Greenland
Whaling
approx. WWl.
The man to the right is aiming an exploding
harpoon loaded into the cannon set in the bow of a whaling catcher
boat.
The whole process of whaling was changed
drastically when Norwegian Sven Foyn invented the exploding
harpoon in 1864. By doing so, he removed much of the danger from
whaling (though it remained a very dangerous task), but more than
anything - increased the
efficiency by which whales could be captured and made it possible
to hunt the larger and faster rorquals (baleen whales).
The gun enabled the harpooner to hit a whale
50 yards away, no longer needing to be next to the whale in a
small wooden boat. On entering the whale, the barbs of the harpoon
opened breaking a small phial of sulphuric acid which set off a
fuse to explode the bomb. So in a single action, the old
hand-thrown harpoon and hand wielded lance were rendered obsolete.
Similar explosively fired harpoons had been
around for several decades, but it was Foyn who after much trial
and experimentation perfected a workable and effective solution.
Such a new invention also required other improvements to the
boats, catching and processing gear to make the most effective use
of it.
Such a heavy harpoon gun needed a stronger boat
to be used on, so Foyn converted a steam whale catcher built the
year before in 1863, the Spes et Fides to take his new harpoon
gun. The Spes et Fides thus became the very first modern
whale catching boat.
This was the invention that allowed for
industrial whaling to begin, an event from which the world's
whaling stocks and oceanic ecosystems have yet to recover.
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