154 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



There are some incidents connected with this pursuit which may, 

 perhaps, not inaptly be called the curiosities of whaling. Many of 

 these are incorporated already in this work, and it may not be inappro- 

 priate to add a few more. 



The Honolulu Commercial Advertiser in December, 1870, contained 

 an account of a harpoon which was found in a whale captured by the 

 ship Cornelius Howland, of Jew Bedford, then cruising iu the North 

 Pacific Ocean. It is the custom among whalemen to have each iron 

 stamped with initials designating the ship to which it belongs. This 

 is done to prevent dispute in case it is necessary to waif the whale, or 

 in case boats from two different ships lay claim to one which has been 

 killed. While off Poiut Barrow the Cornelius Howland took a large 

 polar whale, in the blubber of which was imbedded the head of a har- 

 poon marked "A. G.," the wound made by it having healed over. This 

 was presumed to have belonged to the bark Ansel Gibbs, also of New 

 Bedford. But she was known to have been pursuing the fishery in 

 Cumberland Inlet and its vicinity for some ten or eleven years pre- 

 viously. The obvious inference was that this whale must have found 

 his way from ocean to ocean by some channel unknown to navigators, 

 and that at some seasons of the year there must be an inter-ocean com- 

 munication. The Advertiser adds, "We have heard before of instances 

 where whales have been caught at Cumberland Inlet with harpoons in 

 them, with which they have been struck in the Arctic Ocean, but we 

 believe this is the first authenticated instance of a whale having been 

 caught in the Arctic Ocean with a harpoon iu it from the Davis Straits 

 side." 



Quite a number of instances are on record where irons have been 

 recovered, several years after they had been carried off by escaping 

 whales, by parties who were in the ships to which the harpoons 

 belonged. Thus Cheever mentions the case* of Captain Bunker, com- 

 manding the ship Howard, of New Bedford, who struck a large whale 

 in latitude 30° 30' north, longitude 154° east. The whale escaped, tak- 

 ing the iron with him. About five years after, while iu the same lati- 

 tude, but 14° farther west, he made fast to and succeeded in securing a 

 noble whale. Upon cutting him up, the identical iron lost five years 

 before proved the whale also the same. 



A more singular case yet was one reported to the editors of the New 

 Bedford Standard, in 1865, when they were shown the head of an iron 

 thrown into a whale in the Pacific Ocean, in 1802, from a boat from the 

 ship Lion, of Nantucket, Peter Paddack commander. In 1815, Captain 

 Paddack, then in command of the Lady Adams, also of Nantucket, 

 captured the same whale, and recovered his long-lost harpoon. 



The Milton, of New Bedford, in 1805 or 1866 took a whale that in 

 spouting made a shrill sound like a steam-whistle. In cutting off the 

 head the man who put his feet into the spout-holes got one of them cut. 

 * The Whale and his Captors, p. 157. 



