The Barnsley Whale

The true story of the world’s first inland whale hunt

Sometimes the truth really is far stranger than fiction.

Walking to work some years ago I was struck a childhood memory; a huge whale I’d seen on a lorry in Barnsley.

Attempts to find out more about this bizarre event did not go well.

No one wanted to know; friends, workmates just laughed. I called libraries, local and national papers, radio stations; you name it, I tried it. Everyone put the phone down on on me. Anyone I emailed never replied. Day and night I trawled the internet, but found not one single piece of evidence.

When I posted on a Barnsley Football Club website I found a handful of people who’d had a vague dream of having seen a whale on a lorry. So at least I wasn’t alone (unless this was some kind of mass marine mammal delusion).

By now I’d become obsessed.

I left my job and toured the country asking questions in pubs, on the street and in museums. Rather than laugh down the phone, people were now doing it to my face.

Months later the breakthrough came with a visit to the National Fairground Archive. There in the fading pages of an old copy of ‘The World’s Fair’ I found the proof.

Jonah was a 70ft, 70-ton finback whale caught off Trondheim, Norway in 1952. Originally examined at Oslo University his organs were removed, lungs inflated and a refrigeration unit placed inside him before being loaded on a custom-built 100ft trailer. So began a 25-year overland voyage took him to just about every town in Europe, Japan and Africa. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, saw him.

And my persistence paid off in other ways. I appeared on Home Truths with John Peel, did loads of BBC local radio interviews and made it into national press. To my surprise I got hundreds of responses from people who’d talked of ‘a whale on a lorry’ for years and who’d never been believed.

I’d proved Jonah really did exist but one big question remained. What happened to him? Now that’s another story. And one with had an ending even I couldn’t believe.

‘The Barnsley Whale – the true story of the world’s first inland whale hunt’
Steve Deput -Mainstream Publishing 2003