Windsor Safari Park in the author's childhood visit was the setting of Philip Hoare’s first memorable encounter with Ramu, a young Killer whale presented as an attraction. A family outing in the early 1970s brought the animal’s scale, trained performance and apparent promise of a long life into view; the account later sets that spectacle against Ramu’s transfer, death in captivity and the broader costs hidden by the park’s promotional language.

The Park and Its Attraction

During the family visit, the star attraction was a Killer whale. Hoare’s youngest sister, especially enthusiastic about whales, bought a small, apologetically titled brochure, “Dolphins can be fascinating.” Its modest title framed a show whose principal attraction was not a dolphin but Ramu, a young whale displayed at the park.

The brochure gave visitors precise measures of Ramu’s growth and appetite: at four and a half years old, he was sixteen feet long, weighed one ton and ate between eighty and one hundred pounds of herring daily. It also stated that he was growing at a rate of one foot per year. Those figures made the oversized pool before the family more than a backdrop: they pointed toward the practical difficulty of keeping an animal of his size in a confined space.

Ramu’s Arrival and Performance

Ramu had been specially captured off the coast of North America in 1970 and flown to London of Whaling Trade and Thames Whale Encounters in a crate designed to keep him constantly sprayed with water. He was then taken by lorry and crane to the park’s dolphin training pool and, after a short interval, began a training programme. The account thus connects the attraction the family saw with a chain of capture, transport and preparation for performance.

Hoare recalls Ramu’s black-and-white markings and the turquoise-blue pool, while acknowledging that he cannot remember how the whale made his entrance, although his sisters could. Ramu went through a routine in response to his trainer’s demands, leaping into the air and splashing the audience gathered at the poolside. The spectacle delighted the visitors; to the later narrator, the performance also made the contrast between a powerful whale and its controlled setting difficult to ignore.

Promotional Promise and Aftermath

The brochure assured readers that performers in the pool should survive for many more years than they would in the sea, entertaining visitors. Within two years, however, Ramu had outgrown his tank. In 1976 he was sold to Seaworld in San Diego and renamed Winston. He sired four offspring and died of heart failure ten years later. The account places his death among those of more than two hundred Killer whales that perished in captivity in the final quarter of the twentieth century.

Hoare’s understanding of the display changed with time. At the visit, his attention was fixed on the spectacle; only later did he learn that captive whales may refuse food and be force-fed until they eat. The park’s assurance about longevity consequently reads against the animal’s later history, while the training pool stands as the setting where entertainment and confinement met.

Memory and Significance

After the outing, Hoare painted the Killer whale in his journal, preserving an image that appeared pristine on the page. Other interests soon displaced his fascination, and he forgot about whales. The brief childhood episode nevertheless acquired a longer significance in retrospect: the park’s show, the brochure’s promises and Ramu’s eventual fate became part of an account of how visitors encounter captive whales first as spectacle, while the conditions and consequences of captivity emerge later.