296 FOLLOW THE WHALE 



ing came when a true harpoon gun was invented. This came about 

 in 1864, but this too had a history of its own. 



About the year 1730 some Englishmen started experimenting with 

 a harpoon gun, but it was a hefted device hke a heavy blunderbuss 

 that shot a converted hand harpoon from a long barrel by means of 

 an excessive charge of black powder. The whole thing was so dan- 

 gerous and so heavy that it had to be fastened by the base of its 

 barrel to a rowlock mounted on the whaleboat's gunwale. It was not 

 a success for several reasons. First, an extreme prejudice to the de- 

 vice arose among the whalers of the period because they were still 

 pursuing right whales, and these are very shy and nervous creatures, 

 with acute hearing. The monumental explosion of the guns put these 

 animals to immediate flight, and thus greatly reduced their avail- 

 ability for slaughter at any one time or place. Worse, however, was 

 the lack of technical knowledge in the construction of the guns. 

 Metallurgically, they were very weak, and they often blew up. 

 Worst of all, the line had to be attached to the harpoon head at the 

 jront of the shaft (which, of course, had to go into the barrel) and 

 since the charge was weak, the drag of the line, however carefully 

 and freely coiled, tended to pull the harpoon to one side as it trav- 

 eled between the gun and the whale, and thus often caused it to miss 

 the target completely. The experiments were therefore soon aban- 

 doned, and the whole idea of harpoon guns got a very bad reputa- 

 tion. It was a century before another attack was made on the prob- 

 lem. The belief then was that both the charge and the harpoon should 

 be so strong the line could no longer exert any appreciable drag. 



In 1809 a man named Svend Foyn was born on the island of 

 N0tter0y near T0nsberg in Norway. He lived there, apart from end- 

 less voyages, until his death in 1894. His whole life was devoted to 

 the whaling industry, and notably to the invention of the first work- 

 able harpoon gun. This he finally achieved in 1864, but it was not 

 adopted by the industry till 1880. Thus, once again, we come back 

 full circle to the people of what we call Norway, after just about 

 a thousand years, to mark the final stage of man's pursuit of the 

 whale. Before plunging into this, however, we must digress into still 

 another little pocket of interest in order to keep our record clear. 



The English — that is to say, those people who originally devel- 

 oped, spoke, and still speak the language called genetically by that 



