Come, listen to a tale about a whale on a hill.
When a salesman brought a living white whale, a beluga, to Cincinnati to be exhibited at the Lookout House, a hilltop resort in Mount Auburn.
As one might suspect, this absurd tale does not have a happy ending.
On June 7, 1877, The Enquirer announced A.A. Stewart, a salesman for the Aetna Life Insurance Co. in Cincinnati, had purchased a white whale from the New York Aquarium for $10,000 plus the expenses for capture and transportation.
The New York Aquarium was nothing like the scientific aquatic museums of today, but rather a P.T. Barnum-style menagerie operated by showman W.C. Coup.
There was an astonishing ignorance and negligence regarding the massive marine mammals – tragically, by the handlers, as well. Whales were as mysterious as the depths of the sea, perhaps read about in “Moby-Dick” or spotted on an ocean voyage. Some people thought the aquarium’s whales were fake, clockwork contraptions in rubber suits.
But the whales were real and alive … for a while.
The only genuine living white whale
Stewart’s white whale had been captured in Labrador, Canada. Belugas come into coves or estuaries near the Gulf of St. Lawrence in the summer to give birth, so there was a steady supply.
The whale was transported to New York by schooner, railcar and a water-tight canal boat flooded with five feet of water, then sent by train to Cincinnati. He consumed half a barrel of live eels a day.
The destination was the Lookout House on Jackson Hill Park next door to the Mount Auburn Incline. Most of the city’s inclines were coupled with resorts that offered entertainment and libations to attract passengers and entice them to stick around and spend money.
What could be more enticing that seeing a real live whale in Cincinnati?
Frank Harff, proprietor of the Lookout House, had a special circular tank constructed of wood and wire, 30 feet in diameter and 10 feet deep, that held 168,000 gallons of artificial salt water. The treated water was made by dissolving sea salt in fresh water and “must be made fresh for him every day” at a cost of $100 in salt a day.
Around the tank, amphitheater platforms allowed 1,000 curious patrons at a time to view the first living whale brought inland.
But the whale died June 23 en route to Cincinnati. His death was due to lack of food and insufficient water in the tank. His attendant believed the whale could be kept alive for 48 hours in a mere six inches of water and a bed of wet grass. He could not.
It turned out that Stewart and Coup had arranged the purchase of three whales, with two held in reserve in case of calamity. So, the second whale was dispatched right away.
“Regret the disappointment of a couple of days,” Coup wired to Stewart. “It is both a disappointment and serious loss to us, but Cincinnati shall have a whale if it costs us our last dollar.”
Our white whale
The second whale, a female beluga, arrived by train June 25. A four-horse wagon carried her and her traveling tank from the depot to Lookout House. The water in the exhibition tank was too cold, so water warmed by the incline’s boiler was added before they slid her in.
Thousands of visitors came to see her, “people who, for the first time in their lives, gazed upon a specimen of the largest of marine monsters,” The Enquirer reported. She “was very playful, and spouted beautifully several times.” Admission was 25 cents, 10 cents for children.
Rumors flew that this wasn’t a real whale, that she had been coated with a “bleaching bath” and “does not stay white.” Another rumor had it that the whale had escaped from the tank and was roving around loose upon our streets.
The Cincinnati Southern Railway, a railroad built and owned by the city of Cincinnati, was quite contentious at the time. The track between Cincinnati and Chattanooga, Tennessee, had been under construction for years, and rising costs spurred The Enquirer to refer to the project as “our white elephant.”
When the poor whale died after just three days, The Enquirer responded flippantly: “If we could only get rid of our white elephants as easily as we do of our white whales…”
An autopsy performed by Dr. W.H. Mussey indicated that she had suffered injury during transportation and contusions from striking her head against the tank, but, like the first whale, she really starved to death. Her stomach was empty.
“I am confident that attempts to bring others here will be as disastrous as the previous experiments,” Mussey said.
The third and last whale
Undeterred, Stewart sent for the third and last whale, which arrived on July 1. Newspaper accounts described her as eight feet in length, weighing about 600 pounds.
The Lookout House ads declared, “See it to-day, for to-morrow it may be dead.”
More than 25,000 onlookers came to see her over the next few days.
A thunderstorm erupted on the night of July 5, frightening the whale. While lightning flashed, thunder roared and winds howled, “she scooted, dived and threshed around the tank like one possessed of a restless devil,” The Enquirer wrote.
The next morning, her keeper, Mr. Harper, found her thrashing about in a tank opaque with muddy water. He dove in fully dressed and rubbed the slime off the dying creature.
She settled down and swam for a bit, surfaced feebly, then sank to the bottom of the tank and died.
When Stewart arrived, he cussed his luck and ordered her stomach opened. It contained two quarts of small round stones, a small stick and the bottom of a glass beer tumbler. That was it. She had been fed 3,000 minnows three days before. The eels sent with her from New York had died before she could eat them.
The first two whale bodies had been sent to a taxidermist to be displayed at the Natural History Museum. The third body was liberally washed in carbolic acid and covered with ice to be exhibited for visitors. The stench became unbearable in a few days, the body was sent to a soap factory for rendering and the Lookout House was fumigated.
A.A. Stewart, the man who bought the whales and brought them to Cincinnati, followed his disappointment with a successful career as a sales manager for the Strobridge Lithographing Co., helping to build them into the premier printers of circus posters. He moved to New York a wealthy man and part owner of the Barnum & Bailey Circus.
Having vacationed in Paris, Stewart headed back to New York in April 1912 aboard the RMS Titanic. After getting his friends to a lifeboat, he was last seen going back inside the ship.
So ends the tale.
Sources: Enquirer archives, Cincinnati Curiosities blog by Greg Hand, Encyclopedia Titanica
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