The Real Wellermen: The Weller Brothers' Otago Whaling Boom and Bust

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The 2021 viral song about the Wellerman bringing sugar, tea and rum is named for three real British brothers, Edward, George and Joseph Weller, who reached Sydney in 1829 and in 1831 set up at Otago Heads in New Zealand, 17 years before Dunedin was founded. Their money came from supplying shore based whalers stranded in isolated bays, and their supply ships and employees became known as the Wellermen. By 1834 their Otakou station produced 310 tons of whale oil with 85 staff, part of a chain of seven stations, and they also traded timber, flax, potatoes, dried fish, gunpowder, rum and preserved tattooed Maori heads.

Joseph died of tuberculosis in 1835. The southern right whales they hunted, slow, coastal and buoyant when killed, were slaughtered until the population collapsed. Edward and George turned to buying millions of acres through dubious deals, but after British rule arrived in 1840 around the Treaty of Waitangi, a court of claims voided their purchases, and they were bankrupt by 1840. Otakou closed in 1841 after producing 10 tons. In 1966 folklorist Neil Colquhoun recorded the ballad from an 80 year old man, and in 2021 Scottish singer Nathan Evans's cover hit number one in the UK.

The song follows the whaling ship Billy o' Tea in a weeks long fight with a whale.
Tonguing meant stripping blubber from a carcass on the beach and boiling it down in iron pots.
Strictly it is not a shanty but a forebitter, sung for entertainment off watch.
A dance remix by 220 Kid and Billen Ted helped it top the charts.
The brothers' legacy on the map is Weller's Rock, Te Umukuri, a lookout for the returning right whales.

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