It’s 12 November, so it’s time to mark the 53rd anniversary of the exploding whale of Oregon, an attempt to clear a cetacean carcass from a beach, of which one reporter said
The blast blasted blubber beyond all believable bounds.
The dead sperm whale had washed ashore on 9 November, attracting “curious onlookers until about the third day, when it began to decay and emit a rancid odor”. Enter stage left, George Thornton, highway engineer with the Oregon Department of Transportation.
Thornton “would later complain that it fell to him because his colleagues had planned to go deer hunting” — and when he told the story he used the pointed word ‘conveniently’ in there.
George decided to blow it up, the intention being that it would be rendered into nice, small pieces which crabs and seagulls could dispose of, and
packed 20 cases of dynamite around the leeward side of the whale, thinking most of it would blow into the water
The damage to one car, in particular, was considerable. This is (I believe) the Oldsmobile 88 Regency belonging to Walt Umenhofer, which he had bought a few days earlier, apparently during a promotion with the slogan ‘Get a Whale of a Deal on a New Oldsmobile’.
According to the Offbeat Oregon website, Umenhofer “had received explosives training during his World War II service”, and tried to warn Thornton that he needed either less dynamite (to push the whale out to sea) or more (for the intended tiny pieces).
He was not listened to, so resolved to be as far down the beach as possible, and was. It turned out, sadly, that his car was not quite far enough from what Paul Linnman, a reporter at Portland TV station KATU-2, called
a mighty burst of tomato juice.
The incident was not widely known until 20 years later when Miami Herald ‘humor columnist’ Dave Barry came across some footage and wrote about it under the headline ‘The Farside Comes to Life in Oregon’, opening with “I am absolutely not making this incident up”
He adds:
Paul Linnman eventually wrote a book about his experiences as a reporter, concentrating on the whale.
He didn’t realise it at the time, but he’d been sharing the beach that day with a 24-year-old marine biologist, Bruce Mate, who’d also had misgivings.
“I asked if they would give me time to get into the animal, retrieve its stomach contents, gonads, and such,” Bruce related. “If you have these things you can tell if it died from trauma, its breeding habits, and much more.” But the highway division workers would have little to do with him.
“Their response was, ‘take a few measurements and then move back, sonny, because we’re about to blow this mess up,” he explained. “I also had some experience with explosives before then and could pretty much predict the outcome, but it was obvious to me that the input of a twenty-four-year-old kid was not going to carry much weight.”
When authorities moved those assembled a quarter mile back from the blast site, Mate moved back a half mile to see what would happen next.
“I watched the entire process,” he recalled, “including the rain of rancid whale oil over the crowd. What a scene!”
Later on, Linnman remembers deciding “against pressing our case for being closer”. Later still…
At first, there was nothing particularly surprising about the blast; it looked like any explosion … V-shaped and forceful, with great amounts of matter shooting rapidly upward.
Presumably, I don’t need to remind anyone what the saying says about things that go up.
We began hearing what sounded like something hitting the ground around us … like the spatter of heavy rain falling on pavement, only somehow more serious.
The next thing I knew, Doug and I were running. I don’t recall any communication between us, I don’t remember Doug removing the camera from its tripod or our picking up any gear, I only remember this tremendous urge to get away. The thunking noise, whale meat hitting the ground all around us, had not decreased in intensity. We were at full sprint, charging through the sand down the backside of the sand dune.
…We could hear it pounding into the earth on all sides, both of us fully realizing that should either of us be struck by a sizeable piece, it could be all over. What an ignominious way to go, taken out by a flying piece of dead whale meat.
Doug Brazil is the cameraman who captured the glorious footage, which eventually found its way to YouTube and became very popular indeed.
What that newsreel can’t convey, though, is quite why it would have been so unpleasant to be showered with bits of a whale which had been rotting for 72 hours…
WE COULD SMELL IT the moment we stepped from the car. Not anything recognizable, just this incredible stench, which grew stronger as we walked up the sand dune trail heading toward the beach. Was it my imagination, or was it also putting a taste in my mouth, something completely foreign to the fresh salt air one normally enjoys at the beach? This was on the order of spoiled meat, only stronger.
Funny thing about that smell: I would never again think of this day, or what was about to happen, without the horrible odor returning instantly to my memory. Just as I’ve never been able to adequately describe it to others, I fear I will never be able to completely escape it.
If you have £20 to spare, you can still buy Linnman’s book, but it is in the internet archive, too.
…and perhaps you can get some sense of the smell they must have encountered from the photos of the much, much larger whale which burst in Taiwan in 2004.
(An actor friend did once tell me of a fellow thespian on tour who came across a dead whale in the seaside town where he was performing, climbed on it, and fell into its vagina, but this remains unverified.)
