WHALING 541 



the front part of the. harpoon. The barb jams in the fish at 

 a right angle to the shank of the harpoon, and if it once gets 

 a good hold, there ought to be little fear of its drawing. 

 They seemed to do well for Bottlenosing, and one Norwegian 

 skipper told us it was not an uncommon thing for them to kill 

 a fish dead. 



Scotch whalers had at that time an objection to this gun on 

 the grounds, as far as the writer could make out, that there was 

 no ' Proof House ' in Norway to test guns, and in consequence 

 no guarantee against their bursting. 



Harpoons are made of soft Swedish iron, which will bend 

 into any shape and not break. Great care must be taken in 

 their construction, as the fish twists them into the most extra- 

 ordinary shapes, and any flaw or bad piece of work might 

 result in a fracture entailing the loss of a valuable fish. The 

 shapes and patterns of the barbs are innumerable, and the 

 writer has only been able to give diagrams of a few of the 

 principal at present in use. 



WHALE FISHERIES OF FINMARKEN, NORWAY 



The whales on these stations are too strong and rapid in 

 their movements to be successfully captured in the ordinary 

 way, and not much appears to have been done with them until 

 Captain Svend Foyn, of Tonsberg, invented and patented in 

 1860 a particular kind of harpoon which is fired from a swivel 

 gun in the bows of a small steamer. 



The guns are steel muzzle-loaders, and the gun harpoon 

 contains a shell which bursts when the fish is fastened. For 

 this purpose the barbs of the harpoon are made movable, and 

 secured by a piece of rope yarn which either slips off in passing 

 through the flesh, or breaks when the strain of the line comes 

 on the harpoon. The opening of the barbs, four in number, 

 breaks a glass tube of sulphuric acid, which runs down into 



