sperm whale filled me with 

 astonishment that has increased 

 through the years'. He noted 

 that 'killing a harpooned sperm 

 whale... if you do kill 

 him. . .may take anywhere from 

 ten minutes to a day or 

 longer'" (Mathews 1968). 



Whaling can be dated back as early as 890 A.D. along the coast of Norway. 

 Most noted for whaling during the 12th through 15th centuries were the 

 Basques, who pursued these mammals on a commercial basis for oil and food 

 products ( Whale Fishery of New England 1968). In pursuit of the right whale, 

 the Basques ventured farther and farther from their home ports, eventually 

 covering a large portion of the North Atlantic. The "right" whale was so 

 called because it was considered the right whale to catch, due to its slow 

 swimming speed, long baleen, thick blubber, and because it floated when dead 

 (Hill 1975). The French and the Icelanders were also known to have hunted 

 whales during the 12th century, while English whaling was first reported 

 during the 14th century. At that time the whale was declared "a royal fish," 

 and the head and the tail of all whales caught along the English coast were 

 given to the king and queen respectively. 



During the early 1600s, large herds of bowhead whales were recorded by 

 explorers in the Arctic Ocean who were seeking a northwest passage to the 

 Orient. These stocks along the groups of islands known as Spitsbergen, north 

 of Norway, were quite valuable because of the bowhead' s long baleen and thick 

 blubber, which is almost 2 feet (.6 m) thick. So plentiful were these stocks 

 that when baleen prices were high, it was not uncommon for only the prized 

 baleen to be saved, while the remainder of the whale was discarded. The 

 British sent their first Arctic expedition in 1611 and the Dutch in 1612. By 

 1636 there were indications of a decline in bowhead stocks around eastern 

 Greenland and by 1720 the Spitsbergen fishery was ended. While the Europeans 

 whaled along Canada's eastern Arctic, American whalers hunted the bowhead in 

 the Bering and Chukchi Seas. 



Early explorers of the New England coast found large numbers of whales. The 

 native Indians, using canoes, hunted the whales with stone-headed arrows and 

 spears that were attached to short lines with wooden floats. The Eskimos were 

 also whale hunters in the Arctic waters during this time period. They 

 invented the "toggle" harpoon, which was widely used and later improved upon 

 in 1848 by a New Bedford resident. 



During settlement of the New England colonies, whaling in nearby waters began 

 to grow. By 1650, suits over the ownership of dead whales, claims of rival 

 whalers, and laws governing drift whales were known to exist (Katona et al. 

 1977). Regulations stipulated that the government, the town, and the owner 

 all received one third of every whale taken. By 1662 the church also was 

 given a portion of the take. 



The success of the Plymouth colony spurred on other colonies to engage in 

 whaling, among them Salem and Hartford, Connecticut. Hartford had a 

 recognized whaling industry as early as 1647 but did not prosper ( Whale 

 Fishery of New England 1968 ) . By 1748 it was believed that whalers may have 



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