Harpoons, Lances, Guns, and Boats 229 



The Whale Fishery, in speaking of the use 

 of prussic acid, says that "American whalemen 

 unanimously attribute the inauguration of this 

 enterprise to the French." Nile*' Register, on 

 September 2, 1843, sa ^ triat a French naval 

 surgeon had invented a tube-carrying harpoon of 

 a design that would spill the poison into the 

 wound, and it adds that such a method had been 

 proposed in Baltimore as early as 1837. F. C. 

 Sanford, of Nantucket, is authority for the state- 

 ment that the ship Susan, that sailed from Nan- 

 tucket on November 17, 1873, carried poisoned 

 harpoons. They were not used by the crew, how- 

 ever, according to the mate of the vessel, Mr. 

 Charles E. Allen, also a resident of Nantucket. 

 Mr. Samuel Tuck, of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, 

 New York, who was agent for the Susan, told Mr. 

 James Templeman Brown that the harpoons were 

 forged on Nantucket with slots in the head where 

 slender tubes of poison could be placed. Two 

 harpoons made in this fashion are now displayed 

 in the National Museum. 



Captain William Adams, a Scotch whaler, 

 wrote to Professor Baird as follows: 



