IV 



SCIENCE AND STEAM 



THE death knell of old-fashioned whaling was sounded, 

 though no one then realized it, when, in 1864, a Norwe- 

 gian named Sven Foyn invented the harpoon gun. The old 

 whaling did not immediately cease, by any means — it is not 

 even yet completely extinct — but, with the harpoon gun, its 

 successor had appeared on the whaling grounds and was destined 

 wholly to replace it. 



Whalemen have always been "sot in their ways" and the in- 

 novation at first met with little favour among the established, 

 and perhaps somewhat complacent, Americans and Scotch 

 who at that time did the major part of the world's whaling — or 

 thought they did. But the Norwegians had, of course, no 

 prejudices against their own countryman's invention and in 

 the Varanger Fiords the pioneers were so successful with it that 

 in 1877 a competing company was established and by 1886 there 

 were nineteen companies, with thirty-five ships, on the Norwe- 

 gian coast. 



The small vessels and small crews made for small expenses. 

 Trips were all-day or overnight affairs, in home waters, instead 

 of the Arctic cruises of the Dundee fleet or the three- or four-year 

 voyages of the big sailing vessels out of New Bedford. The 

 harpoon gun was quick, powerful, and sure. And the new 

 quarry — finbacks, humpbacks, and blue whales — were plentiful 

 and just about defenceless against the new gear and the new 

 methods. In 1885 over a thousand of them were taken off the 

 Norwegian coast. 



But a new difficulty, too, soon appeared. The fishermen 

 were greatly alarmed by all this activity, which, they declared, 

 would scare away the fish and ruin their own means of livelihood. 



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