Possibly contains inappropriate or misinterpreted citations that do not verify the text. In the last verse, the narrator conveys how the Billy o' Tea is still considered locked in an ongoing struggle with the whale, with the wellerman making 'his regular call' to strengthen the captain and crew. Subsequent verses detail the captain's determination to bring in the whale in question, even as time passes and the quadruple of whaling boats is lost in the fight. Tonguing in this context refers to the practice of cutting strips of whale blubber to render into oil. According to the song's listing on the website New Zealand Folk Song, 'the workers at these bay-whaling stations (shore whalers) were not paid wages, they were paid in slops (ready made clothing), spirits and tobacco.' The chorus continues with the crew singing of their confidence that the 'tonguin'' will be the last step of their plight. The song describes how the ship's crew hope for a 'wellerman' to arrive and bring them supplies of luxuries. The song's lyrics describe a whaling ship called the ' Billy o' Tea' and its hunt for a right whale. One day, when the tonguin' is done We'll take our leave and go Soon may the Wellerman come To bring us sugar and tea and rum Nonetheless, whaling in New Zealand continued up until the 1960s. In 1841, the Court of Claims in New South Wales ruled that the Weller brothers' purchases of land in New Zealand were legally invalid, after which the Wellers 'slipped unobtrusively out of the pages of New Zealand history'. The Weller brothers' success in the whaling industry was fleeting, and they were declared bankrupt in 1840 after failed attempts at large-scale land purchase in New South Wales. By 1835, the year that Joseph Weller died in Otago, the brothers became convinced of the need to abandon the station even as they branched out into massive land purchases in New Zealand, which amounted to nearly 3 million acres by 1840. However, given that the Colony of New Zealand would not be declared until 1840, the Wellers were treated as foreign traders and were affected by protectionist British import tariffs on whale oil. From the Otakou base the Wellers branched out into industries as diverse as 'timber, spars, flax, potatoes, dried fish, Maori artefacts, and even tattooed Maori heads which were in keen demand in Sydney'. In its heyday in 1834, the Otakou station was producing 310 tons of whale oil a year and became the centre of a network of seven stations that formed a highly profitable enterprise for the Wellers, employing as many as 85 people at Otago alone. The whalers depended on good relations with the local Maori people and the whaling industry integrated the Maori into the global economy and produced hundreds of intermarriages between whalers and local Maori, including Edward Weller himself, who was twice married to Maori women, thus linking the Wellers to one of the most prominent local MДЃori families, the Ellisons. The industry drew whalers to New Zealand from a diverse range of backgrounds encompassing not just the British Isles but also Native Americans, Pacific Islanders and Indigenous Australians. Unlike whaling in the Atlantic and northern Pacific, whalers in New Zealand practised shore-based whaling which required them to process the whale carcasses on land. Their employees became known as 'wellermen'. From 1833, the Weller brothers sold provisions to whalers in New Zealand from their base at Otakou, which they had named 'Otago' in approximation of the local MДЃori pronunciation. Speaking at centennial celebrations in 1931, New Zealand's Governor General Lord Bledisloe recalled how the Weller brothers had on their voyage to New Zealand 'brought in the 'Lucy Ann' (the Weller brothers' barque) a good deal of rum and a good deal of gunpowder.and some at least were rum characters'. In 1831, the UK-born Weller Brothers Edward, George and Joseph, who had immigrated to Sydney in 1829, founded a whaling station at Otakou near modern Dunedin in the South Island of New Zealand, some seventeen years before the first British settlement of Dunedin. The history of whaling in New Zealand stretches from the late eighteenth century to 1965. 5 Popular culture adaptations and references.

Sugar man song