A French lithograph showing the comparative sizes of a whale, an elephant, a horse, and a giraffe.
Whales have often exceeded one hundred feet in length, and George Brown Goode, in his report on the United States Fisheries, mentions a finback having been killed that was one hundred and twenty feet long. A whale’s head is sometimes thirty-five feet in circumference, weighs thirty tons, and has jaws twenty feet long, which open thirty feet wide to a mouth that is as large as a room twenty feet long, fifteen feet high, nine feet wide at the bottom, and two feet wide at the top. A score of Jonahs standing upright would not have been unduly crowded in such a chamber.
The heart of a whale is the size of a hogshead. The main blood artery is a foot in diameter, and ten to fifteen gallons of blood pour out at every pulsation. The tongue of a right whale is equal in weight to ten oxen, while the eye of all whales is hardly as large as a cow’s, and is placed so far back that it has in direction but a limited range of vision. The ear is so small that it is difficult to insert a knitting needle, and the brain is only about ten inches square. The head, or “case,” contains about five hundred barrels, of ten gallons each, of the richest kind of oil, called spermaceti.
One of these giants, when first struck by a harpoon, can go as fast as a steam yacht, twenty or twenty-five miles an hour, but it soon slows down to its usual speed of about twelve miles, developing about one hundred and forty-five horse-power.
Mr. Roy C. Andrews, of the American Museum of Natural History, New York, was on a whaler ninety feet long, which struck a finback whale, and he says that for seven hours the whale towed the vessel, with engines going at full speed astern, almost as though it had been a rowboat.
The whale’s young are about twelve feet long at birth, and can swim as soon as they are born. So faithfully does the cow whale watch over her offspring when they are together that she will rarely move when attacked for fear of leaving the young whale unprotected, or of hurting it if she thrashes round to escape capture. It is believed that whales sometimes live to attain the age of eight hundred years. They sleep at the bottom of the ocean, which fact shows that they do not inhale air when asleep, like the warm-blooded animals, and to help them in breathing below the surface they have a large reservoir of blood to assist circulation. This spot is known to whalemen as the “life” of the whale. When “sounding” to a great depth it is estimated that the whale bears on its back the weight of twenty battleships. The strength and power of a whale are described as almost unbelievable.
ANCIENT HISTORY OF WHALING
Every one knows the story of Jonah; how he was thrown overboard to appease the gods, and how a “big fish” swallowed him and carried him ashore. It will always be a mooted question whether or not the big fish was a whale. If it were a whale, it is doubtful whether Jonah got any further than its mouth, on account of the smallness of a whale’s throat. It may be well to explain that a whale does not belong to the fish family, but is a mammal, and therefore, perhaps, this great fish mentioned wasn’t a whale.
This “fishing on a gigantic scale,” as it has been often termed, is of very ancient origin and dates back to 890 A.D., when a Norwegian, called Octhere, skirted the coast of Norway for whales.
The Biscayans, who in the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries became famous on account of their whale fishery, were the first people to prosecute this industry as a regular commercial pursuit. In this connection the French are also mentioned about 1261, using the whale for food. Also the Icelanders are believed to have whaled some time during the twelfth century. The first reference to English whaling appears during the fourteenth century, and by statutory law the whale was declared “a royal fish.” Another curious law was that the King, as Honorary Harpooner, received the head, and the Queen the tail of all whales captured along the English coast, which is very much like halving an apple, there is so little left.