Lancing a Whale.
An eighteen-foot spear is the lance—half iron half wood. The pram isswung out; and Jensen is handed the lance. We reach the whale and Jensenmakes a lunge, and the spear goes in five feet and is twisted out of hishand; the vast body rolls over, the tail rises up and up and comes downin a sea of foam.
MODERN WHALING
&
BEAR-HUNTING
A RECORD OF PRESENT-DAY WHALING WITH
UP-TO-DATE APPLIANCES IN MANY PARTS
OF THE WORLD, AND OF BEAR
AND SEAL HUNTING IN THE
ARCTIC REGIONS
BY
W. G. BURN MURDOCH, F.R.S.G.S.
AUTHOR OF
“FROM EDINBURGH TO THE ANTARCTIC”
“AN ILLUSTRATED PROCESSION OF SCOTTISH HISTORY”
“FROM EDINBURGH TO INDIA AND BURMAH”
&c. &c. &c.
With 110 Illustrations
chiefly from Drawings & Photographs
by the Author
LONDON
SEELEY, SERVICE & CO. LIMITED
38 Great Russell Street
1917
The readers of this book will be interested to learnthat the expedition from Dundee which set out forthe Antarctic regions in 1892 to the Weddell Sea,south and east of Graham’s Land, and in which the authorof the present volume took part, was the first of its kind sincethe famous expedition commanded by Sir James Ross in1842. Dr W. S. Bruce, the distinguished polar traveller andoceanographer, was the scientific naturalist, and Mr BurnMurdoch, the author of this volume, was the artist andhistorian of the expedition, which is described by his pen in“From Edinburgh to the Antarctic.” It consisted of threewhaling vessels specially built of great strength to withstandice pressure, barque rigged and fitted with auxiliary steampower. They were accompanied by a Norwegian barque ofsimilar type. The chief object of the expedition was thecapture of the Right or Bowhead whale by old methods,from small boats. For three months these vessels were continuouslyamongst the thick pack ice and enormous bergs onthe east side of Graham’s Land.
The publication of the above-mentioned book, and lecturesby Dr Bruce and Mr Burn Murdoch, revived both at homeand abroad interest in the Antarctic regions, and in 1897 theBelgica expedition followed in their wake, and this again wasfollowed by expeditions of various European nations.
During the expedition of 1892-1893 vast numbers of thelargest-sized finner whales were observed in the neighbourhoodof Erebus and Terror Gulf, and between South Georgiaand the South Shetland Islands. The report brought homeof these whales being in such numbers led to the developmentof the present great whaling industry in the SouthernSeas. Companies were formed and modern steam whalers[4]were sent South to hunt these powerful rorquals or finnerwhales. The extent of this industry and the methods ofmodern whaling are described in the first part of this volume.
In the second part, which is concerned principally with