The Davidson family resided in the small town of Eden on the southeastern coast of Australia. Whaling was their main source of income, which nothing unusual for local descendants of European colonists. This family, however, had a significant advantage: for many years Old Tom’s gang, known across Australia as “The Killers from Eden”, helped them out. The key feature of this hundred-year partnership was the fact that Old Tom and his gang members were orcas. I should note that their English name “Killer Whale” is a mistranslation of the Spanish “asesina ballenas”, i.e. Killer of Whales.
Tom’s gang had 36 members overall throughout its existence. The “Killers” attacked migrating baleen whales, they chased them towards the shore and tired them out. They then gave the Davidsons a sign by jumping out of the water and hitting the water with their tails. Together with the orcas, the whalers finished the whales off with harpoons. They anchored the body and towed it away, leaving behind the orcas’ favourite parts: the whale’s tongue and lips. This unwritten rule became known as the “law of the tongue”.
The orcas didn’t trust anybody but the Davidsons and could distinguish their green boats from other ones. Their partnership wasn’t limited to hunting together and sharing their prey. Old Tom and his gang chased sharks away from overturned boats, while the Davidsons helped the orcas get untangled from anchor and buoy ropes on numerous occasions. Members of the Davidson family never used motorboats or firearms so as not to scare their orca colleagues.
Although Old Tom was the most friendly and famous of the orcas, he wasn’t the gang’s true leader. The Killers from Eden, like any other group of orcas, had a matriarchal structure. Their leader was probably Stranger, a female.
In 1900 the gang was comprised of 15 orcas. That same year, a vagrant by the name of Harry Silks somehow managed to attack an orca from Old Tom’s gang and kill it with a knife. This tragedy marked the end of the century-long partnership. Most “Killers” stopped trusting humans and left the bay forever. The number of the remaining orcas was dwindling year after year. Old Tom was one of the few who didn’t leave the Davidsons after the tragedy. He died on the 5th of September 1930. His skeleton is on display in the museum of Eden.
Pictured: one of the Davidsons with Old Tom in the background, 1908.