CHAPTER. VIL, 
APPARATUS AND METHODS OF CAPTURE; Boats; CREWS; 
AND WHALE PRODUCTS AND THEIR USES. 
At first thought a discussion of the instruments used 
in whaling seems to have but little relation either to the 
history of the industry or to its various economic phases. 
Yet in the course of time the growth of the whale fishery 
has resulted in innovations in implements and methods 
which seem worthy of at least brief notice. At other 
times the successful continuation of the fishery has 
depended largely on the improvement of implements of 
capture. 
The primitive method of capturing whales appears 
from all accounts to have been by means of the harpoon 
and lance. It is not quite clear, however, whether the 
line was at first used with the harpoon to fasten to the 
whale. Some writers say that the Indians of this coun- 
try were in the habit of capturing whales by the use of 
wooden harpoons to which logs of wood were attached as 
floats, and that by repeated attacks they occasionally 
succeeded in harrying a whale to death. It is also some- 
times stated that the American colonists followed the In- 
dian mode of capture.1 But the harping iron is referred 
to even before the first settlement of New England.? In 
the first account of whaling at Nantucket Macy’ tells of 
the harpoon being wrought, and as early as 1669, in an 
account of whaling ventures from Long Island, it is re- 
corded that of two whales attacked, “the iron broke in 
1Scammon, note, p. 204. 
2 Starbuck, p. 6. 
* Macy, p. 28. 
