xiv GREENLAND WHALE FISHERY 203 



but that of Davis Straits and Lancaster Sound is still re- 

 munerative, owing to the very high price that whalebone has 

 lately been fetching. At the beginning of the century the 

 average value was from 70 to 90 a ton, but a few years 

 ago a sale was effected at the enormous sum of 2650 per 

 ton ; this is the highest price which has ever been given for 

 it, and recently it has somewhat declined. In 1893 four 

 Dundee vessels secured between them twenty-seven whales. 

 An average-sized Greenland whale will produce about fifteen 

 hundredweight of whalebone and about fifteen tons of oil. 

 The Greenland fishery begins early in May, and goes on to 

 the end of September. A few vessels remain all winter in 

 Cumberland Inlet, ready to take advantage of the opening of 

 the ice in the following spring. The Arctic right whale, 

 called locally by the American whalers the "bowhead," has 

 since 1848 been regularly hunted in the neighbourhood of 

 Behring Strait and the Okhotsk Sea, where its southern limit, 

 according to Scammon, is about 54. 



Although doubtless individual sperm whales approaching 

 near the shore, especially in the neighbourhood of the right 

 whale fisheries, had often fallen a prey to man, the systematic 

 capture of this species is of recent date compared to that of 

 some other kinds. It began about the end of the seventeenth 

 century, from the Atlantic coasts of North America,, especially 

 the part then called New England, at first only from the 

 shore, but afterwards in sea-going vessels from Nantucket, 

 New Bedford, and other ports, which gradually extended their 

 voyages into the Indian and Pacific Oceans. From the year 

 1775 vessels engaged in this trade (assisted for a time by 

 Government bounties) regularly left the mouth of the Thames 

 for the South Seas, making voyages of three or four years' 

 duration ; but since 1853 the business has been abandoned by 

 the English, and what little remains of it has almost entirely 

 reverted into the hands of the Americans. At one time our 

 Australian Colonies had a considerable number of ships 

 engaged in the sperm whale fishery, and a few still sail 

 every year from Hobart Town. Sperm oil has fallen so 

 greatly in price that its production is now hardly a 

 remunerative industry, and it has found a rival, possessing 



