A year ago this month London was transfixed by a bottlenosed whale that swam up the River Thames and couldn’t find its way down river again. For three days news crews and the general public were lining the banks up and down the river trying to catch sight of the whale, which somehow had swam up the shallow Thames when its normally found in very deep water.
There were loads of shots of it swimming up under Westminster Bridge and past the Houses of Parliament, unfortunately it went too far and a number of times tried to beach. Members of the public waded into the water to keep it from doing so, but the following day it was decided the whale was to weak through lack of food to make it out of the Thames on its own, and it was captured and lifted onto a barge to be transported to the open ocean. Unfortunately it died on the way.
Now the Thames Whale Week will see the skeleton of the whale (which £10,000 from The Sun newspaper helped save) will be put on show from 22-27 January at the Guardian and Observer’s archive and visitor centre, the Newsroom, on Farringdon Road. The exhibition will the skeleton and fin of the whale plus film and photography of its time in the Thames and the attempted rescue. There’s also a week of related events at the Natural History Museum, which is loaning the skeleton for the Newsroom exhibit. The nearest Tubes to the Newsroom are Farringdon and angel.
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