THE WHALE FISHERY.—[Page 208.]
The engraving represents the lancing of the whale, who has already been harpooned,
and is in a dying state. In his last struggles he has broken one of the whalers’ boats.
The manner of taking whales at present is as follows: As soon as the fishermen hear the whale blow, they cry out, Fall! fall! and every ship gets out its long-boat, in each of which there are six or seven men, who row till they become pretty near the whale; then the harpooner strikes it with the harpoon: this requires great dexterity, for through the bone of his head there is no striking, but near his spout there is a soft piece of flesh, into which the iron sinks with ease. As soon as he is struck, they take care to give him rope enough, otherwise, when he goes down, as he frequently does, he would inevitably sink the boat: this rope he draws with such violence, that, if it were not well watered, it would, by its friction against the sides of the boat, be soon set on fire. The line fastened to the harpoon is six or seven fathoms long, and is called the fore-runner; it is made of the finest and softest hemp, that it may slip the easier: to this they join a heap of lines of 90 or 100 fathoms each, and when there are not enough in one long-boat, they borrow from another. The man at the helm observes which way the rope goes, and steers the boat accordingly, that it may run exactly out before; for the whale runs away with the line with so much rapidity, that he would overset the boat if it were not kept straight. When the whale is struck, the other long-boats row before, and observe which way the line stands, and sometimes pull it: if they feel it stiff, it is a sign the whale still pulls in strength; but if it hangs loose, and the boat lies equally high before and behind upon the water, they pull it in gently, but take care to coil it, that the whale may have it again easily, if he recovers strength: they take care, however, not to give him too much line, because he sometimes entangles it about a rock, and pulls out the harpoon. The fat whales do not sink as soon as dead, but the lean ones do, and come up some days afterwards. As long as they see whales, they lose no time in cutting up what they have taken, yet keep fishing for others: when they see no more, or have taken enough, they begin with taking off the fat and whiskers in the following manner. The whale being lashed alongside, they lay it on one side, and put two ropes, one at the head and the other in the place of the tail, (which, together with the fins, is struck off as soon as he is taken,) to keep those extremities above water. On the off-side of the whale are two boats, to receive the pieces of fat, utensils, and men, that might otherwise fall into the water on that side. These precautions being taken, three or four men, with irons at their feet to prevent slipping, get on the whale, and begin to cut out pieces of about three feet thick and eight long, which are hauled up at the capstan or windlass. When the fat is all cut off, they cut off the whiskers of the upper jaw with an axe, previously lashing them together to keep them firm, which also facilitates the cutting, and prevents them from falling into the sea; when on board, five or six of them are bundled together, and properly stowed: and after all is got off, the carcase is turned adrift, and devoured by the bears, who are very fond of it. In proportion as the large pieces of fat are cut off, the rest of the crew are employed in slicing them smaller, and picking out all the lean. When this is prepared, they stow it under the deck, where it lies till the fat of all the whales is on board; then cutting it still smaller, they put it up in tubs in the hold, cramming them very full and close. Nothing now remains but to sail homewards, where the fat is to be boiled, and melted down into train oil.
During the summer of 1821, an attempt was made to kill whales with Sir William Congreve’s rockets. The trial was conducted by William Scoresby, Esq. who took out with him, on board of the Fame, in which he sailed, several rockets, by way of experiment. Success attended his expectation; and little doubt can remain, if they continue to be skilfully applied, that the danger attending the harpoon will be nearly done away; and, consequently, this valuable branch of commerce will be essentially benefited by the discovery.
We shall conclude this short sketch of some of the curiosities respecting fishes, with an account of The Kraken.—This is a most amazingly large sea animal, said to be seemingly of a crab-like form; the credit of whose existence rests upon the evidence produced by Bishop Pontoppidan, in his Natural History of Norway.
“Our fishermen (says the author) unanimously and invariably affirm, that, when they are several miles from the land, particularly in the hot summer days, and, by their distance, and the bearings of some points of land, expect from eighty to a hundred fathoms depth, and do not find but from twenty to thirty,—and especially if they find a more than usual plenty of cod and ling,—they judge the kraken to be at the bottom: but if they find by their lines that the water in the same place still shallows on them, they know he is rising to the surface, and row off with the greatest expedition till they come into the usual soundings of the place; when, lying on their oars, in a few minutes the monster emerges, and shews himself sufficiently, though the whole body does not appear. Its back or upper part, which seems an English mile and a half in circumference, (some have affirmed, considerably more than this,) looks at first like a number of small islands, surrounded with something that floats like sea-weeds; at last several bright points of horns appear, which grow thicker the higher they emerge, and sometimes stand up as high and large as the masts of middle-sized vessels. In a short time it slowly sinks, which is thought as dangerous as its rising; as it causes such a swell and whirlpool as draws every thing down with it, like that of Maelstrom.”
The Bishop justly regrets the omission of probably the only opportunity that ever has or may be presented of surveying it alive, or seeing it entire when dead. This, he informs us, once did occur, on the credit of the Rev. Mr. Früs, minister at Nordland, and vicar of the college for promoting Christian knowledge; who informed him, that in 1680, a kraken (perhaps a young and careless one, as they generally keep several leagues from land) came into the waters that run between the rocks and cliffs near Alstahong; where, in turning about, some of its long horns caught hold of some adjoining trees, which it might easily have torn up, but that it was also entangled in some clefts of the rocks, whence it could not extricate itself, but putrefied on the spot.
Our author has heard of no person destroyed by this monster; but he relates a report of the danger of two fishermen, who came upon a part of the water full of the creature’s thick slimy excrements, (which he voids for some months, as he feeds for some other;) they immediately strove to row off, but were not quick enough in turning to save the boat from one of the kraken’s horns, which so crushed the head of it, that it was with difficulty they saved their lives on the wreck, though the weather was perfectly calm, the monster never appearing at other times. His excrement is said to be attractive of other fish on which he feeds; which expedient was probably necessary, on account of his slow unwieldy motion, to his subsistence; as this slow motion again may be necessary to the security of ships of the greatest force and burden, which must be overwhelmed on encountering such an immense animal, if his velocity were equal to his weight; the Norwegians supposing, that if his arms, on which he moves, and with which he takes his food, were to lay hold of the largest man of war, they would pull it down to the bottom.
In confirmation of the reality of this animal, our learned author cites Debes’s Description of Faroe, for the existence of certain islands, which suddenly appear and as suddenly vanish. Many seafaring people, he adds, give accounts of such, particularly in the North Sea; which their superstition has either attributed to the delusion of the Devil, or considered as inhabited by evil spirits. But our honest historian, who is not for wronging even the Devil himself, supposes such mistaken islands to be nothing but the kraken, called by some the soe trolden, or sea-mischief; in which opinion he was greatly confirmed by the following quotation of Dr. Hierne, a learned Swede, from Baron Grippenheilm; and which is certainly a very remarkable passage, viz. “Among the rocks about Stockholm, there is sometimes seen a tract of land, which at other times disappears, and is seen again in another place. Buræus has placed it as an island, in his map. The peasants, who call it Gummars-ore, say, that it is not always seen, and that it lies out in the open sea; but I could never find it. One Sunday, when I was out amongst the rocks, sounding the coast, it happened, that in one place I saw something like three points of land in the sea, which surprised me a little, and I thought I had inadvertently passed them over before. Upon this, I called to a peasant, to inquire for Gummars-ore; but when he came, we could see nothing of it; upon which, the peasant said, all was well, and that this prognosticated a storm, or a great quantity of fish.” To which our author subjoins, “Who cannot discover that this Gummars-ore, with its points and prognostications of fish, was the kraken, mistaken by Buræus for an island, which may keep itself about that spot where he rises?” He takes the kraken, doubtless, from his numerous tentaculi, which serve him as feet, to be of the polypus kind; and the contemplation of its enormous bulk led him to adapt a passage from Ecclesiasticus, xliii. 31, 32. to it. Whether by it may be intended the “dragon that is in the sea,” mentioned Isaiah xxvii. 1. we refer to the conjecture of the reader.
After paying but a just respect to the moral character, the reverend function, and diligent investigations, of our author, we must admit the possibility of its existence, as it implies no contradiction; though it seems to encounter a general prepossession of the whale’s being the largest animal on or in our globe, and the eradication of any long prepossession is attended with something irksome to us. But were we to suppose a salmon or a sturgeon the largest fish any number of persons had seen or heard of, and the whale had discovered himself as seldom, and but in part, as the kraken, it is easy to conceive that the existence of the whale had been as indigestible to such persons then, as that of the kraken may be to others now.