active at Cloudy Bay and Banks Peninsula (1835) on the South Island. Teams of whalers were landed by small vessels - usually schooners - to establish temporary settlements during the winter months. These vessels usually returned for the men, and the full oil casks, at the end of the season. Some of these support vessels remained offshore, serving as a dormitory and warehouse for the operation. Pelagic (deep-sea) whaling ships occasionally came in to compete with the shore-based whalers, especially toward the end of their cruise when they were trying to fill their oil casks before returning to port. Some of these whaling stations, such as those at Portland Bay and Twofold Bay, became the forerunner of permanent settlements, the pioneer settlers combining whaling with pastoral activities. Australian whaling ships Australian-owned whaling ships first sailed from Sydney in 1805. The 185-ton King George (Captain George Moody), owned by Henry Kable and James Underwood, departed Port Jackson in June and was "fishing" for southern right whales in the Derwent Estuary in Tasmania by July 1805. The first sperm whaler was the 224-ton Argo (Captain John Bader) owned by John Macarthur (wool pioneer) through his London agents Hullets & Co, and which departed Sydney in September 1805. Vessels owned or based in Australia went on to make more than 1,500 whaling voyages from colonial ports in the nineteenth century. Sydney and Hobart were the two main whaling ports. Whaling ships were sometimes hired to transport people and freight between settlements, or to establish new colonies. The Albion (362 tons) arrived at Risdon Cove on 8 September 1803, with settlers who founded Hobart. The Amity (192 tons) landed the first white settlers at Western Australia in 1826. Lord Howe Island was settled by colonists landed from the Sydney whaler Caroline (192 tons) in 1834. The large crews on such vessels – necessary to man the whale boats – meant the trade was a major employer of maritime labour. The forty-two whalers based in Sydney by 1837 employed about 1,300 men. Most were British-born seamen but as the years went by Australian-born mariners joined the fleet in increasing numbers. Whaling was a challenging business that produced capable and versatile individuals some of whom went on the achieve prominence in other fields. Three future parliamentarians and a Lord Mayor of Sydney served on Australian whalers, as did others who later became important merchants. Whaling also