Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/564

Rh 528 W H A W H A to decline, and finally, owing to the war, came to a close before the end of the century. At the same time the Germans prosecuted the fishing to a very considerable extent : 79 vessels from Hamburg and Bremen were employed in 1721, and during the fifty years 1670-1719 an average of 45 vessels sailed yearly from Hamburg alone. German vessels continued to engage in the fishing until 1S73. The Spaniards, although they took part in the pursuit at an early date, and appear at first to have supplied the skilled por tion of the crews of the English and Dutch vessels, never seem to have engaged largely in the northern fishery ; 20 of their vessels were employed in it in 1721, but before the end of the century they had entirely abandoned the occupation. The Danes, although likewise early appearing on the Spitzbergen fishing-grounds, never pursued the industry on a large scale until after the commencement of the Davis Strait fishing in 1721, in which year they had 90 sail engaged ; in 1803 the number had fallen to 35. As for the English fishing, although sundry attempts had been made to revive it, notably in 1673 and in 1725 (the latter year by the South Sea Company), it was not until a bounty of 20s. per ton on the burden of the ships employed, granted in 1733, had been increased to 40s. in 1749 that the industry began to revive ; in the same year vessels sailed from Scotland for the first time. Notwithstanding the re duction of the bounty to 30s. the number of ships sailing from British ports in 1787 amounted to 255. In 1814 the value of the gross freights of the Greenland and Davis Strait fleets amounted to 700,000, and in the same year the &quot; Resolution &quot; of Peterhead, Captain Souter, returned from Greenland with 44 whales, produc ing 299 tons of oil, the largest cargo ever brought into Great Britain. In 1824 the bounty was finally withdrawn. Since that time, owing to the scarcity of whales, and still more to their in creasing shyness, caused in a great measure by the injudicious use of steam, the returns of the fishery have been gradually decreasing and the vessels employed have become fewer. Sperm Whale. Since 1853 British vessels have ceased to prose cute this fishing. Begun in 1775, the British sperm whale fishing soon increased and by 1791 had assumed considerable importance, when the vessels engaged numbered 75, all hailing from London. It was British sperm whalemen who opened up the whaling-grounds of the Pacific and Indian Oceans. American Fisheries. The American whale fisheries embrace the Behring s Strait or Arctic fishery and the sperm whale or southern fishery. Greenland Right Whale. As already mentioned above, the object of this fishery is the capture of Bal&na mysticetus. In this case, however, the whales are mostly sought, not among the ice, but in open water, the vessels used being less adapted to ice navigation than those of the British, and nearly all are propelled by sail power alone. The hand harpoon is preferred and bomb lances are used to kill the whales. The vessels sail mostly from San Francisco in .March, and arrive at the ice edge off Cape Navarin, where the fishing is first prosecuted, in May. The whales disappear during .-summer, but return in the autumn, when the &quot;fall&quot; fishing is carried on in the neighbourhood of Point Barrow ; between seasons the vessels go south and prosecute the sperm whaling. The Behring Strait fishery was commenced in 1848, and in the three following years 250 ships obtained cargoes. In 1871 34 vessels were abandoned in the ice off Cape Belcher, the crews making good their escape to other vessels ; again in 1876 12 vessels experienced a similar fate. Xperm Whale. The capture of the sperm whale (Physetcr macro- ccphaliis) is prosecuted throughout the tropical seas of the globe. The distribution of the animal being, however, restricted to deep water, the fishing is usually carried on at a distance from land. The vessels used are generally barques of about 300 tons, carrying five boats and manned by a crew of thirty hands all told. The vessels have no particular time for sailing or arriving in port ; the duration of a voyage is generally three years. The sperm whale is killed in the same manner as the Greenland right whale ; the use of the hand harpoon is, however, preferred ; and the whale-boats, which are not required to withstand contact with ice, are less strongly built, and much lighter and swifter than those used in the northern fisheries. The ordinary sperm whale yields about 60 barrels of oil ( = 10 tons), although large males are occasionally killed which yield a greater quantity. The oil is boiled at sea ; hence its freedom from smell and the consequent high price which it commands as compared with that of the bottlenose whale. Sperm whale fishing seems to have commenced early in the 18th century, the whaling community of Nantucket embarking in the industry about 1712 ; and in 1774, before the commencement of the War of Independence, a fleet of 360 vessels was engaged in it. This fishery perhaps reached its climax in 1846, when it occupied a total of 735 vessels, having an aggregate capacity of 233,199 tons. During the period 1877 to 1886 inclusive the average annual number of vessels employed was 159, their average annual aggregate burden being 35,713 tons. The average annual imports into the United States of whaling produce were as follows: of sperm oil 31,824 barrels ( = 5304 tons), of whale oil 29,180 barrels ( = 4863 tons), of whalebone 325,559 lb ( = 145 tons). New Bedford and San Francisco are the principal whaling-ports. Norwegian Fisheries. The Norwegian fisheries include that of the fin whale and that of the bottle-nose whale. Fin Whale. Associated with this fishery is the name of Svend Fin Foyn, the seaman who first invented apparatus to attack success- whale fully the large and active fin whales which abound in northern seas, fishery and at certain seasons frequent the fjords of the north coast of Nor way. The principal feature of the whaling gear is the use of an exploding harpoon, which virtually kills the animal immediately it is struck. Owing to its weight, a gun of large size is required to throw the harpoon, and in turn a craft of considerable burden is required to carry the gun. The harpoon bears a shell containing j lb powder and weighs 123 lb ; the gun, 4| inches thick at the muzzle, with 3 inches bore, requires a charge of 1 lt&amp;gt; powder, and weighs about 15 cwts. ; the vessel answering the purpose of a whale- boat is a steamer of about 80 tons burden and 30 horse-power. It is used not only for carrying the gun and pursuing the whales but also for towing the bodies of the animals when dead to the &quot;factory&quot; on shore, where the operation of flensing is performed. The whales hunted (in the order of their size and relative value) are (1) the blue whale (Bal&noptcra sibbaldii), (2) the humpback (Megaptcra longimana], (3) the common rorqual (Balsenoptcra musculus), (4) Rudolphi s rorqual (B. borcalis), and (5) the lesser rorqual (B. rostrata}. All are killed for their oil, which is much inferior in quality to that of the Greenland right whale, for their whalebone, which is short and brittle, and for their bones and flesh, which are converted into manure. The whalers hail from the south of Norway (Sandefjord, Tonsberg, &c. ), and have their whaling sta tions or &quot; factories &quot; on the fjords along the coast of Finmark. The fishing is prosecuted only in summer. In 1884 450 fin whales were killed, in 1885 1398, and in 1886 954. Bottlenose Whale. The bottlenose whale (Hypcroodon rostratus) Bottle- abounds during summer in the northern seas adjacent to the ice nose edge, from the Labrador coast on the west to Nova Zembla on the whale east, but more particularly in the neighbourhood of Jan Mayen and fishery. Iceland, where the fishing is usually prosecuted during May, June, and July. Previous to May the weather is generally too stormy, and about the middle of July the whales, although hitherto numer ous, suddenly disappear. The average-sized bottlenose whale yields 22 cwts. of oil, 5 per cent, of which is spermaceti ; the oil is superior even to sj term as a lubricant. Although the whale -ships had fre quented the northern seas for centuries, and sailed over the haunts of these animals season after season, it was not until recent years that they were discovered to exist there in immense numbers. The fishing may be said to date from the capture of 203 of these animals by the &quot;Eclipse,&quot; Captain David Gray, of Peterhead in 1882. In the following year a number of British vessels took up the fishing, and at the same time the Norwegians embarked in it to such an extent that the market was soon glutted with oil, and the price fell from 55 per ton to 18, which no longer renders the industry remunerative to British vessels. A fleet of about thirty small sail ing vessels annually leaves the Norwegian ports to prosecute this fishing. In 1885 they killed over 1300 whales and in 1886 about 1700. Literature. On British whale fisheries, see Scoresby, Arctic Regions, Voyage to the Greenland Sea in 1822; M Culloeh, Diet, of Commerce; Markham, Whaling Cruise ; Southwell, &quot;Notes on the Seal and Whale Fisheries,&quot; in Zoologist, 1884, &c. ; F. D. Bennett, Whaling Voyage round the Globe, 1833-36 ; and Beale, The Sperm Whale and Us Captors, 1839. On American whale fisheries the following works may be consulted : Starbuck, Hist, of Amer. Whale Fishery from its Earliest Inception to 187G ; Report of U. S. Comm. of Fisheries, 1875, vol. iv. ; Whalemen s Shipping List and Merchants Transcript (New Bedford) ; and Scam- mon, Mammalia of North-Western America, 1874. On the Norwegian whale fisheries there are various papers in the Zoologist, by A. H. Cocks, 1884 and succeeding years. (R. GR.) WHALEBONE is the inaccurate name under which the baleen plates of the right whale are popularly known ; and the trade-name of whale-fin, Avhich the substance receives in commerce, is equally misleading. Three kinds of whale bone are recognized by traders the Greenland, yielded by the Greenland whale, Bal&na mysticetus ; the South Sea, the produce of the Antarctic black whale, E. australis; and the Pacific or American, which is obtained from B. japonica. Of these the Greenland whalebone is the most valuable. It formed the only staple known in earlier times, when the northern whale fishery was a great and productive industry. This whalebone usually comes into the market trimmed and clean, with the hairy fringe which edges the plates removed. To prepare whalebone for its economic applications, the blades or plates are boiled for about twelve hours, till the substance is quite soft, in