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WHALE FISHERY OF NEW ENGLAND 63 



whale oil. Most of the Pacific steam whalers are now provided with a 

 harpoon gun invented by Svend Foyn, a Norwegian. This gun is 

 placed in the bow, and to the harpoon is attached a rope with which 

 to play the whale, as one does a fish with a rod and reel, but there is 

 little romance in this method of whaling. 



In modern whaling the flesh is made into guano and the bones and 

 blood into fertilizer, and even the water in which the blubber has 

 been "tried out" is used in making glue. The meat is to-day sold 

 to Japan, and, if the weather is very cold and the supply of fish is 

 limited, a whale might bring there as much as four thousand dollars 

 by utilizing all the by-products as well as the meat, which is some- 

 times canned. In America a whale is now valued at about two hundred 

 dollars, but, if the entire carcass is utilized, it might bring one thousand 

 dollars. 



From the Whalemen's Shipping List, still published in New Bedford, 

 it can be figured that the total whaling fleet in America last year (1913) 

 consisted of thirty-four vessels, twenty hailing from New Bedford, 

 eleven from San Francisco, two from Provincetown, and one from 

 Stamford, Conn. The Atlantic fleet, however, reported a total catch of 

 over twenty thousand barrels of sperm oil and one thousand pounds 

 of whalebone during the year 1913, which is a considerably larger 

 amount than for the year previous. 



Whaling in stout wooden ships on the far seas of the East and the 

 West is no longer carried on, for the glory and the profit of the industry 

 have gone never to return. Substitute products have come in, and to- 

 day the little whaling that is still done is along the coasts of the Antarctic 

 and Arctic Oceans, off the shores of Western Africa, Northern Japan, 

 New Zealand, California, and South America, and in the main it is 

 carried on in stout iron steamers. Ere long the last whaleship will 

 disappear from the sea and only the romance of a great industry will 

 remain. 



Corpora aa r qau<&nt immania toflrrr Cfta- Sif varjs ttfu, varyi frriunmr a 



A very old picture of whale-killing in the 17th century. 



