who, in 1910, actually picked up a mass of ambergris worth £10,000 floating on the sea.

One of the strangest things about the story of ambergris is that it was its characteristic odour of musk which gave it the fabulous value it has enjoyed. It has long been used in the very finest grades of perfumes, to which it imparts a subtle “velvetiness” unattainable with other raw material.

While musk possesses the greatest diffusive power of the four animal extracts used in the fixation of perfumes, ambergris has the longest duration. If a three per cent, solution of each of these extracts is placed upon absorbent paper, the odour of the musk will last only a few days, but that of the ambergris will persist for months. Not only is its odour more persistent than any other, but ambergris also has the quality of greatly prolonging the life of other perfumes with which it is mixed. How it achieves this result is still largely a matter for speculation among the chemists, but possibly it has the uncanny property of picking up and appropriating to itself the odour of anything with which it is associated.

Unfortunately for the New Zealand beachcomber, a slump has set in and ambergris to-day is practically worthless. The decline came quickly after the record year of 1929. In 1931 a launch party found a stranded whale at Cape Providence, Southland. Returning later, the whale was opened and a piece of ambergris weighing 5 cwt. was extracted. Even on a conservative estimate of £1 an ounce, this find would have yielded nearly £9,000 in Britain, but it was subsequently ascertained that the market price was then considerably below that figure. There was a large supply on hand and a substitute had been found which was being used with much success in the manufacture of perfumes.

In 1936 another consignment was returned to its owner in New Zealand, as ambergris by that time had become worthless. Thus another Dominion product has succumbed to competition, robbed by the skill of the synthetic chemist of its romantic lure and the prospect of small fortunes quickly won, and beachcombing as a part-time or full-time profession has become unprofitable.