Apparatus and Methods of Capture. 85 
But there is no reference to their use in later years. In 
this country nets of strong manila twine were tried at the 
mouths of the rivers emptying into Cumberland Inlet.” 
At one setting 500 white whales or grampuses were 
captured and killed. Other experiments were tried in 
the same year and the year following, but the scheme does 
not seem to have been satisfactory to the promoters, for 
it was abandoned. | 
In 1852 the United States patent office granted a 
patent on a whaling apparatus which was to employ 
electricity. It consisted of a wired harpoon to be used 
from a copper sheathed boat, making a circuit from the 
generating machine in the boat through the wire, whale, 
water and boat to the machine again, The device was 
calculated to facilitate the killing of whales by electrocu- 
tion as soon as struck by the harpoon.” But as far as is 
known it was never used, though one author says,” “In 
1851 the first experiments in killing whales by electricity 
were tried.” 
The use of harpoons poisoned with prussic acid is 
variously attributed to the French and to the Scotch, and 
it is also claimed that it was never used by the American 
whalemen. Goode* states that as early as 1833 Nan- 
tucket whalemen went equipped with poisoned harpoons, 
but that they were not used, as the crew “ were frightened 
by reports concerning the death of men from handling 
poisoned blubber.’’ Such news spread rapidly through 
the whale fleet and suddenly brought to an end a practice 
which, almost beyond doubt, must have proved a very 
effective means of killing whales. 
The boats and vessels engaged in the whaling fleet have 
also undergone marked changes since the fishery began. 
*® Goode, pp. 247-248. 
71 Goode, p. 250. 
2 Ellis, p. 420. 
8 Goode, p. 248. 
