CHAPTER XXI
THE RIGHT WHALE AND BOWHEAD
Whaling began more than a thousand years ago in the Bay of Biscay, on the coast of Spain. The Basques, who were the first hunters, soon learned that a certain kind of whale, among the hundreds which came into the bay, yielded finer baleen and a greater amount of oil than any other and therefore it was said to be the “right whale to kill.”
In later years other species were gradually recognized, but the name “right whale” clung to the animal which was first hunted and thus it is known today. The scientific name, Eubalæna glacialis, bestowed upon it in 1789 by the Abbé Bonnaterre, is hardly appropriate, for the whale is not a lover of cold and does not go into the icy waters of the far north or south.
As years went by and right whales began to decrease in numbers, the hunters wandered afar and discovered in the waters about Davis Strait and Greenland another whale which was only a larger edition of the first and which eventually became known as the Greenland right whale, or bowhead; its smaller relative was then distinguished from it as the North Atlantic right whale.
A model of a right whale in the American Museum of Natural History. Prepared by Mr. James L. Clark under the direction of the author, from studies made at Amagansett, L. I.
The bowhead is appropriately named because the fore part of the head is arched in almost a half-circle to make room for the enormous baleen which hangs in the mouth. This sometimes reaches a length of fourteen feet, and is so exceedingly fine and elastic that until recent years it often sold for $4 or $5 per pound.
A small (calf) right whale on the beach at Amagansett, L. I. Note that no dorsal fin is present in this species.
Since an average sized bowhead yields 2,000 pounds[15] of baleen, a single animal was thus worth $8,000 or $10,000, and if a ship took two or three whales each season a profitable voyage was insured. Although the baleen of the smaller right whale is of excellent quality, it seldom exceeds nine feet in length and consequently this species is not so valuable as its Arctic relative.
Whalebone is used principally in corsets, dress stays, whips, and other articles where strength and elasticity are required, but a few years ago several substitutes, such as “featherbone,” “near-bone,” etc., were perfected; since some of these proved fully as good as, and were very much cheaper than, baleen, it was no longer profitable to outfit expensive vessels and Arctic whaling abruptly ended.
Both the bowhead and right whale live upon minute crustaceans, called “brit,” which are strained out by means of the mat of bristles on the inner side of the baleen plates; when the mouth is closed the whalebone folds back on both sides of the tongue, but straightens out again as the great lower jaw is dropped.
On the extreme end of the snout the right whale always has an oval roughened area, some two feet in length, called the “bonnet.” This growth is produced by whale lice (Cyamus) and barnacles (Coronula), and although it is never absent in this species it is not found on the bowhead. Neither of these whales has a dorsal fin or folds on the ventral surface of the body, because their heads are so proportionately large that it is not necessary to increase the throat and mouth capacity by any external modifications.
The right whale is found only in temperate waters and does not go into the far north or south. It is frequently taken by the shore whalers on the coasts of Japan, Australia, and South America, and is much less timid than the bowhead; it is also much quicker in its movements and is consequently a more dangerous whale to attack for the men who hunt in small boats with a hand harpoon and lance.
The bowhead, on the contrary, is exceedingly difficult to approach and very slow in its movements. It is exclusively a whale of the northern hemisphere, found only in the waters of the Arctic Ocean, Greenland, Hudson’s Bay, and the Bering and Okhotsk Seas.
The finest bowhead grounds of today are those north of Bering Strait; as the ice breaks in the spring the whales follow the coast eastward, past Point Barrow, Alaska, as far as Banks Land. In the fall they again pass Point Barrow, going westward toward Wrangle Island, off the Siberian Coast.
Until Arctic whaling ceased, the ships used to leave San Francisco or Seattle in time to arrive at Point Barrow when the ice had broken sufficiently to allow them to smash their way through, and then cruise about under sail or tie up to the floe-ice where they could watch for whales from the masthead. The bowheads have such acute hearing and are so very timid that if the vessels use steam the propellers would be heard at a long distance and a whale would never be seen.
As soon as a whale is sighted, two or three small boats are lowered and each endeavors to be the first to reach the animal. The bowhead’s blowholes are situated on the summit of a prominent bunch and immediately behind them is a deep concavity over the base of the skull, and the “neck.” When the whale lies at the surface only the blowholes and back show above water, and the attacking boat, coming from behind, endeavors to sail directly over the submerged neck. As the boat crosses the whale, the harpooner thrusts a hand bomb-iron into the body; the bomb explodes and plows its way into the backbone, often killing the animal almost instantly.
Stripping the blubber from the large right whale at Amagansett. This specimen was fifty-four feet long and the largest that has yet been scientifically recorded.
The most difficult part of the work is to approach so noiselessly that the boat can cross the neck and place the bomb harpoon properly. If the whale is not killed at once it will usually run at considerable speed and, perhaps, dive under an ice-floe, in which case, if the boat does not carry sufficient line, the rope must be cut or certain destruction follows.
As far back as tradition goes, the Eskimos of northern Alaska have been a race of mighty hunters and whalemen. At the largest villages, near every cape and headland, the passing of the dark days of winter marked the preparations for the great “devil dance,” the invariable prelude to the spring whale hunt. About April 1, all the able-bodied men of the village would build across the ice to the water a road over which they might haul their boats and sleds. Their gear, consisting of a few fathoms of walrus-hide line fitted with sealskin bladders and tied to a short flint-headed spear, was primitive enough, but effective.
On the appearance of a bowhead all the boats took up a position in some comfortable nook along the edge of the ice-floe. When the whale came near a boat, the head man, whose place was usually in the stern, turned the canoe head-on toward the ice and sang the great death song, handed down from some famous whale-killing ancestor. This consumed fifteen or twenty minutes and then the harpooner thrust his flint-headed spear into the whale, doing little except frighten it nearly to death.
As it passed the next canoe the same performance, without the song, was repeated, continuing until the number of skin pokes made it impossible for the whale to dive. Then the natives paddled up to finish the animal with their flint-headed killing lances.
When the whale was dead a slip, or runway, had to be cut to the edge of the water and the carcass secured by walrus-hide lines passed round a rude windlass constructed of a rounded cake of ice and a piece of driftwood. Then the huge body could be hoisted up, or, if the edge of the ice was too rough, cut in while rolling over and over in the water. The meat, blubber, “black skin,” and bone were equally divided and sent ashore on sleds, where they could be dressed and prepared for the winter.
The Amagansett whale covered with ice after the blubber had been stripped off the carcass.
The advent of the white man to engage in beach, or floe, whaling was a momentous event for the natives of northern Alaska and was the beginning of the end of their age-old methods. The first attempts made at Point Barrow in 1884 were without result, but two years later, under the Pacific Steam Whaling Company, a successful footing was gained and the Eskimos began to adopt the white man’s guns, bombs, and other gear.
The changes introduced by the white man were profound and the Eskimo of today has almost completely adopted his methods and materials; even the native boat—the only practical one for floe whaling—has been modified; the ancient superstitions are gone and the Eskimos have acquired a taste for the luxuries of civilization. Trading stations have been established at various points along the Arctic coast. Point Barrow boasts of an extensive native village besides several white residents, and further to the eastward the whalers often wintered at Herschel Island, increasing the profits of the voyage by trade in furs.
But bowhead whaling is almost a thing of the past. The present low price of baleen for either white man or Eskimo, and the closed season on fur have sealed the fate of the Arctic whaler.
The hunt for right whales still goes on but has been robbed of much of its picturesqueness, for the shore whalers soon learned that the animals could be shot with the harpoon-gun from their little steamers. But since the baleen has fallen in price they are not of very much greater value than the large fin whales; in Japan a humpback is really more appreciated because its flesh is much better for eating than that of any other species.
Right whales are often taken on the coast of Long Island, N. Y., and even now, at Amagansett, a whale-boat is kept in readiness to be launched whenever a spout is seen. In February, 1907, a crew under the leadership of Captain Josh Edwards killed a large right whale, the skeleton and baleen of which were secured for the Museum at an expense of $3,200.
“We had to stand in freezing water while cutting away at the huge mass of flesh which encased the bones.”
Captain Josh, as he was known to all the country near and far, was a genial old man, radiating good nature—a typical whaler of the old school. Although seventy-six years had whitened his hair, when the cry of “Ah! Blow-o-o-o!” had sounded through the village, he forgot his age and was in the first boat to leave the beach on the five-mile chase. And it was his arm, still strong under the weight of years, which sent the keen-edged lance at the first thrust straight into the lungs of the whale.
Mr. James L. Clark, formerly of the Museum, and myself, as soon as word of the whale was received, hastened to Amagansett, where we had two weeks of the hardest sort of work to secure the skeleton.
The carcass was beached just at the edge of low tide, where surf was continually breaking over it, and we had to stand in freezing water while cutting away at the huge mass of flesh which encased the bones.
The temperature was +12°, and, to add to our difficulties, on the second day a terrific storm almost buried the carcass in sand so that it was necessary to build a breakwater of flesh against the surf, and laboriously dig out the skeleton bone by bone.
The Amagansett whale was an old female, fifty-four feet long, and proved to be the largest specimen which had then been recorded. On the same day that it was captured, a smaller thirty-eight-foot whale, evidently the calf of the first, was killed at Wainscott, Long Island. This skeleton was also secured, and was eventually sent to London, while the Amagansett whale with its baleen remains in the Museum to be mounted in the Hall of Water Mammals. Just a year later another right whale, a twenty-eight-foot calf, was killed at Amagansett, but its carcass was lost in a storm.
The baleen of a right whale. This specimen had whalebone eight feet long.
As yet it is impossible to say with authority just how many species of right whales exist. Some years ago Lieutenant Maury, after studying the daily logs of hundreds of whaling vessels, prepared a chart which appears to show that the animals do not cross the belt of tropical water at the Equator, and that the right whales of the northern and southern hemispheres are thus definitely separated. Acting upon the supposition that since there could be no communication between them these whales must certainly have become differentiated enough to form distinct species, each has been given a scientific name.
In the light of present knowledge, however, this apparent separation cannot be considered sufficient ground for dividing the right whales into northern and southern species, unless a critical comparison of their external and internal anatomy reveals constant differences.
