The Porpoise (Delphinus Phocœna), which only attains a length of five or six feet, and seems to be the smallest of all cetaceans, is frequently confounded with the dolphin. It is at home in the whole Northern Atlantic, in the Mediterranean, and the Euxine. While the dolphin prefers the high sea, the porpoise loves tranquil bays and cliff-sheltered shores, and often swims up the rivers, so that individuals have been caught in the Elbe and Seine as high up as Dessau and Paris. The porpoise is a no less excellent swimmer than the dolphin, making at least fifteen miles an hour. His rapidity and sharp teeth render him a most dangerous enemy to all the lesser fry of the ocean, whose sole refuge lies in the shallowest waters. When he rises to the surface to draw breath, the back only appears, the head and tail are kept under water. At the entrance of harbours, where he is frequently seen gambolling, his undulatory or leaping movements, now rising with a grunt, now sinking to reappear again at some distance, afford an entertaining spectacle.
A much more formidable animal, the largest of the whole dolphin tribe, is the ravenous Grampus, (Delphinus Orca,) which measures no less than twenty-five feet in length, and twelve or thirteen in girth. The upper part of the body is black, the lower white: the dorsal fin rises in the shape of a cone, to the height of three feet or more.
All naturalists agree in describing the grampus as the most voracious of the dolphin family. Its ordinary food is the seal and some species of flat-fish, but it also frequently gives chase to the porpoise, and perhaps the whale would consider the grampus as his most formidable enemy, were it not for the persecutions of man. Pliny gives us a fine description of the conflicts which arise between these monsters of the deep. At the time when the whale resorts to the bays to cast its young, it is attacked by the grampus, who either lacerates it with his dreadful jaws, or in rapid onset endeavours to strike in its ribs, as with a catapult. The terrified whale knows no other way to escape from these furious attacks, than by interposing a whole sea between him and his enemy. But the grampus, equally wary and active, cuts off his retreat, and drives the whale into narrower and narrower waters, forcing him to bruise himself on the sharp rocks, or to strand upon the shelving sands, nor ceases his efforts until he has gained a complete victory. During this fight the sea seems to rage against itself, for though no wind may be stirring the surface, waves, such as no storm creates, rise under the strokes of the infuriated combatants.
While the Emperor Claudius was visiting the harbour of Ostium, a grampus stranded in the shallow waters. The back appeared above the surface of the sea, and resembled a ship with its keel turned upwards. The Emperor caused nets to be stretched across the mouth of the harbour to prevent the animal's escape, and then attacked it in person with his prætorian guards. The soldiers surrounding the monster in boats, and hurling their inglorious spears, exhibited an amusing spectacle to the populace.
That man ventures to pursue the leviathans of the deep among the fogs and icebergs of the Arctic seas, and is generally successful in their capture, may surely be considered as one of the proudest triumphs of his courage and his skill.
The breast of the first navigator, says Horace, was cased with triple steel; but of what adamantine materials must that man's heart have been formed, whose steadfast hand hurled the first harpoon against the colossal whale?
History has not preserved his name; like the great warriors that lived before Agamemnon, he sank into an obscure grave for want of a Homer to celebrate his exploits. We only know that the Biscayans were the first civilised people that in the fourteenth and fifteenth century fitted out ships for the whale fishery. At first the bold men of Bayonne and Santander contented themselves with pursuing their prey, (most likely rorquals) in the neighbouring seas, but as the persecuted whales diminished in frequency, they followed them farther to the north, until they came to the haunts of the real whale, whose greater abundance of fat rewarded their intrepidity with a richer spoil.
Their success naturally roused the emulation and avidity of other seafaring nations, and thus, towards the end of the sixteenth century, we see the English, and soon after the Dutch, enter the lists as their competitors. At first our countrymen were obliged to send to "Biskaie for men skilful in catching the whale, and ordering of the oil, and one cooper, skilful to set up the staved casks," (Hakluyt's Voyages, i. 414); but soon, by their skill, their industry and perseverance, together with the aid and encouragement granted by the legislature, they learnt to carry on the whale fishery on more advantageous terms than the original adventurers, whose efforts became less enterprising as their success was more precarious.
The first attempts of the English date as far back as the year 1594, when some ships were sent out to Cape Breton for morse and whale fishing. The fishing proved unsuccessful, but they found in an island 800 whale fins or whalebone, part of the cargo of a Biscayan ship wrecked there three years before, which they put on board and brought home. This was the first time this substance was imported into England.