24 WHALING AND BEAR-HUNTING 



hunting from the Falkland Islands and other dependencies. 

 In the neighbourhood of Cape Horn last year their gross 

 return amounted to 1,350,000. 



These Balaenoptera, averaging fifty to ninety feet, are fast 

 swimmers and when harpooned go off at a great speed and 

 require an immense harpoon to hold them, and when dead 

 they sink, and their weight is sufficient to haul a string of 

 small boats under the sea. To bring them to the surface a 

 very powerful hawser is attached to the harpoon, and is 

 wound up by a powerful steam winch on the ninety-foot 

 steamer, which can be readily towed by the whale, but which 

 is also sufficiently buoyant to pull it to the surface when it 

 is dead and has sunk. 



In order that a whale may not break this five-inch hawser 

 (or five and a half inches in circumference) the little vessel 

 or steamer must be fairly light and handy, so as to be easily 

 swung round. If the steamer were heavy and slow, the hawser, 

 however thick, would snap, as it sometimes does even with 

 the small vessel when the whale puts on a sudden strain. 



In the old style the Greenland whale which floated when 

 it was dead was pulled alongside the sailing-vessel, when 

 the whalebone was cut out of its mouth and stowed on 

 board, as was also the fat or blubber, and the carcass was 

 left to go adrift. The sperm also floats when dead. 



But the " modern whales," as I call them, when killed are 

 towed ashore and pulled upon a slip at a station or alongside 

 a great magazine ship anchored in some sheltered bay and are 

 there cut up, whilst the little steam-whaleboat killer goes off 

 in search of other whales. All parts of the body, at a fully 

 equipped shore station, even the blood, of these finners are 

 utilised, the big bones and flesh being ground up into guano 

 for the fertilisation of crops of all kinds, and the oil and small 

 amount of whalebone are used for many purposes. The oil 

 is used for lubrication, soap, and by a new "hardening 

 process " is made as firm as wax and is used for cooking, 

 etc. Some of the whalebone fibre is used for stiffening silk 

 in France, but of these uses of the products we may only 

 give the above indication, for every year or two some new 

 use is being found for whale products. 



