240 FOLLOW THE WHALE 



First, it has only four fingers in its flippers; but much stranger are 

 its ribs. It has more than any other whale, and they are flattened 

 and immensely broad from front to back, forming an almost solid 

 barrel of bone around the internal organs. What this is for we do 

 not know, but it has been surmised that it is to hold the body out 

 in deep-diving operations. Despite the fact that no other baleen 

 whale makes deep dives, this theory is considerably strengthened by 

 the fact that the ribs are but loosely attached to the backbone, pre- 

 sumably so that they can bulge outward to counteract pressure. 



Truly Australian whaling became extinct with the end of the bay 

 whaling about 1850, but several ports in that country, Tasmania, 

 and New Zealand continued to make gestures towards the spermers 

 for twenty-five years. Thus, Sydney remitted all port charges to 

 whalers in 1871, and Otago in New Zealand offered five hundred 

 pounds to the first ship which would refit there, but found no 

 takers. It was over half a century before an entirely new industry 

 sprang up, using motorboats to pursue quite another kind of whale, 

 which we shall have cause to mention later. 



The end of the Australian enterprise did not mean the end of 

 either British South Sea whaling or the British industry as a whole, 

 though it presaged a critical period in whaling throughout the world. 

 There were many contributing factors, but principal among these 

 was the discovery of petroleum. Meantime, the British whaling fleet 

 in the Arctic had fared no better, and by 1850 was reduced to 

 thirty-one ships. Ten years later it suddenly revived, for reasons we 

 will soon learn. The high tide of British whaling was about the year 

 1 8 19 at a time when the American fleet was at its lowest ebb. As the 

 latter increased again, the British declined and they had already 

 practically given up the effort when the Civil War broke out. 



It is the great outburst of Yankee activity following this interlude 

 which we must now turn to examine. 



