Travel: A man, a harpoon and a legend

[Photo: Marina Brown]

Bentley Corea is shown at the whaling museum in Bequia, a West Indian island about 200 miles north of Venezuela. Of harpooning a whale, he says, “You must decide that it is you or the whale that will die this day. You must have no fear — only a strong arm and a brave heart.”

BEQUIA, West Indies -- We looked from the snapshot to the man and back again. If he had been stark naked, a lance in hand and an antelope as prey, or bearing down on a buffalo from atop an unsaddled horse, we wouldn't have been surprised.

This photo showed Bentley Corea braced at the bow of an open boat, ready to harpoon a whale.

It had been taken one March morning off the West Indian island of Bequia (BECK-way), which lies about 200 miles north of the Venezuelan coast and 110 miles west of Barbados. With one foot jammed against the mast of a careening sailboat, right arm ready to hurl a wooden javelin with a rod of steel and a hinged brass arrow at its tip, Corea was pictured doing what he lives for -- trying to harpoon a whale.

His passion has left him a man out of his own time -- except on Bequia. Here he is a hero.

Just as once a year certain North American Indian tribes are allowed to go whaling, the taking of two whales every season by citizens of Bequia has been sanctioned by agreement between the International Whaling Commission and the government of the Grenadines.

"Aboriginal and subsistence" is the treaty status under which their hunts fall. Closely monitored by Greenpeace and by marine scientists, the Bequians are permitted to participate in the traditional livelihood using methods lifted from the 18th century.

Then, rugged Scots and New Englanders had followed the whales from their summer feeding grounds to the West Indies. It was from these whalers that the island fishermen learned their skills, and the soft Scottish burr that drifts through Corea's Caribbean-accented English.

He sits in the garden of the tiny whaling museum at La Pompe near Friendship Bay, the former home of his mentor and idol, Athneal Ollivierre. Corea's father, Harold, watches over the museum. Bentley Corea is 38. His skin is a ruddy brown, his eyes are hazel. His curly hair and beard, neither braided nor brushed, give him an aboriginal appearance.

A group of whalers from Bequia ride ashore on top of the partially carved carcass of a whale they harpooned in May 1999.

[Photo: AP]

In his life there is one subject for which he will abandon his natural reticence and speak with passion: whales.

"You must have a brave heart," he says of the moment when he throws the 25-pound harpoon into a whale that may weigh 40 tons.

"You must decide that it is you or the whale that will die this day. You must have no fear -- only a strong arm and a brave heart."

Born, he says, "just a little too late," Corea wishes he could have lived the life of Athneal Ollivierre, who died in 2000. Indeed, Athneal is a household name on Bequia.

"On the day Athneal killed a monster whale with his first iron (his first harpoon toss), he became like a god -- the only man in 149 years of island whaling to do such a thing!" recounts Harold Corea.

Now 70, Harold was Ollivierre's "look-out man," sometimes even shimmying up the little boat's mast for a better view of the whale pod.

While this seems an extraordinary number, each of the whales taken by the ancient harpooning methods was consumed and processed for use by the islanders. Not so the mass killing by the Norwegian whaling industry during the mid-1940s. Harold Corea says:

"They took 1,000 whales the first year, 700 the second year, 20 the third year, and nothing the last year! They had fished out all the whales."

Using fast ships with explosive-tipped harpoons fired from guns and massive ships that were rendering plants, the Norwegians forced a 10-year hiatus on whaling in West Indian waters.

It wasn't until 1957 that the whales had returned in sufficient numbers for the Bequians to petition to resume a token whaling expedition each year.

Singling out a mother and her year-old calf from a pod of 20 or 30 whales, says the elder Corea, the fishermen sail silently close. First, the calf is harpooned and secured, but not killed. The mother, hearing the cries of her baby, circles until she, too, is harpooned and then killed. Finally the calf is killed.

We watched last March from a dinghy as Bequia's whalers returned with the first of their kills. It takes two days to butcher the whales, which takes place on the jagged islet of Petit Nevis, a mile off Bequia.

The carcass is pulled by rusting winches up a concrete ramp. The blubber is immediately boiled into oil and the meat cut into slabs for the waiting locals to take home.

Though the clergy had blessed the fleet before the hunt, and the day had more the trappings of a regatta than a hunt, the sight of the magnificent animals reduced to meat-by-the-pound leaves many Bequians quiet.

And yet, they are a practical people. The whale oil will be used for medicine, the meat eaten on special occasions, and the bones sometimes show up in local restaurants and bars as stools and tables.

Bentley Corea points to a large piece of whale bone mounted on the wall of the museum. A painting on the bone shows the day the harpoon's rope got caught around the bow of Ollivierre's boat. We see the harpooner and his six-man crew being pulled under by the whale. But the hero, Ollivierre, manages to cut the rope and save his crew.

"If I had one dream," says Corea, gazing at the painting, "It would be to be just like Athneal."

As we leave the museum, there are several children in the garden. They finger the whale ribs and arching jaw bones at the entrance, and they steal glances at Bentley, looking adoringly at him from afar.

"Someday, when I grow up," said one little boy, "I'm going to get me a whale -- I'm going to be just like Bentley Corea."

A man, a harpoon and a legend

Bentley Corea lives for the thrill of an unusual hunt. Once a year, he is allowed to harpoon two whales for his West Indian island home of Bequia. For this he is a local hero.