SOUTH SEAS AND THE NORWEGIANS 61 



I have suggested the division of whaling history on the basis 

 of nationaHty; it might quite as naturally be divided according 

 to the species of whale hunted. First, of course, came the 

 Biscayan right whale of those earliest Basque whalers; then 

 the Greenland right whale, and later his near relative, the 

 bowhead; after these the sperm whale. Here the history of 

 whaling and all our first-hand knowledge of whales might have 

 stopped but for the use of steam vessels and the invention of the 

 harpoon gun. 



In 1850 two steam vessels, the Pioneer and the Intrepid, went 

 into the Arctic: they were the first of their kind there. Im- 

 mediately it was manifest that difficulties and even impossibili- 

 ties for the sailing vessel might be matters of no moment to a 

 steamer, and during the decade that followed, auxiliary steam 

 engines were put into the sailing vessels then in use, and several 

 iron steamers were built. Of course, steam whaling was still 

 in the experimental stage and at first was almost constantly 

 attended by failure. The iron vessels, especially, sailed forth 

 with pride and returned, some of them, not at all. But mechan- 

 ical errors were soon corrected, and by 1873 steam whaling had 

 proved its value. 



The Arctic, of Dundee, a vessel of four hundred and thirty- 

 seven tons and seventy horsepower, substantially built and re- 

 inforced with wood and iron, brought home twenty-eight whales 

 after a four-months' cruise. She had entered the ice at Davis 

 Strait and had cruised among rolling pack ice and enormous 

 bergs into the ''north water" of Melville Bay, and far beyond. 

 The passage of the ''middle ice,'' which had taken sailing vessels 

 between thirty and sixty difficult and dangerous days, she easily 

 made in sixty hours. When she had secured her record cargo 

 she turned about and pushed through the ice again — fifty miles 

 of it. What would not steam power have meant to gallant 

 Captain Gamblin of the Dee in that unspeakable winter of 

 1837-'38. 



Such a vessel as the Arctic and such a trip were the general 

 rule of their time. The Dundee fleet of ten, some of them 

 built for steam whaling, others converted sailing vessels, all of 



