COMMERCIAL AND POLITICAL ASPECTS 



Greenland. By this time the nordcaper, the bovvhead, 

 and the bottlenose whales were all hunted. Early in 

 the eighteenth century the second phase of whaling 

 commenced when American whalers hunted the sperm 

 w^hale in temperate and tropical oceans. In 1840 there 

 were some eight hundred vessels so engaged, mostly 

 from New England ports. All these whales were slow 

 swimmers and were harpooned from boats. The sperm- 

 whale industry had practically died out by 19 18. 



Before the end of the eighteenth century there were 

 w^halers in the Falkland Islands, and we have seen that 

 these hardy seamen greatly extended our knowledge of 

 the Antarctic Islands south of America. They chiefly 

 hunted the right whale, Balcena aiistralis. Between 

 1804 and 181 7 American ships took one hundred and 

 ninety-three thousand right whales in southern waters. 

 They also took sperm whales (Physeter) and hump- 

 backs. This southern whaling lasted through most of 

 the nineteenth century, Enderby Brothers being one 

 of the best known British companies about 1840. 

 When the northern whales were killed off, the Nor- 

 wegian and Scotch whalers voyaged to the Weddell 

 and Ross seas around 1892-94. The whales, however, 

 W'Cre found to be chiefly the swift rorquals, which 

 could not be taken by the old technique. However, the 

 Norwegian, Foyn, had invented the grenade harpoon 

 some years earlier and this led to the third phase in 

 w^haling, beginning in the north about 1886. It reached 

 a climax in the north seas about 1905, and here the 

 swifter whales again became depleted by 1915. 



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