History of whaling
Whaling has a very extensive history. This article discusses whaling prior to the "modern" era of whaling when conservation became an important international issue.
Pre-historic to medieval times
Humans have engaged in whaling since pre-historic times. The oldest known method of catching whales is to simply drive them ashore by placing a number of small boats between the whale and the open sea and attempting to frighten them with noise, activity, and perhaps small, non-lethal weapons such as arrows. Typically, this was used for small species, such as Pilot Whales, Belugas and Narwhals.
The next step was to employ a drogue: a floating object such as a wooden drum or an inflated sealskin which was tied to an arrow or a harpoon, in the hope that, after a time, the whale would tire enough to be approached and killed. Several cultures around the world practiced whaling with drogues, including the Inuit, Native Americans, and the Basque people of the Bay of Biscay. Archaeological evidence from Ulsan in South Korea suggests that drogues, harpoons and lines were being used to kill large whales as early as 6000BC. Petroglyphs (rock carvings) unearthed by researchers at the Museum of Kyungpook National University show Sperm Whales, Humpback Whales and Northern Right Whales surrounded by boats. Similarly-aged cetacean bones were also found in the area, reflecting the importance of whales in the prehistoric diet of coastal people.
The Basque fishery
By medieval times, the Basque fishery had become a significant industry, with whale meat and blubber exported to many parts of Europe. The operation was strictly coastal: watchmen manned lookout towers and when whales were sighted, rang a bell to alert the boat crews. When a whale was killed, it was towed ashore for cutting up and processing.
The type of whale sought was at that time abundant in the North Atlantic and particularly in the Bay of Biscay: the right whale—named because it was the "right" whale to hunt. It was, at least by comparison with other whales, easy to kill, non-aggressive, rich in both baleen and oil, and above all, the carcass often floated. (The particular right whale hunted was the one now known as the Atlantic Northern Right Whale.)
Eventually, during or before the 16th century, Basque whalemen tired of the low success rate of the drogue method (many a harpooned whale would simply swim off into the distance and never be seen again) and adopted the fast-fish method: using the entire whaleboat as a drogue. The technique evolved a great deal over the centuries and varied in detail from one whaling nation to another, but essentially involved having a very long line in the boat that could be paid out as the whale sounded and hauled back in as it neared the surface. After making repeated attempts to escape, the exhausted whale could be killed.
This was considerably more dangerous than the drogue method but resulted in a higher proportion of successful attempts—something that was becoming a necessity at the time, because although the Basque fishery was tiny by comparison with those of later years, right whales were becoming rare near the coasts of Europe. As early as 1372, Basque ships were crossing almost to the other side of the North Atlantic to whale on the Grand Banks near Newfoundland. By the late 16th century, right whales were almost exterminated in the eastern North Atlantic and Basque, Norwegian and Icelandic whalers were traveling as far afield as the Gulf of St Lawrence and to the edges of the Greenland ice-pack.
The Atlantic Arctic fishery
With the Atlantic Northern Right Whale nearing commercial extinction in the early 17th century, news came from fur traders sailing to Archangel of vast numbers of another type of right whale far to the north. Originally known as the Greenland Right Whale, it is better known now by the name given to it by American whalemen in later years, the Bowhead Whale. The initial rush to the "Northern Goldfield" started with an English company in 1611 and centered on the waters near Spitzbergen. A five-way international struggle soon developed over whaling rights: there were armed clashes between whaling crews and naval vessels were sent to provide extra firepower. In 1618, the English fleet was so embroiled in the struggle against other whalers that it returned from Spitzbergen without having caught a single whale.
A compromise peace was negotiated shortly afterwards, and for the next 30 years whalers of many nations conducted the "Bay Fishery". Bowhead Whales were present in such numbers that there was no need to leave the coastal waters in search of them. Whalers sailed to Spitzbergen, anchored, and set up temporary processing stations on the shore for the summer season. Fleets of three or four small, open boats called shallops would work together to catch and kill a whale, then tow it ashore for flensing (cutting the blubber into long strips) ready to be boiled down into oil, which was stored in wooden casks.
Semi-permanent shore stations were established and, for the 30-odd years that the boom lasted, the Dutch whaling settlement of Smeerenburg north-west of Spitzbergen hosted hundreds of whaling ships each year. By 1645, the coastal whales had been exterminated and Smeerenburg was deserted. The hunt for Bowhead Whales continued on the open seas.
Gradually, whaling ships became more self-sufficient. Flensing took place on any nearby shore, then on ice-floes (it became the custom to moor the ship to a large ice-floe and drift south with it for the season) and eventually on the open seas with the carcasses tied to the side of the ship. Different nations adopted different methods: most packed the blubber into casks to be boiled down ashore; the Basques (and a hundred years later the Americans) preferred to risk the perils of fire on a wooden boat to boil down their oil while at sea.
As Bowhead Whales became scarce in the North Atlantic, operations shifted to ever more difficult areas. The Davis Strait (between Newfoundland and Greenland) was fished out, and whalers penetrated into Baffin Bay, then still further north-east past the Melville Bay ice-pack into what was known as the North Water. Ships were lost in the ice every year, many ships in bad years. In 1830, of the 91 British ships to enter Davis Straits, 19 were lost.
The few remaining Atlantic Bowhead Whales became prohibitively expensive to hunt. By the early 20th century, there were only a handful of ships left whaling in the North Atlantic, and although whalebone could be sold for £3500 a ton, there was little to be had. In 1910, for example, 10 Scottish whalers sailed for the Arctic but between then returned with 18 Pilot Wales, 389 Belugas, 1697 Walruses, 4549 seals, 242 Polar Bears, and no Bowhead Whales at all.
When the First World War broke out, the fishery was abandoned completely.
The Pacific Arctic fishery
American whalers were active participants in the hunt for Right and Bowhead Whales in the North Atlantic and the Arctic through the 18th and 19th centuries, and as Atlantic stocks dwindled, whalers from the United Stated switched their attention to the North Pacific. Here, the Pacific Northern Right Whale—a species very nearly identical to the familiar but now scarce Atlantic Northern Right Whale—was as-yet unexploited.
As had been the case in the Atlantic, stocks in the more readily accessible areas were soon depleted, and in 1848 the first of many American whalers pushed north through the Bering Strait into the Arctic Ocean. Bowhead Whales were plentiful, and during the 1870s the American Arctic fishery became the largest in the world. It was a short-lived boom, however, as the Pacific Arctic was fished out within just a few decades.
The Sperm Whale fishery
Along the eastern seaboard of the United States, a relatively small-scale shore-based whaling industry was well established by the middle of the 17th century, mostly using the drogue method, and hunting both Right and Humpback whales. Humpbacks usually sink after death, but are placid and easy to approach. They were usually taken close inshore and buoyed: after a few days, decomposition gasses would bring the carcass to the surface, from where it could be towed onto a beach and cut up at low tide.
The coastal fishery slowly dwindled as inshore stocks were exhausted. The inefficient drogue method (which had allowed many whales to escape, usually to die afterwards) was gradually abandoned in favour of the efficient but more dangerous fast fish method. By the middle years of the 18th century, the coastal fishery had drawn to a close. In the meantime, however, New England whalers had discovered how to catch the Sperm Whale—a species previously considered impossible to hunt.
In 1700 a Sperm Whale was stranded at Nantucket and when boiled down by the villagers, proved to yield very high quality oil. In 1712 a small Nantucket whaler, blown off-course in a gale, chanced upon a Sperm Whale and succeeded not only in killing it, but also in towing the carcass back to shore. Within a few years, deep-sea whalers were operating from several New England ports to hunt Sperm Whales.
Initially, the blubber was cut into blocks and stored in barrels to be boiled down at shore stations, but this soon proved impractical as, unlike the baleen whales, Sperm Whales are mainly found in tropical and temperate waters, where decomposition is rapid. In consequence, as ships grew bigger and voyages longer, the New England whalemen constructed brick tryworks on the decks: pairs of large copper vats, fueled by blubber scrap fires and cooled by a tray of sea water underneath to prevent the deck catching alight. The oil was drawn off into barrels; the spermaceti and ambergris (if any) stored separately, and the remainder of the carcass cut loose to be eaten by sharks.
American whalers introduced several other innovations, including the cutting-in stage (a wooden platform that could be lowered beside the ship to aid in flensing on the high seas), and a lighter, double-ended whaleboat with a complicated and dangerous pulley system running down its length, which allowed the entire crew to grasp the whaleline when hauling in a tiring but still active Sperm Whale.
The American whaling industry boomed. Despite the near-total destruction of the fleet by the American War of Independence and the War of 1812, in 1846 it reached its peak with no less than 732 ships, most of them engaged in the Sperm Whale fishery. Other countries followed suit and as early as 1788 a British whaler rounded Cape Horn, entering the Pacific Ocean and extending the Sperm Whale hunt to the South Seas. The American fleet began to follow in 1791—the first being the Beaver of Nantucket (the same ship that had previously been involved with the Boston Tea Party).
As the Sperm Whales of the Atlantic were fished out, the Pacific became increasingly important to the industry, and voyages of two and even four years became routine. (It was said, not entirely in jest, that a Southseasman did not bother to say goodbye to his family if embarking on a mere transatlantic voyage.) For the newly-settled English colonies of Australia and New Zealand, the proximity of the southern whaling grounds provided the first real export industry.
Three events brought the Sperm Whale fishery to a close. First, even the vast Pacific Ocean was becoming fished out. Second came the American Civil War and a third wholesale destruction of the United States whaling fleet. Finally, there came the discovery of petroleum in 1859, which over next few decades began to push the price of whale oil down. The American industry gradually faded away, the long-established New England ports giving way to San Francisco and Honolulu, and most whalers spending the northern summer in the Pacific Arctic hunting Bowheads, and the Austral summer in the south Pacific. By the end of the century, low oil prices and scarce whales had brought the Sperm Whale fishery to a close.
The rorqual fishery
Up until the later years of the 19th century, rorquals were never hunted. Despite the obvious attractions—rorquals were plentiful in many waters, and offered vast quantities of both whalebone and blubber—they were simply too dangerous and difficult to handle. Until this time, the only rorqual fishery of any note had been the short-lived and strictly shore-based taking of the relatively small Humpback Whale off the coast of New England.
A gun for killing whales was not a new idea. Guns had been fitted into the bows of whaleboats as far back as 1732, but never become popular, mainly because it was too difficult to aim them accurately from a small boat on a rough sea, but also because it formed an obstruction in the bows of the boat, and because the noise of it scared other whales away. The steam-driven whaler was not a new idea either: these had become common in the dying days of the North Atlantic fishery, and had allowed whalers to venture further into the northern ice packs in search of the last few Bowhead Whales than had been possible with sail and oars. The explosive head was also an old idea. Two variants, the bomb-lance and the darting-gun were in common use in the Arctic fishery, particularly when hunting small, fairly easily-killed species such as pilot and the bottlenose whales.
The combination of these three well-known technologies, however, was new when, in 1865, Svend Foyn of Norway mounted a harpoon-gun with an explosive head in the bows of a small, steam-driven whaler, with the intention of hunting the only whales that were still common in Scandinavian waters, the rorquals.
To begin with, the steam catchers were underpowered (they still relied on sail for most purposes), small enough to have great difficulty in hauling in a large Blue or Fin Whale, and they operated from shore stations. It took about 20 years for the innovation to become widespread.
In previous times, the commercial exploitation of whales was a major business, supporting large fleets engaged in their pursuit. In the heyday of whaling during the 19th and early 20th centuries, large species such as the Humpback Whale and Blue Whale were the primary targets. Whaling ships often spent years at sea with little or no contact with the rest of humanity. Whales were primarily hunted for the oil contained in their bodies. Some species, once abundant, were killed in numbers reaching tens of thousands annually, and approached extinction. By the mid-20th century, with the depletion of the stocks, the declining market for whale oil, and general public disapprobation of the hunting of rare species, commercial whaling decreased to the point where the industry nearly vanished.
The subject of whaling is central to the novel Moby-Dick by the American novelist Herman Melville.
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