| INTRODUCTION | |
| PAGE | |
| The development of shore whaling and its progress throughout the world—The floating factory—A modern shore station—The ship, harpoon-gun and apparatus—What shore whaling is doing for science | [1] |
| CHAPTER I | |
| MY FIRST WHALE HUNT | |
| Making ready for the hunt—Three humpbacks sighted—The first kill—Inflating the whale—Cutting in a whale by machinery—Disposition of the parts | [22] |
| CHAPTER II | |
| HOW A HUMPBACK DIVES AND SPOUTS | |
| Diving—How far down whales can go—Spouting—Construction of the blowholes | [38] |
| CHAPTER III | |
| AN EXCITING EXPERIENCE IN ALASKA | |
| A fruitless chase of two humpbacks—Another humpback sighted—It bursts from the water half under the vessel’s side | [46] |
| CHAPTER IV | |
| THE “VOICE” OF WHALES AND SOME INTERESTING HABITS | |
| The voice—How long whales can remain under water—Where whales sleep—The “double-finned” whale | [54] |
| CHAPTER V | |
| THE PLAYFUL HUMPBACK | |
| The whalebone, or baleen—What whales eat and how—Affection for young—The fighting qualities of humpbacks—Breeding habits—Nursing the baby whale with milk—A story of whale milking | [63] |
| CHAPTER VI | |
| JAPANESE SHORE STATIONS | |
| Studying whales in Japan—Japanese shore stations and their method of cutting in—Cutting in at night—Whale meat as a food | [77] |
| CHAPTER VII | |
| A JAPANESE WHALE HUNT | |
| Hunting sei whales off the coast of North Japan—The whale runs—Moving pictures—The second whale | [91] |
| CHAPTER VIII | |
| CHARGED BY A WILD SEI WHALE | |
| The first sight—The shot—The charge—The death flurry—Sharks | [107] |
| CHAPTER IX | |
| HABITS OF THE SEI WHALE | |
| A distinct species—Wandering disposition—Migration—Distinguishing characteristics—Food—Speed | [122] |
| CHAPTER X | |
| A LONG BLUE WHALE CHASE | |
| The whale runs—The ship dragged through the water—A broken harpoon line—Caught after a day’s chase | [129] |
| CHAPTER XI | |
| THE LARGEST ANIMAL THAT EVER LIVED | |
| Weight and size of a blue whale—Why whales grow so large—A new-born baby 25 feet long—The wonderful strength of a blue whale—A remarkable hunt described by J. G. Millais | [140] |
| CHAPTER XII | |
| WHAT HAS BECOME OF THE WHALE’S LEGS | |
| Watching a whale swim—The flippers and hind-limbs—Ventral folds—Blubber—A blue whale which followed a ship 24 days | [148] |
| CHAPTER XIII | |
| THE GREYHOUND OF THE SEA | |
| A finback hunt in Alaska—A finback struck by two harpoons—Finished with the lance—A humpback—A finback mother and calf | [158] |
| CHAPTER XIV | |
| SHIPS ATTACKED BY WHALES | |
| Sinking the Sorenson—Whales attacking ships—Habits of blue and finback whales—Killing a finback off the Shetland coast—Wanderings of whales | [175] |
| CHAPTER XV | |
| REDISCOVERING A SUPPOSEDLY EXTINCT WHALE | |
| Whales on the Pacific Coast—The devilfish of Korea—Living in Korea—Theft of bones—My first gray whale | [186] |
| CHAPTER XVI | |
| HOW KILLERS TEAR OUT A GRAY WHALE’S TONGUE | |
| Stampeding a herd of gray whales—Cleverness in avoiding capture—Migrations | [197] |
| CHAPTER XVII | |
| SOME HABITS OF THE GRAY WHALE | |
| What gray whales eat—Affection—Diseases—Parasites—Hair | [207] |
| CHAPTER XVIII | |
| THE WOLF OF THE SEA | |
| Captain Scott’s experience with killers—Killers in the Antarctic—The swordfish and thresher | [215] |
| CHAPTER XIX | |
| A STRANGE GIANT OF THE OCEAN | |
| The giant sperm whale—Spermaceti—Ambergris—Teeth—Scrimshawing—Food—Size—Blowing and Diving—Sperms off the Japan coast—Ferocity—Length of life in whales | [224] |
| CHAPTER XX | |
| A DEEP-SEA SPERM WHALE HUNT | |
| Old-time whaling—Killing with a hand lance—“Diary of a Whaling Cruise,” by Mr. Slocum | [238] |
| CHAPTER XXI | |
| THE RIGHT WHALE AND BOWHEAD | |
| The beginning of whaling—The right whale and bowhead—Valuable whalebone—Right whales killed with the harpoon-gun—How bowheads are hunted—The Eskimo whalers—A right whale captured at Amagansett, Long Island | [245] |
| CHAPTER XXII | |
| THE BOTTLENOSE WHALE AND HOW IT IS HUNTED | |
| Hunting the bottlenose whale—Habits of the bottlenose—Peculiarities of the ziphioid whales—Teeth of Layard’s and Gray’s whales—Skulls—Existing ziphioid whales the last survivors of an ancient race | [258] |
| CHAPTER XXIII | |
| HUNTING WHITE WHALES IN THE ST. LAWRENCE RIVER | |
| Porpoises and dolphins—Hunting white whales in the St. Lawrence River | [267] |
| CHAPTER XXIV | |
| THE BOTTLENOSE PORPOISE IN CAPTIVITY | |
| A bottlenose porpoise fishery at Cape Hatteras—“The Porpoise in Captivity,” by Dr. Charles H. Townsend | [278] |
| CHAPTER XXV | |
| THE BLACKFISH | |
| An exciting blackfish hunt in the Faroe Islands—Habits | [291] |
| CHAPTER XXVI | |
| THE PASSING OF THE WHALE | |
| The commercial extermination of the right whale—Capture of the bowhead—“Whaling in Newfoundland,” by Dr. F. A. Lucas—The American Pacific coast—Sub-Antarctic whaling—Japan—Needed legislation | [296] |
| APPENDIX | |
| Classification of the Cetacea—Diagnoses of the whales described in this book—The skeleton of the Cetacea—Adaptation as shown by the Cetacea | [307] |
| Index | [323] |
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
| PAGE | |
|---|---|
| A modern shore whaling station at Kyuquot, Vancouver Island, B. C. | [9] |
| The Orion with three humpback whales at Sechart, Vancouver Island | [10] |
| The harpoon-gun on the Rex Maru | [13] |
| The harpoon is tipped with a hollow point called the “bomb,” which is filled with powder and ignited by a time fuse | [15] |
| The harpoon after it has been fired into the body of a whale | [15] |
| A trial shot with the harpoon-gun | [16] |
| A near view as the gun is fired at a target | [18] |
| Captain Balcom at the gun on the Orion | [23] |
| Loading the harpoon-gun | [26] |
| Model of a humpback whale in the American Museum of Natural History | [28] |
| “The man in the barrel called down, ‘Whales on the port bow’!” | [29] |
| “Two men with long-handled knives began to cut off the lobes of the tail” | [32] |
| “A hollow, spear-pointed tube of steel ... was jabbed well down into the whale’s abdomen, the engines started, and the animal slowly filled with air” | [34] |
| Flensing a whale at one of the Vancouver Island stations | [36] |
| A humpback whale “sounding” | [39] |
| A humpback whale with a very white breast | [40] |
| “The tail of the humpback as the animal ‘sounds’ looks like a great butterfly which has alighted upon the water” | [43] |
| “The flukes of a big humpback just disappearing below the surface on the starboard side” | [47] |
| “The captain swung the vessel’s nose into just the right position and they appeared close beside the starboard bow” | [49] |
| “Scrambling up, I ... snapped the camera at the huge body partly hidden by the boat” | [51] |
| Bringing in a humpback at the end of the day’s hunt | [53] |
| “Suddenly, not more than two hundred fathoms in front of the ship, four humpbacks spouted and began to feed” | [58] |
| Two humpback whales swimming close together at the surface | [61] |
| A humpback whale “lobtailing” | [65] |
| The tongue of a humpback whale, which has been forced out of the animal’s mouth by air pumped into the body to keep it afloat | [68] |
| Pulling the barnacles off a humpback whale | [71] |
| A humpback partly in the water at the station in North Japan | [73] |
| The result of a single day’s hunt | [76] |
| “In some instances the whales are drawn out upon the slip in the Norwegian way” | [78] |
| “She was listing far to starboard and we could see the huge flukes of a blue whale ... waving at her bow” | [80] |
| “A steel wire cable was looped about the tail just in front of the flukes, and the huge carcass drawn slowly upward over the end of the wharf” | [81] |
| “Section by section the carcass was cut apart and drawn upward to fall into the hands of the men on the wharf and be sliced into great blocks two or three feet square” | [83] |
| “Transverse incisions were made in the portion of the body remaining in the water, a hook was fastened to a blanket piece and as the blubber was torn off by the winch the carcass rolled over and over” | [85] |
| The inner side of a strip of blubber as it is being torn from a whale | [87] |
| “What ... remains is first tried out to extract the oil, then chipped by means of hand knives, and dried in the sun for fertilizer” | [88] |
| Whale meat on the washing platforms ready to be sent to market | [89] |
| The whaling station at Aikawa, North Japan | [92] |
| A sei whale on the slip at Aikawa | [93] |
| The spout of a sei whale | [94] |
| “He ... would sometimes swim just under the surface with only the tip of the dorsal fin exposed” | [95] |
| “I pressed the button of the camera as the broad back came into view” | [97] |
| The sei whale | [98] |
| “The winch was then started and the whale drawn slowly toward the ship” | [99] |
| A sei whale at Aikawa, Japan | [101] |
| “‘There’s a whale dead ahead. He spouted six times’” | [102] |
| “The click of the camera and the crash of the gun sounding at almost the same instant” | [103] |
| “We were just off Kinka-san at half-past six, and by seven were blowing the whistle at the entrance to the bay” | [105] |
| “We hunted them for two hours, trying first one and then the other—they had separated—without once getting near enough even for pictures” | [107] |
| “He was running fast but seldom stayed down long, his high sickle-shaped dorsal fin cutting the surface first in one direction, then in another” | [108] |
| “Always the center of a screaming flock of birds which sometimes swept downward in a cloud, dipping into the waves and rising again, the water flashing in myriads of crystal drops from their brown wings” | [109] |
| A sei whale showing a portion of the soft fatty tongue | [110] |
| “In the mirror of my camera I could see the enormous gray head burst from the water, the blowholes open and send forth a cloud of vapor, and the slim back draw itself upward, the water streaming from the high fin as it cut the surface” | [112] |
| “Then turning about with his entire head projecting from the water like the bow of a submarine, he swam parallel with the ship” | [115] |
| “I was ... gazing down into the blue water and waiting to catch a glimpse of the body as it rose, when suddenly a dark shape glided swiftly under the ship’s bow” | [116] |
| “Two boat hooks were jabbed into the shark’s gills and it was hauled along the ship’s side until it could be pulled on deck” | [118] |
| Making the sei whale fast to the bow of the ship | [119] |
| A sei whale swimming directly away from the ship | [120] |
| “For many years the sei whale was supposed to be the young of either the blue or the finback whale, and it was not until 1828 that it was recognized by science as being a distinct species” | [122] |
| A sei whale fast to the ship | [123] |
| A blue whale, eighty-five feet long, at Kyuquot, Vancouver Island | [125] |
| “In the water the sei whale may be easily recognized at a considerable distance by the form of the spout and the high dorsal fin which is prominently displayed as the animal swims at the surface” | [126] |
| “The sei whale has a roving disposition and wanders restlessly from one coast to another, sometimes ... suddenly appearing in waters where it has never before been known” | [127] |
| “Suddenly a cloud of white vapor shot into our very faces and a great dripping body rounded out under the ship’s bow” | [129] |
| “For ten minutes the silence continued, then the Captain said in a quiet voice: ‘There he is, far away on the beam!’” | [131] |
| “I ran on deck just as the great brute rounded up right beside the bow and the gun flashed out in the darkness” | [134] |
| “The rope attached to the first harpoon floated backward in dangerous proximity to the propeller and it required some careful work to get the animal fast to the bow and the line safely out of the way” | [137] |
| Bringing the blue whale to the station | [138] |
| A blue whale at Aikawa, Japan | [141] |
| An eighty-two foot blue whale at Vancouver Island | [142] |
| The open mouth of a blue whale | [144] |
| The upper jaw of a blue whale, showing the mat of hairlike bristles on the inner edges of the baleen plates | [145] |
| Posterior view of a blue whale on the slip at Aikawa, Japan | [149] |
| The flipper of a humpback whale | [150] |
| After the humpback’s flipper has been stripped of blubber | [151] |
| The folds on the throat of a finback whale | [152] |
| A cross section of the folds on the breast of a humpback whale | [154] |
| The eye and ear of a blue whale | [155] |
| The skull of an eighty-foot blue whale, the skeleton of which was sent to the American Museum of Natural History from Japan | [157] |
| “The finback whale is the greyhound of the sea ... for its beautiful slender body is built like a racing yacht and the animal can surpass the speed of the fastest ocean steamship” | [159] |
| “I was standing on the bridge with the camera focused and pressed the button as they rose to the surface” | [160] |
| “An instant later came the crash of the harpoon-gun and the nearest whale, throwing its flukes and half its body out of the water, turned head down in a long dive” | [162] |
| The finback whale reaches a length of about seventy-five feet | [163] |
| “I had climbed to the barrel at the masthead ... and was watching the little pram as it neared the dying finback” | [165] |
| Marked with a flag and left to float until the end of the day’s hunt | [166] |
| The whale is made fast to the bow by a heavy chain and the ship starts on the long tow to the station | [167] |
| “Sorenson hesitated, swung the gun a little to one side and fired” | [170] |
| Bringing in a finback | [171] |
| A finback lying in the water at Aikawa just before it is “cut in” | [172] |
| Drawing up a finback at Aikawa, Japan | [173] |
| The long slender body of a finback lying on its side; the outer edges of the whalebone plates in the mouth are well shown | [175] |
| The spout of a finback whale | [177] |
| A finback whale “sounding” or taking the “big dive” | [179] |
| When sounding the finback sinks lower and lower until the dorsal fin disappears; this is the last part of the body to leave the surface | [180] |
| A finback taking an “intermediate” or “surface” dive | [182] |
| The upper jaw of a finback whale, showing the bristles on the inner edges of the baleen plates | [184] |
| The side view of a model of a gray whale in the American Museum of Natural History prepared under the direction of the author from studies made in Korea | [188] |
| A ventral view of the gray whale model | [189] |
| The whaling station at Ulsan, Korea | [190] |
| “At the port bow hung the dark flukes of a whale, the sight of which made me breathe hard with excitement” | [191] |
| Cutting in a gray whale | [193] |
| “When the winch began slowly to lift the huge black body out of the water, a very short examination told me that the kaku kujira really was the long-lost gray whale” | [194] |
| Cutting through the body of a gray whale | [198] |
| The posterior part of a gray whale | [200] |
| The flukes of a gray whale | [203] |
| A strip of blubber from the back of a gray whale with the short flipper at the end of it | [205] |
| Captain Melsom about to lance a gray whale from the pram | [209] |
| After the death stroke | [211] |
| “The killer is the wolf of the sea and like the land wolves hunts in packs of twenty or more individuals which will attack and devour almost anything that swims” | [216] |
| A posterior view of a killer showing the high dorsal fin | [217] |
| An anterior view of a killer | [222] |
| A sperm whale lying on the slip at Kyuquot, Vancouver Island | [224] |
| Stripping the blubber from the head of a sperm whale | [226] |
| “The sperm ... has from eighteen to twenty-five massive teeth on each side of the lower jaw; these fit into sockets in the upper jaw and assist in holding the whale’s food” | [228] |
| Cutting away the “junk” from the “case” of a sperm whale | [229] |
| An interior view of a young male sperm whale | [231] |
| The tongue of a sperm whale; it is strikingly different from the enormous flabby tongue of the whalebone whales | [233] |
| The head of the sixty-foot sperm whale, the skeleton of which was sent to the American Museum of Natural History, from Japan | [234] |
| A posterior view of the head of the Museum’s sperm whale | [236] |
| A female sperm whale at Aikawa, Japan | [239] |
| A posterior view of the Museum’s sperm whale | [241] |
| Cutting in a sperm whale at sea by the old-time method | [242] |
| A model of a right whale in the American Museum of Natural History | [246] |
| A small (calf) right whale on the beach at Amagansett, L. I. | [247] |
| Stripping the blubber from the large right whale at Amagansett | [250] |
| The Amagansett whale covered with ice after the blubber had been stripped off the carcass | [252] |
| “We had to stand in freezing water while cutting away at the huge mass of flesh which encased the bones” | [254] |
| The baleen of a right whale | [256] |
| The white whale, or white porpoise | [268] |
| The posterior part of a white whale | [271] |
| “A big white fellow slipped under only a hundred feet away, headed directly for us” | [273] |
| “We beached it in a sandy cove, where the gray rock wall rose in a jagged mass, making a perfect background for the white body, its purity intensified by the bright red streaks of blood which dripped from the bullet holes” | [276] |
| “They are taken with a net of extra heavy twine, about 1,000 feet long, which is placed about 200 yards outside the line of surf and parallel with it” | [279] |
| “Thirty-three porpoises were beached in the haul of the seine which provided our specimens” | [281] |
| “Immediately after their capture at Hatteras ... the porpoises were placed for 24 hours in a deep salt water pond, just back of the ocean beach” | [285] |
| “The captive porpoises are very lively, and keep swimming day and night, rising to blow usually with each circuit of the pool” | [288] |
| A school of blackfish at Cape Cod | [293] |
| A Pacific blackfish (Globicephalus scammoni) | [294] |
| A skeleton of a finback whale in the American Museum of Natural History | [303] |
WHALE HUNTING
WITH GUN AND CAMERA
INTRODUCTION
THE DEVELOPMENT OF SHORE WHALING
Although the commercial products of whales have contributed largely to the comfort and welfare of the civilized world for over a thousand years, never have the animals been of greater economic importance than they are today.
It is true that the magnificent fleet of ships which had its birth in the New England States has passed away, and that the smoke of cotton-mills now drifts over the famous old city of New Bedford where once the harbor was filled with the towering masts of scores of whaling vessels.
But as one chapter of whaling history closed another opened and the scene shifted to Norway where Tønsberg, a little city in Christiania Bay, has become the Alpha and Omega of the modern whaling alphabet. It was there, in 1864, that Svend Foyn invented the harpoon-gun and brought into existence the sturdy little steamships which were destined to take the place of New England’s fleet, destroyed by the Confederate raiders during the Civil War.
Although despised by the “deep-water” whalers of New Bedford, nevertheless shore whaling has rapidly grown into a world industry which today, in the height of its prosperity, yields a revenue of nearly $70,000,000 a year.