whaling the hunting of whales for the oil that can be rendered from their flesh, for meat, and for baleen (whalebone). Historically, whale oil was economically the most important.

Early Whaling

Whaling for subsistence dates to prehistoric times. The early people of Korea were hunting whales as far back as 5000 BC, and those of Norway began whaling at least 4,000 years ago. Various peoples of the NW North American coast and the Arctic have a long tradition of whaling. Whaling, done from canoes or skin boats, often when migrating pods of whales passed nearby, was a very dangerous undertaking. Over time, many, such as the Qwidicca-atx (Makah) people of the Olympic peninsula, developed set spiritual and hunting practices that became the core of their culture.

Early Commercial Whaling

The hunting of whales is thought to have been pursued by the Basques from land as early as the 10th cent. and in Newfoundland waters by the 14th cent. It is not until the middle of the 16th cent., however, that the appearance of Basques in those waters is established by record. Whaling on a large scale was first organized at Spitsbergen at the beginning of the 17th cent., largely by the Dutch who, with the Basques, apparently developed methods of flensing and boiling. The Dutch were at first in competition with the English Muscovy Company of London, but before its collapse in 1625 they had gained ascendancy; in 1623 they established the port of Smeerenberg. Large profits continued only until c.1640, when the scarcity of whales forced the Dutch farther out into the northern waters in search of them.

By the middle of the 17th cent. whaling from the land was established in America. The earliest type, called drift whaling, consisted of harvesting whales that had washed up on the shore, mainly after storms. Drift whaling became economically important in Colonial America, and the first laws regarding it were written at Southampton, Long Island, in the 1640s. This practice was followed by shore whaling, in which whales swimming close to shore were hunted. Whaling centers, at first on Long Island and Cape Cod, shifted to Nantucket and then New Bedford, Mass., the greatest whaling port in the world until the decline (c.1860) of the industry. With the capture (1712) of a sperm whale by a Nantucket whaler, the superior qualities of sperm oil were discovered, and American whalers began fishing farther south in search of the sperm whale, which superseded the right whale in value.

American fisheries were set back by the American Revolution, but in 1791 the first Americans rounded Cape Horn to hunt in the S Pacific. Another, but temporary, setback occurred in the War of 1812, but the outcome spelled the complete defeat of British whaling. From c.1815 until shortly before the Civil War, the period widely known as the golden age of U.S. whaling, Americans sailed the Pacific from south to north, on voyages often lasting as long as three or four years, in search of whales. Melville's Moby-Dick gives an account of a voyage in this period. The advent of the Civil War, a decrease in the demand for sperm oil and in the number of whales, and the discovery (1859) of oil in Pennsylvania brought on the decline of the industry.

Modern Whaling

The invention (c.1856), by the Norwegian Sven Foyn, of a harpoon containing an explosive head may be said to have inaugurated modern whaling. Besides insuring the whale's immediate death this type of harpoon was subsequently modified to shoot compressed air into the whale so that it will not sink before it can be secured. The development of the factory ship, equipped to take on board and completely process whales caught by smaller chaser boats, increased safety and enhanced the ability to catch the larger blue whale. It also allowed for the use of all parts of the whale; formerly only the blubber and head could be procured, and the job of flensing from the side of the ship was a hazardous one.

In 1904 operations commenced from a whaling station on South Georgia, an island in the S Atlantic, and the modern industry found in Antarctic waters the last rich whaling fields on the globe. The number of expeditions from the Antarctic islands, however, was restricted by Great Britain, which had secured sovereignty over these areas. In 1925 the first floating factory was sent to the Antarctic regions; that innovation led to the greatest expansion in the history of whaling. In 1930 the modern whaling industry reached its zenith, with 6 shore stations, 41 floating factories, and 232 whale catchers in the Antarctic regions, of which 3 stations, 27 factory ships, and 147 catchers were Norwegian and 2 stations, 27 floating factories, and 68 catchers were British. During World War II most of the world's whaling fleet was lost, but afterward Norway, Britain, and Japan (which had started Antarctic expeditions in 1935) soon reestablished their prewar positions, and in addition the Soviet Union, the Netherlands, and South Africa appeared in the Antarctic regions for the first time.

Attempts at Regulation and Protection

In 1932-33, partly in response to the collapse of the whale-oil market, the first attempts were made to regulate and restrict the catch by international agreement. After World War II the International Whaling Commission (IWC) was formed in Washington, D.C., by 17 nations, including all those operating in the Antarctic regions. The commission, which regulates most of the world's whaling activity, began in the 1960s to limit the number and species of whales that could be hunted.

In the subsequent years, environmental activist groups, notably Greenpeace , became extremely involved in the attempt to stop whaling, and in 1982 the IWC voted a moratorium on commercial whaling, to take effect after the 1984-85 season. Exceptions to the moratorium generally have been made for native peoples, such as the Makah, who traditionally had hunted whales and used their meat as a major part of their diet. These regulations are not adhered to by all nations, including some members of the commission (which now has 76 member nations), and whales continue to be hunted by Norway and Iceland and, for research purposes, by Japan. (The killing of whales for research, while permitted under IWC regulations, is opposed by many as unnecessary, and opponents of whaling believe it has been abused and should be abolished.)

In 2003 the IWC voted to expand its main functions to include whale conservation. The Indian Ocean and the ocean waters off Mexico, a number of South Pacific island nations and territories, and Antarctica have been designated whale sanctuaries. The protective efforts have allowed some species to return to numbers that will probably assure their survival, but others, especially the right whales, remain severely depleted in numbers and endangered. In 2006, however, after more nations favoring commercial whaling joined the IWC, it narrowly voted to support the eventual return of commercial whaling.

Bibliography

See J. T. Travis, A History of the Whale Fisheries (1921); C. Ashley, The Yankee Whaler (1926, 2d ed. 1942); A. Church, Whale Ships and Whaling (1938); F. R. Dulles, Lowered Boats: A Chronicle of American Whaling (1933); E. Stackpole, The Sea-Hunters: The New England Whaleman … 1635-1835 (1953); F. Crisp, The Adventure of Whaling (1954); A. Whipple, Yankee Whalers in the South Seas (1954); E. Ash, Whaler's Eye (1962); L. H. Matthews et al., The Whale (1968); G. L. Small, The Blue Whale (1971); J. N. Tennessen and A. Johnsen, The History of Modern Whaling (tr. 1982); D. Day, The Whale War (1987); E. J. Dolin, Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America (2007). See also IWC, The Journal of Cetacean Research and Management (1999-).

whaling is the catching of whales, which has been practised since the Neolithic period. The first large-scale whaling was carried out by the Basques, who were hunting the Atlantic right whale (Balaena glacialis) as early as the 10th century. They harpooned them from rowing boats, then towed the carcasses ashore where they were cut up and processed.

The use of hand-held harpoons thrown from small boats was the basis of most whaling until the invention of the explosive harpoon gun by a Norwegian, Sven Foyn, in the 1850s. By the 17th century even these primitive whaling operations had pushed the whale populations in the Bay of Biscay into a terminal decline and the Basques were forced to go further afield. By then whaling in the Arctic had already begun, following the discovery of Spitsbergen by the Dutch explorer Willem Barents in 1596.

The English and Dutch companies were set up using whaling ships of about 200 tons displacement. Small boats were launched from the whaler, to chase and harpoon the whales. Once killed, the whales were then cut up either aboard the ship or ashore, so the blubber could be rendered with try works to extract the oil. One of the most famous accounts of 19th-century whaling was written by William Scoresby Jr. (1789–1857). He undertook some of the first oceanographic observations in the Arctic to try and understand more about the whales' habits.

Britain's North American colonies began whaling initially hunting humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae), then sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus). When the first sperm whale was caught in 1712 by a Nantucket whaler it triggered a new wave of whaling in warmer waters, for the sperm whales' waxy oil and spermaceti, used to make wax candles and other useful commodities, quickly proved more profitable than the right whale's oil.

The key characteristic of the ‘right’ to hunt whales was that when killed they floated, and so their carcasses could be retrieved. It was not possible to harvest several of the baleen whales including the blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus) until the technique of inflating the carcasses with compressed air was invented. Yankee whalers operating out of Nantucket and New Bedford roamed the oceans of the world mostly in the search for sperm whales, a way of life well described by Herman Melville's novel Moby-Dick. In the Pacific, whalers operated mainly out of San Francisco hunting mostly gray (Eschrictius robustus) and bowhead whales (Balaena mysticetus). After the American Civil War (1861–5) this whaling operation flourished for several years until in 1871 almost the whole fleet was crushed in ice.

The Norwegians had probably been taking whales for several centuries before they opened a land-based whaling station in South Georgia. The main target initially was humpback whales, whose carcasses were towed back to the onshore factory for processing. The British government raised a levy on every barrel of oil collected to finance research and instigated the Discovery Investigations, but in the late 1920s the introduction of factory ships to process the whales at sea enabled whaling to spread to all sectors of the Southern Ocean beyond the limits of any national jurisdiction. Whale stocks had started to show signs of decline before the Second World War (1939–45), and minimum size limits were agreed internationally. After the war the whale populations temporarily showed some signs of recovery. The International Whaling Commission was established in 1947 to provide the industry with effective scientific advice. The hunting of some species—humpback, bowhead, and some of the right whales—was banned. Even so in the 1970s the populations of Southern Ocean whales were in such sharp decline that a moratorium on whaling was agreed, although some whaling for scientific purposes was still allowed. Limited aboriginal whaling was still permitted. For example, the Inuit continued to hunt for the beluga and bowhead, and the traditional pilot-whale (Globicephala melas) hunt continued in the Faeroes, though the islanders have now stopped eating them because the meat is heavily contaminated with pollutants. The Japanese, Russians, Norwegians, and Icelanders, who hunt mainly for meat for human consumption, also continued to take small numbers, particularly of minke whales (Balaenoptera acutorostrata), whose populations were still quite large, and they still do.

In 1992 the North Atlantic Marine Mammal Commission was established by Norway, Iceland, Greenland, and the Faeroes to argue the case for the continuation of whaling particularly for minkes, stressing the importance of whale meat to some of their more remote communities, but also pointing out that the whales are competing with fishermen for fish stocks. In the North Atlantic minke whales are estimated to take up to a million tonnes of commercial fish including herring, cod, and capelin, and despite the rapid growth of whale-watching as an ecotourism activity, whaling in those countries which still have a market for whale products seems likely to restart.

Bibliography

Philbrick, N. , In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex (2001).www.whaling.fo/index.htm

M. V. Angel

WHALING

WHALING. Whaling, or the commercial hunting of whales, results in oil, ambergris, whalebone, meat, and other various by-products. Whale oil is used as a lubricant and as an additive in soapmaking, while ambergris is valued as a fixative in perfumes.

Native Americans had long hunted the great beasts by the time European settlers began to colonize the New World in the early seventeenth century. For the most part, indigenous people processed whale carcasses that washed up on beaches; however, some used canoes to pursue whales that swam into coastal waters.

By 1640, white settlers, who had brought with them knowledge of European whaling techniques, had established their own organized whaling efforts in Long Island and in parts of New England. The colonial whalemen towed harpooned whales to shore from small boats. They then removed blubber and bone, extracting the oil by boiling the blubber in large cast iron kettles called trypots.

Eventually, whale numbers near shore declined, and the colonists began hunting whales in single-masted sloops. As demand increased, whalemen undertook longer voyages of up to several years to find their quarry. The year 1774 saw the peak of colonial whaling when at least 350 vessels sailed from ports in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New York. Nantucket Island and New Bedford in Massachusetts eventually became important whaling centers. Other significant whaling ports included Provincetown, Massachusetts; New London, Connecticut; San Francisco; and Sag Harbor, New York.

Just two years later, the industry was collapsing because of the British blockade of colonial ports during the Revolutionary War; in addition, the Embargo of 1807 and the War of 1812 forced whaleships to lie idle. Several resourceful shipowners, the Rotches of New Bedford for example, went to France and conducted whaling from foreign shores.

Whaling burgeoned during the peaceful years that followed, and by the mid-1800s, the industry counted 736 vessels and seventy thousand people. Sperm whale oil peaked in 1843 with a production of 5.26 million gallons. Whale oil production reached 11.59 million gallons in 1845, and more than 5.65 million pounds of whalebone was retrieved in 1853.

The discovery of petroleum, a product superior to whale oil for lighting, in 1859 signaled the beginning of the end for the lucrative whaling industry. Other factors contributing to the decline of whaling included the loss of thirty-seven New Bedford vessels that were sunk during the Civil War followed by the Arctic disasters of 1871 and 1876, in which forty-five more New Bedford ships were lost to ice. The development of spring steel, which replaced the market for whalebone, coupled with diminishing whale populations, also contributed to the industry's downfall. The last American whaling vessel made final port in San Francisco on 28 October 1928, although several whaling voyages under the American flag were made from foreign ports until around 1938.

International Whaling Commission

After World War II, a convention held in Washington, D.C., resulted in the creation of the International Whaling Commission (IWC), an organization of twenty-four countries that participated in whaling. Regulating most of the world's whaling activities, the commission set specific limits on the numbers and species of whales that could be hunted. Today, the IWC lists forty-eight members worldwide, from Antigua to the United States. Besides setting catch limits and creating sanctuaries, the commission funds whale research.

The attempt to place limits on whaling has become a volatile issue. Many nations do not recognize IWC authority and have continued to hunt whales. In response, environmental and wildlife groups, among them Greenpeace, an environmental activist group, have made attempts to stop all whaling. The Japan Whaling Association contends that whaling is an integral part of Japan's history and culture and defends the country's continued whaling. Norway, the only country that objected to the IWC's 1982 moratorium on whaling, continues its whale hunts; in 2000, Norway took 487 small whales that yielded 713 tons of meat (valued at roughly $2.5 million) and ninety-six tons of blubber.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Busch, Briton Cooper. Whaling Will Never Do for Me: The American Whaleman in the Nineteenth Century. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1994.

Ellis, Richard. Men and Whales. New York: Knopf, 1991.

International Whaling Commission. Home page at http://www.iwcoffice.org.

Ronnberg, Eric A. R. To Build a Whaleboat: Historical Notes and a Model Makers Guide. Bogota, N.J.: Model Shipways Co., 1985.

Webb, Robert Lloyd. On the Northwest: Commercial Whaling in the Pacific Northwest, 1790–1967. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1988.

Works Progress Administration. Whaling Masters. New Bedford, Mass.: Old Dartmouth Historical Society, 1938.

KymO'Connell-Todd

WHALING

The hunting of whales for food, oil, or both.

The hunting of whales by Eskimos and Native Americans began around 100 a.d. in North America. In Europe the systematic hunting of whales began during the Middle Ages and greatly expanded in the seventeenth century. Whaling was driven by the desire to procure whale oil and sperm oil. Whale oil comes from baleen whales and is an edible product that was used in the making of margarine and cooking oil. Sperm oil, which comes from sperm whales, was used for illuminating lamps, as an industrial lubricant, and as a component of soaps, cosmetics, and perfumes.

During the nineteenth century, the U.S. whaling fleet dominated the world industry. Most of the seven hundred U.S. ships sailed out of New Bedford and Nantucket, Massachusetts. However, the industry went into a steep decline with the discovery and exploitation of petroleum during the late nineteenth century. Though new uses for sperm oil were developed, the U.S. fleet gradually disappeared.

In the early twentieth century, concerns were raised about the dwindling whale population. An international movement to regulate the hunting of whales met resistance from Scandinavian countries and Japan, but in 1931 the league of nations convened a Convention for the Regulation of Whaling. It proved unsuccessful because several important whaling states refused to participate.

Annual international whaling conferences led to the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling in 1946, which established the International Whaling Commission (IWC). The IWC was charged with the conservation of whale stocks. It limited the annual Antarctic kill and created closed areas and hunting seasons throughout the world. Despite these initiatives and others over the years, the whale population edged closer to extinction, and the IWC agreed in 1982 to prohibit commercial whaling beginning in 1986. Commercial whaling has continued, however, often under the fiction of capturing specimens for scientific research.

In 1990 a scientific study was begun to determine if the whaling moratorium should be lifted. Though the study indicated that whale populations were growing, in 1993 the United States refused to agree to a resumption of commercial whaling, and the IWC agreed. The United States warned that if a country (primarily Japan, Norway, or Iceland) ignored the IWC conservation program and resumed commercial whaling without IWC approval, that country's actions would be reviewed, and sanctions would be considered where appropriate.

further readings

Freeman, Milton M. R., et al. 1998. Inuit, Whaling, and Sustainability. Walnut Creek, Calif.: AltaMira Press.

cross-references

Environmental Law; Fish and Fishing.

WHALING INDUSTRY

Whaling is an ancient industry. There is evidence that whales were hunted along the coasts of Alaska and Siberia since 2000 b.c. The first mention of it in European sources dates from a.d. 875, but it is uncertain whether this is a reference to harvesting beached whales or to hunting them at sea. Although whaling in some form was conducted throughout the Middle Ages by the English, French, Icelanders and Norwegians, there is no clear proof that live whales were captured in Europe until 1575, when they were hunted in the Bay of Biscay. New England colonists brought the practice from Europe and made whale meat a part of their diet.

By the seventeenth century whale hunting was on the increase. Whale oil, which was produced when the animal's blubber (fat) was boiled down, was in great demand for lubrication and as a fuel for illumination. Realizing its commercial potential, the Massachusetts government encouraged the industry in 1639 by stipulating that whaling ships were exempt from taxation for seven years, and that members of the crew were free from their military obligations during the fishing season. The first organized whale fishery in North America was found on Long Island (an island near New York City) sometime after 1640, but Nantucket (an island off the coast of Massachusetts) had become the center of the industry by the late seventeenth century. These early whalers hunted the right whale, a forty-four foot mammal that migrated south to spend the winter off the American coast. The sailors slept in their own beds at night, since whales were spotted from lookout stations on land and caught near the shore by men in small boats. The animals would be dragged to the beach, where their blubber was removed and boiled down (the contemporary term was "tried out").

In the eighteenth century the growth in population and the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution increased the need for whale oil. It lubricated machines and fueled the lamps that illuminated the streets of major cities. It cleaned wool in textile mills and became a base for paint. By the middle of the century, spermaceti, a waxy solid that was extracted from the whale's head, was made into candles that were excellent sources of light and had a pleasant odor. It was also used for ointments and perfumes.

The increased demand for oil coincided with the hunting of the sperm whale, which began around 1812. Its heads contained spermaceti and also a reservoir of oil that was known for its purity and lightness In general the oil from sperm whales burned more brightly than that from right whales, and it was marketed separately. Since sperm whales preferred deep water, whalers built large ships were built that were capable of sailing in the open ocean. These vessels contained tryworks, equipment that allowed the sailors to render the oil at sea. Since sailors no longer had to return to shore after each kill, the new technology completely changed the nature of the industry. Voyages could last four or five years, and American whaling slowly spread to all the oceans of the world. The industry began to have an influence on U.S. diplomatic policy, playing a role in the opening of Japan, the purchase of Alaska, and other important events.

Larger ships and long voyages meant that the crew could be divided according to their social standing. The officers, who were usually white and middle class, ate better food and lived in the rear part of the ship, where they had more space and privacy than the crew. The captain would have would have a parlor and bedroom. Many took their wives and sometimes their children to sea with them.

Ordinary sailors were usually poor whites, African or Native Americans. They were forced to live in cramped quarters in steerage or in the forward part of the ship. They ate food that was at best barely palatable and at times rancid. Fresh fruits or vegetables were rare, and death by scurvy, a disease caused by a lack of vitamin C, was relatively common. Nathaniel Robinson, a young man who went to sea in 1843, disliked the salt-cured horse and tar-like molasses he had to eat. He was particularly repelled by a pig's snout with bristles attached that he saw floating in a pan of food. Robinson became deathly ill on the voyage and died the day after he returned home.

Life aboard ship could be monotonous, but when a whale was sighted there was a flurry of excitement. The ship sailed near the creature and lowered whale-boats, which were about thirty feet in length and carried six men. The whale was approached carefully, so it would not become frightened, and so the harpooner could stand and steady himself. When he struck the animal, it would often dive to tremendous depths. The boat usually contained about 18,000 feet of line, which could be attached to the harpoon, and which whistled and burned as it spun out, following the diving whale. At times the whale would not dive, but swim along the surface at tremendous speed, taking the whaleboat on what was known as a "Nantucket sleigh ride." Once the sailors survived the stricken beast's initial reaction, the long process of weakening the whale by tightening and slackening the rope began. It could take seven hours to exhaust the whale. When the animal became tired, the whaleboat would pull along side and an officer would kill it by plunging a six-foot razor-sharp lance into its lungs. The entire hunt was fraught with danger. Sailors had to avoid the whale's powerful fins and jaws, and the animals were known to attack the whaleboat, crushing or capsizing it. In 1820, the mother ship itself, the Essex, was rammed twice by sperm whale and sank, losing nearly half the crew.

The proceeds from the sale of the oil were divided between the owners of the vessel and the crew. Those who owned the ship or provided the capital investment took at least a quarter and usually much more of the profit. Often ownership was shared among a number of investors to lessen the risk. Captains could receive ten times as much as seamen. The rest of the crew's pay was proportionate to their tasks, and those who performed menial jobs obtained the least. The owners often lent the crew money to purchase their equipment, and often they charged 25 percent interest for their loans. In addition the ship usually had a company store, where the men could buy tobacco, clothes, and other sundries at high prices. After deducting their expenses, seamen might earn little for their hard and dangerous work. In 1844 John Murray returned from a voyage on the Milton for which the captain was paid nearly $6,000.00. Murray's wages after expenses amounted to ten cents, but the owners gave him an extra $10.00 on condition that he press no legal claim against them.

American commercial whaling reached its height in the 1840s and 1850s, when at one point 700 of the 900 vessels engaged in the industry were registered in the United States. By that time New Bedford with its deeper harbor had surpassed Nantucket as the nation's whaling capital. Whaling began to decline after 1859, when oil was discovered in Pennsylvania, and kerosene, an oil derivative that burned more brightly, surpassed whale oil as a fuel for lamps. The Civil War (1861–1865) also damaged the industry, as Confederate raiders wreaked havoc on the largely defenseless whaling fleet. In addition, over-fishing made whales more difficult to find. By the late 1860s the business had contracted by 70 percent. It was saved by an increased demand for baleen, bony slats from the upper palate of certain whales that were used to strain food. It was excellent for making combs or umbrellas, providing support for corsets, and filling out Victorian skirts. Yet baleen could not prevent the eventual failure of the American whale industry, which declined by 20 percent every five years throughout the second half of the nineteenth century. With the development of spring steel in 1907, even the baleen market collapsed.

Whaling has continued in the twentieth century but not as an American industry. Indigenous peoples, many of whom live around the Arctic Circle, continued to hunt whales, and countries like Japan, Norway, Iceland, the Soviet Union (now Russia) and others engaged aggressively in the practice. The whale still provided many saleable products. Hydrogenated whale oil can be used for margarine, and bowhead whale oil is still the best lubricant for watches or clocks. Whale flesh is a valuable source of meat, and vitamins can be extracted from their inner organs. Whalebone can be ground for livestock feed.

The whaling nations built large factory ships that could drag the entire animal on deck for processing. They were so efficient was that in 1946 the International Whaling Commission (IWC) was established to save the creatures from extinction. In its first 40 years the commission made little progress, but in 1986, a moratorium went into effect that banned all commercial whaling. Canada left the IWC in 1982 in order to protect the hunting rights of its native people, and Norway resigned in 1992, maintaining that some types of whales could be harvested without endangering the species. Japan takes about 500 minke whales a year for "research" purposes. The fear however, that whales may become extinct have made them a symbol for the Conservation movement. Although the United Nations has banned all commercial whaling, Japan, Norway, and Canada continue to hunt these creatures.

Topic overview

A sailor's life is a hard life. (They) are exposed to many hardships, (of) which those of us who reside on land have no conception. Even when our ships are commanded by a pious man, the influence of the seaman is often very bad; and many are the young men who have left home with good habits, but when they have returned, they have become dissipated.

reverend daniel lord, pastor, mariner's church of boston, july 30, 1841

See also: Massachusetts

FURTHER READING

Church, Albert Cook. Whale Ships and Whaling. New York: Bonanza Books, 1938.

Creighton, Margaret S. Rites and Passages: The Experience of American Whaling, 1830–1870. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Ellis, Richard. Whales and Men. New York: Knopf, 1991.

Hohman, Elmo P. The American Whaleman. New York: Longmans, Green, 1928.

Sherman, Stuart C. The Voice of the Whaleman. Providence: Providence Public Library, 1965.

i want one more whale bad. we have got but one months salt meet (meat) in the ship but i would not mind (staying) untill that is gon and thin live on faith untill we get in where we can get some more.

master of the roman, his ship "intirly encircled with (arctic) ice", september 1853

whaling Industry involved in the pursuing and catching of whales for their oil and flesh. Originating in the Middle Ages, the modern whaling era began in the 1850s with the development of harpoons with explosive heads. After 1925, ocean-going factory ships were sent to the Antarctic. Since that time most larger whale species have been hunted to near-extinction. In 1986, the International Whaling Commission (IWC) agreed a moratorium on commercial whaling. Whaling for ‘scientific purposes’ by Japan, Iceland, and Norway continued. In 1990, Norway claimed that whale numbers were high enough to sustain hunting; however, public opposition remains strong.

whaler.
1. The generic, and older, name for ships of all types engaged in the whaling industry.

2. A warship's boat, usually fitted with oars and sails and taking its design from the original whaleboats used for whaling. In the British Navy a whaler pulls five oars and is yawl rigged with jib and mizzen and a gunter mainsail. It was in a whaler that Shackleton sailed nearly 500 kilometres (300 mls.) in 1916 to fetch help for his stranded Antarctic party.

whaleboat, the name given to an open rowing boat, pointed at both ends so that it was convenient for beaching either bow- or stern-to. It had no rudder and was steered by an oar over the stern. Of robust construction, they were used for a variety of coastal work which entailed beaching frequently and were modelled on the original whaleboats carried in 19th-century whaling ships.

whaleboat n.
1. a long rowboat designed to be very maneuverable and used to pursue and kill whales.

2. a boat resembling a whaleboat in size and shape. Also called whaler.

whal·ing / ˈ(h)wāling/ • n. the practice or industry of hunting and killing whales for their oil, meat, or whalebone.

whal·er / ˈ(h)wālər/ • n. a whaling ship. ∎  a seaman engaged in whaling.

whaler n.
1. a whaling ship.

2. See whaleboat, def. 2.

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