326 WHALING 



They appealed to their Government and got a law prohibiting 

 whaling in Norwegian waters. So the whalers were obliged to 

 move on. In 1894 they began whaling off the Faroe Islands 

 and before long they had six stations there. 



These near-home waters, however, promised hardly room 

 enough, and in 1892, Captain C. A. Larsen left Norway for 

 the Antarctic and sub-Antarctic oceans. The next year 

 Captain Sven Foyn himself went into the Far South and, though 

 neither captain took whales, having fitted for sperm and right 

 whaling only and found both those varieties notably absent, 

 they brought back report of humpback whales in great abun- 

 dance. 



Norwegian coast whaling continued to be profitable, and for 

 a time nothing further was done about the Far Southern whal- 

 ing. In 1892, also, four Dundee whalers went South and later 

 tried to introduce modern Norwegian methods there; but not 

 for another fifteen years or more did either Scotch or Nor- 

 wegians begin to realize the great wealth of these new whaling 

 grounds. 



Meanwhile^ a Swedish South Polar expedition went out in 

 1901 under command of Captain Larsen. His vessel, the Ant- 

 arctic, was wrecked, and an Argentine sloop rescued all hands 

 and took them to Buenos Aires, where Captain Larsen went to 

 work to organize a whaling company. In 1904 it was founded, 

 the Compaiiia Argentina de Pesca, and began operations at 

 Gritviken in South Georgia. This was the very first company 

 in sub-Antarctic whaling, and others, most of them Norwegian, 

 were not long in following. 



At first there were multitudes of humpbacks; as they were 

 thinned out, whether by intensive whaling or by more natural 

 causes we do not yet know, finbacks and blue whales were taken 

 in their place. What a hopeless contrast — for the old-timer — 

 is the modern whaler! A single vessel nowadays may take in 

 one season more than three hundred whales. In the early 

 part of the century, off South Georgia and the South Shetlands 

 (for, early in the history of Far Southern whaling bases were 

 established at the South Shetlands) more than ten thousand 



