Harpoons, Lances, Guns, and Boats 207 



forging these special weapons, and razor steel 

 was used in making the cutting edges and points. 



The first toggle-iron made for an American 

 whaler was forged by Lewis Temple, a negro 

 harpoon maker living in New Bedford. He 

 introduced it in the year 1848, and it has been 

 the most popular harpoon among American 

 whalemen since that year. (The Whale Fishery.) 



In 1850 Captain C. F. Brown, of Warren, 

 Rhode Island, invented a harpoon that had 

 a chisel-shaped point. The sides of the chisel 

 were not sharpened to a cutting edge and the 

 barbs were both twisted to one side in a curve 

 like the thread of a screw. The forward edges 

 of ordinary harpoons were necessarily sharp 

 and they sometimes cut so large a hole in the 

 flesh of the whale that the harpoon drew out 

 when a strain was brought on it. The curved, 

 flangelike barbs of the chisel-pointed harpoon, 

 it was supposed, would engage themselves in 

 uncut flesh when a strain was brought on the 

 harpoon, and hold under all circumstances. The 

 conservative whalemen, however, never took a 

 fancy to this invention. 



