At one time, ambergris had been ubiquitous. It was traded like gold, prized everywhere from the east coast of Africa to Alaska, bartered and quarrelled over, and transported from remote places like Tasmania and the Andaman Islands, to modern cities — to perfume houses in Paris and London — on the other side of the world. And it was used, at one time or another, for almost every imaginable purpose.
The natives of Sulu, an independent island province near the Philippines, had once burned large lumps of it, fishing by the light it provided on dark and moonless nights. And in Mexico, Moctezuma, the Aztec emperor (1397–1469), supposedly added ambergris to his tobacco. During the Middle Ages, the English believed that a piece of ambergris, held tightly beneath the nose, would protect them from pestilence. Lazare Rivière, a seventeenth-century French physician, reported that ambergris was an effective cure for rabies. When the governor of Mozambique finished his three-year term, Jean-Baptiste Tavernier reported in 1678 in Travels in India, he was partly paid in ambergris, taking home “300,000 pardos’ worth of ambergris, and the pardo, as I have elsewhere said, amounts to 27 sols of our money”. The Florida Native Americans, and the Bermudians and the Bahamians too, valued the medicinal properties of ambergris. “Whenever they are poisoned with fish,” wrote Henry Barham in 1794, in Hortus Americanus, “(which often they are), they fly to ambergris as a powerful antidote, and are cured therewith, and rescued from the most horrid symptoms threatening them.”
In Asia and the Middle East, the effects of ambergris also were widely celebrated. “The belief in its efficacy yet lingers in the Orient,” stated an article about ambergris in Arthur’s Illustrated Home Magazine from 1874, “where it forms the chief ingredient in a very popular so-called ‘Elixir of Life.’ In Egypt it is valued principally for its supposed virtues as an exciter of love.” The most common method of preparation in Egypt involved melting a carat-weight of ambergris in the bottom of a coffeepot before making the coffee. Sailors simply ate crude lumps of it. In the mid-nineteenth century, the standard chemical formula for Indian ink included a few drops of essence of ambergris.
“It is a signal remedy for the horrid spasms, or loss of the use of limbs in the dry belly-ache,” wrote Barham in 1794. He continued: “It also stops vomiting and loosenesses, is proper for all inward bruises, and a most universal cordial; it refreshes the memory, and eases all pains to the head, being dissolved in a warm mortar and mixed with ointment of orange-flowers, anointing the head, temples, and forehead therewith; it also helpeth barrenness proceeding from a cold cause, and cures fits of the mother inwardly taken.”
After reading such an enthusiastic testimonial, I had begun to consider eating ambergris too, if I ever found any.
By August 1891, Louis Smith’s ambergris had arrived in London — an implausibly large boulder. Rumours of its arrival were beginning to spread through the city. It was heavy, cumbersome, and difficult to move. Attempts to place it inside a train car and to transport it to potential brokers had failed. It was too large to move. Instead, it was stored long-term — sealed in an airtight case — and locked in a London bank vault. It had earned a nickname: the Bank Lot.
Eventually, brokers were summoned to inspect the Bank Lot. When the case was opened, “everyone beat a hasty retreat from its vicinity, for the horrible smell which issued from the box was overpowering.” Unable at first to approach the case, they waited for the smell to subside before unpacking the large black object inside. Finally, it was lifted from the case and placed before the assembled bank officials and brokers: the Bank Lot measured six feet four inches (193 centimetres) in circumference and was almost perfectly spherical. It weighed 162 pounds 11 ounces (approximately 74 kilograms). It was simply an enormous black boulder of ambergris.
Included in the 1902 US Commission of Fish and Fisheries’ Report of the Commissioner was an excerpt of a letter written by one of the brokers: “The next thing to do was to split the lump, so as to see what the interior was like. This was accomplished with the aid of long chisels and crowbars. We then saw that the substance consisted of layers or laminae, rolled around a central core, the laminae varying a good deal in texture, color, and flavor.”
There, in the stillness of the vault, the Bank Lot was carefully dismantled. The core was removed from the surrounding layers. Shaped like a rifle bullet, it weighed 5 pounds (2 kilograms) and “stood alone, a pure, solid lump of the finest gray ambergris.”
People began to talk about the Bank Lot. It was inevitable. An enormous and priceless black boulder of ambergris, brought all the way from Tasmania, was now hidden somewhere within a bank vault in London. The brokers knew that no one would be able to buy so much ambergris in a single lot. In the summer of 1891, the price of ambergris was unusually high —108 shillings per ounce. If the details of such a gigantic boulder of ambergris became known, market prices would plummet. The brokers agreed on a strategy of deception and counter-deception. If anyone asked them about the Bank Lot, they said it was a myth.
From an article in the trade journal Chemist and Druggist: “Our representative, who called for information at the bank, was confronted with a number of courteous officials whose know-nothing attitude would have baffled a Sherlock Holmes.” The subterfuge had begun. Referring to the Bank Lot as the Monster Lump, the article continued, “We came into contact with several gentlemen, each of whom assured us, in strict confidence, that the lump had been entrusted for sale to his care, and that fabulous prices had already been obtained for part of it.”
Eventually, ambergris always disappeared. It was impossible to track. Found somewhere on a remote beach — maybe in New Zealand, or at the steaming edge of a lush frond-filled jungle in the Nicobar Islands, or even inside the intestines of a decaying sperm whale — it was then sold, passed along from vendor to vendor, and transported to London or Paris. And then, it simply disappeared. It was processed: ground down with sand in a mortar, dissolved in alcohol over a period of months, made into a tincture, incorporated into perfume, and then sprayed onto the slender necks and the blue-veined wrists of the wealthy. But the Bank Lot was different. It was such a superlatively large and singular piece of ambergris that it left a trail of rumour and excitement wherever it went. Press reports followed it from Hobart, to Melbourne, and finally to London, where it sat in its bank vault.
“The recent importation of a piece of ambergris from Melbourne, weighing, it is said, 136 pounds and valued at £10,000, naturally caused a good deal of excitement,” reported the American Druggist from London in 1891. “The piece is believed to be the same which was captured by a black man in Tasmania some time ago. But the matter still remains shrouded in some mystery, for the London consignees of the parcel refuse to show the piece to anyone, and even decline to give the slightest information of any value.”
Even a glittering black boulder of ambergris like the Bank Lot disappears eventually. In London, the brokers quietly sold it off, releasing a piece at a time to avoid flooding the market, until it was gone.
“The fact weighed heavily upon us,” wrote the broker, in his 1902 letter to the US Commission of Fish and Fisheries,
that if the real truth about [the ambergris] leaked the depression of the market would be so great that we should not be able to do justice to our clients, and, consequently, as few people as possible were let into the secret. It is true that reports about it were rife for a month or two, but as nothing authentic could be ascertained they gradually died out, and we have ourselves been repeatedly assured that the thing was a myth altogether, one gentleman going so far as to tell one of our partners, about three months afterwards, that he held three-fourths of the total quantity of ambergris in London, not knowing that we were controlling about one-and-a-half hundredweight.
For the few odd minutes in July 1891 spent clambering through the whale — what amounted, more or less, to a brief and slippery second birth — Louis Smith earned £11,000. It was an astonishing and transformative amount of money.
“It is a matter of so
me regret to us,” the broker admitted sadly, “that we did not secure a photograph of this extraordinary lump.”
3 THE BEACH MAFIA
I thought it was just an ordinary floating rock.
* BEN MARSH, to reporters from the Taranaki Daily News (March 2009)
“I’m not really interested in discussing it with you to be honest, mate,” Rob Anderson says abruptly on the phone.
I called Anderson to ask him about his son Robbie’s discovery of ambergris — reportedly worth more than $10,000— on Long Beach in May 2006. Long Beach was just a few kilometres from my house. I visited it often. I wanted to learn more about the chunk of ambergris Robbie had found on the gently sloping sand there three years earlier. Several times in previous weeks, I had called and left messages, which Anderson had never returned.
“I’m just not interested,” he says again. “That’s why I didn’t get back to you.”
I ask Anderson if the object his son had found was even ambergris, and if it had been sold.
“Oh, it’s ambergris,” he answers. “It hasn’t been sold because, as I explained to my son, who has since found more, it will only increase in value. It won’t decrease. When you don’t need the money, you hold on to it.”
I say nothing. Anderson says nothing. The seconds pass. “Apparently, it’s been appraised at $15,000,” he admits finally, and then, as if regretting the disclosure, he adds, “or whatever.”
A moment later, Rob Anderson hangs up on me. I feel, and not for the first time, like a failed telemarketer. From my window, I can see the ruffled blue water of Otago Harbour. The hills of the peninsula rise up sharply behind it like a grassy green wall, volcanic and steep, plunging beneath the surface of the water, angling downward to give the harbour its depth. Farther to the north a few kilometres sits Long Beach and the gleaming breakers of the Pacific Ocean.
For days afterward, I struggle to understand why my phone call with Rob Anderson ended the way it did, with me holding a dead phone. When Robbie had first returned from the windblown strip of sand near their home, holding a kilogram lump of ambergris, news reporters had found his father approachable enough. What had caused him to grow so tight-lipped since then?
And then three words from our brief conversation slowly filter back to me: Since found more.
I imagine Rob Anderson and his son, Robbie, doubled over on Long Beach as the slate-grey rain clouds drift across the sky above them. Since found more. Perhaps they scour the sand after every high tide, patiently sifting through the debris for the smallest fragments of ambergris. And maybe at home, a pile of ambergris is slowly accumulating in a corner of their kitchen, one waxy, fragrant piece at a time.
One thing had become abundantly clear: I needed to speak with people who knew more about ambergris than I did. For more than six months, that was what I attempted to do. And without exception, I failed.
The first thing I learned is that mentioning ambergris can change a conversation. Talkative people suddenly become suspicious and non-communicative. Only those who know nothing about ambergris will discuss it in any detail. Aware of the impact of revealing too much, anyone familiar with its value and scarcity will say nothing or respond in generalities to questions that require specific answers. A pattern began to develop: as I carefully explored each new line of communication, I was referred to a succession of steadily less helpful people, each inclined to say fewer words than the last, until the trail finally ended. Requests to meet went unanswered. Telephone numbers rang out endlessly when I dialled them. The people I expected to know about ambergris always knew nothing; and the people who actually did know something refused to talk with me.
I began my search for information at the local aquarium, a cluster of buildings perched on a wild green finger of land that protrudes into the channel of Otago Harbour. Program director Sally Carson referred me to Steve Dawson, a University of Otago associate professor of marine studies and a trustee of the New Zealand Whale and Dolphin Trust. A few days later, Dawson responded and admitted he had no experience with ambergris, suggesting I contact Dallas Bradley, a professional ambergris trader based in Invercargill, a three-hour drive south of Dunedin.
Dawson gave me Bradley’s mailing address. There was no phone number or any other information, just an address. Undaunted, I found a postcard with a photograph of a whale on it, wrote a quick note on the back along with my contact details, and sent it to Bradley in Invercargill. It would arrive the following day. I had the distinct feeling that I might as well have driven over the hills to Long Beach, stood on the sand beneath the cliffs, and thrown the postcard into the rolling surf instead. I waited for a few days. And then a week passed. And a month. No response.
A few weeks later, I contacted Hal Whitehead, a world expert on sperm whales and a professor at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada. In 2003 Whitehead published Sperm Whales: Social Evolution in the Ocean. Despite years spent researching sperm whales from his oceangoing research vessel, the Balaena, Whitehead responded that his research interest is in sperm whale social behaviour, and he wouldn’t be able to provide any information about ambergris. I called Richard Sabin, the curator of marine mammals for the Natural History Museum in London, who replied: “I would not be able to give you much more information than can be found in the scientific literature.”
Next, I contacted Luca Turin, a fragrance chemist who has written several books on fragrance, including The Secret of Scent: Adventures in Perfume and the Science of Smell. Turin was friendly and graciously referred me to Christopher Sheldrake, an expert on natural and synthetic compounds for Chanel in Neuilly, near Paris, who ignored my emails and phone calls. Around this time, I also contacted Dale Rice. Recently retired from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration laboratory, Rice had written a brief but informative entry for ambergris in the Encyclopedia of Marine Mammals in 2009. He returned my email, suggesting that I contact Robert Clarke, the author of “The Origin of Ambergris”.
On another occasion, a bright and cheerful email correspondence with an Auckland-based ambergris vendor became surly when I asked one too many questions. I requested more specific information about the largest shipments of ambergris she had bought and sold, both in terms of weight and value, and she responded: “No, sorry I can’t help you with this information. We run a business, we have competitors and this is commercially sensitive information.” There the correspondence ended, abruptly and permanently.
On October 21, 2003, Ross Sherman was fishing a few kilometres north of Baylys Beach, not too far from Dargaville on New Zealand’s North Island, when he noticed a car racing toward him across the sand. Among the several different competing versions of what happened next, many details are disputed. But this is not one of them. It’s a filmic moment: a car ploughing across the wet sand toward Ross Sherman. From that moment on, almost everything else becomes contentious. One other important detail is not disputed: John James Vodanovich was the driver of the car, as it slid and fishtailed along the shoreline toward Sherman.
Three years earlier, the two men — Sherman on the beach, Vodanovich in the bouncing car — had been business partners in a local ambergris-collecting venture. It was, more or less, a full-time concern for both men. Daily they harvested the beaches around Dargaville for ambergris, searching the beach after every high tide. It was a practice they called “milking the beach”. Eventually, the partnership ended badly. The two men hadn’t spoken since.
“It finished badly for him, not for me,” Vodanovich later corrected the Whangarei District Court.
Back on the beach, the car was still speeding along the shoreline toward Sherman, a brown spray of sand in its wake. In a modern interpretation of a medieval joust, Crown prosecutors argued, on that day in October 2003 Vodanovich, a self-employed seaweed gatherer, had intentionally aimed his car at Sherman on the beach. In self-defence, Sherman had allegedly swung a length of plastic piping at the car. The car had hit him. He was thrown in the air and landed heavily on the beach.
Consequently, Vodanovich was appearing in court to face several charges relating to the collision. After he hit Sherman, Vodanovich drove his damaged and dented car home. “I just drove off,” he said in his police statement, adding that he had seen Sherman running across the beach toward him, brandishing a length of pipe. “I feared for my life,” Vodanovich had said. “I thought he was probably lining me up for another shot.”
Meanwhile, Sherman was lying flat on the sand listening to the sound of Vodanovich’s car recede into the distance. Once the beach was quiet again, Sherman struggled to his feet, staggered to his car, and drove to a local police station. In court, a doctor testified that the injuries to Sherman’s hands, feet, and legs were consistent with being struck by a motor vehicle. When he arrived at the police station, the Northern Advocate reported, Sherman “had tooted his vehicle’s horn to get the attention of police inside the station, as he believed his injuries meant he could not get out of the vehicle.”
Almost a year later, Vodanovich was found not guilty of both charges, and the court accepted it was an accident. It had been Sherman’s word against Vodanovich’s. A headline in the New Zealand Herald cheerily announced the news: “NORTHLAND MAN CLEARED OF USING CAR AS WEAPON.” The case was over. A fragile calm descended over the Dargaville coastline.
And it lasted. At least for a little while.
As I read about the battles that were fought over ambergris in 2003, I thought of what Rob Anderson had said again: Since found more. And I began to understand what had made him so reluctant to talk. Perhaps it was the fear that unwanted incidents — like the one between Vodanovich and Sherman — might take place on the unpopulated sands of Long Beach.
It’s a quiet Sunday morning. Early summer. Out on the coast, a chill still clings to the pearly air. I trudge slowly around the broad, kelp-choked bay at Brighton, a few kilometres south of Dunedin. The tide is ocean-going, and I walk the meandering high-tide line. In an attempt to avoid the dog walkers and the weekend strollers, I keep to the less visited parts of the bay. I pick up a long wet piece of driftwood, covered with thick tufts of bright green intestine seaweed, which I use to give objects on the shoreline an exploratory poke. When I find wet tangles of seaweed and heavy pieces of weathered timber, I use the driftwood like a crowbar, digging it into the sand and prying them into the air so that I can peer into the dark spaces beneath them. Earlier that day, I had driven past sheep farms in the grey morning light, following the coastline south. The road is bordered by a rolling green apron of land. Just beyond it, the Pacific Ocean glitters like a flat blue table. Pulling into the parking lot in my old and dented Subaru, I realized I still had no idea what I was looking for, or how I should try to find it.
Floating Gold Page 5
