1919] Subantarctic Whales and Whaling 537 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING. 

 Friday, May 16, 1919. 



Sir James Crichton-Browne, J.P. M.D. LL.D. D.Sc. F.R.S., 

 Treasurer and Vice-President, in the Chair. 



S. F. Harmer, Sc.D. F.R.S. M.R.I., Director of the Natural 

 History Departments of the British Museum. 



Subantarctic Whales and Whaling." 



[Abstbact.] 



The history of Whaling in Northern waters, and of the hunting of 

 Sperm Whales in warmer seas, has often been written, and some of 

 the principal facts relating to these subjects are matters of common 

 knowledge. There is reason to believe that the existence of a 

 whaling industry, which was inaugurated just outside the South 

 Polar Circle after the commencement of the present century, is by 

 no means generally known. Although Captain Cook, Sir James 

 Ross and others had many years before reported the presence of 

 whales in those latitudes, no practical advantage was taken of the 

 information under fourteen years ago ; and since that date the 

 industry has eclipsed in importance all that had been done previously, 

 even when the Greenland Whale " fishery " was at its height. 



In 1892 Capt. C. A. Larsen left Norway for the far South, which 

 he reached in the October of that year. No whaling was done, and 

 an Expedition to the same regions, fitted out by Capt. Svend Foyn 

 in the next year, was also unproductive of whales, mainly for the 

 reason that it had been intended to hunt Right Whales and Sperm 

 Whales. The Norwegian captains brought home, however, a very 

 vivid impression of the enormous number of whales frequenting 

 Subantarctic waters ; and the fact that they at first made no further 

 ventures was due to the profitable nature of the whaling in the neigh- 

 bourhood of the Norwegian coasts. Dr. W. S. Bruce had simultane- 

 ously (1892) accompanied four vessels of the Dundee whaling fleet 

 to the Antarctic, and had been similarly impressed with the abundance 

 of whales in these waters. A meeting was shortly afterwards held in 

 the rooms of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society at Edinburgh^ 

 to advocate the use of the modern Norwegian methods of whaling in 

 the South ; but the proposal was not carried, and no practical steps 

 were taken. 



Capt. Larsen subsequently became the Commander of the 



* Published by permission of the Trustees of the British IMuseum. 



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