Sperm whaling

Only a few sperm whales were recorded to have been caught during the first few decades (1709–1730s) of offshore whaling, as sloops concentrated on Nantucket Shoals where they would have taken right whales or were sent to the Davis Strait region to catch bowhead whales. By the early 1740s, with the advent of spermaceti candles (before 1743), American vessels appear to have begun to take sperm whales in earnest. The diary of Benjamin Bangs (1721–1769) shows that, along with the bumpkin sloop he was in, he found three other sloops with sperm whales being flensed alongside off the coast of North Carolina in late May 1743.[9] On returning to Nantucket in the summer 1744 on a subsequent sperm whaling voyage he noted that "45 spermacetes are brought in here this day," another indication that American sperm whaling was in full swing.[9]

Sperm whaling

American sperm whaling soon spread from the east coast of the American colonies to the Gulf Stream, the Grand Banks, West Africa (1763), the Azores (1765) and the South Atlantic (1770s). From 1770 to 1775 Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, and Rhode Island ports produced 45,000 barrels of sperm oil annually, compared to 8,500 of whale oil.[10] In the same decade the British began sperm whaling, employing American ships and personnel.[11] By the following decade the French had entered the trade, also employing American expertise.[11] Sperm whaling increased until the mid-19th century, as spermaceti oil was important in public lighting (for example, in lighthouses, where it was used in the United States until 1862, when it was replaced by lard oil, which was quickly replaced by petroleum) and for lubricating the machines (such as those used in cotton mills) of the Industrial Revolution. Sperm whaling declined in the second half of the 19th century, as petroleum and other products began to replace spermaceti.[12][13]

Sperm whaling in the 18th century began with small sloops carrying only a pair of whaleboats (sometimes only one). As the scope and size of the fleet increased so did the rig of the vessels change, as brigs, schooners, and finally ships and barks were introduced. In the 19th century stubby, square-rigged ships (and later barks) dominated the fleet, being sent to the Pacific (the first being the British whaleship Emilia, in 1788),[11] the Indian Ocean (1780s), and as far away as the Japan grounds (1820; Syren) and the coast of Arabia (1820s), as well as Australia (1790s) and New Zealand (1790s).[14][15]

Sperm whaling involved the above-named ships searching for sperm whales on certain "grounds," or areas where sperm whales were likely to be found, such as the "Western" Ground in the mid-North Atlantic or the "Offshore" Ground in the latitudes of 5–10 degrees south and 105–125 degrees west longitude. The whales were spotted from one of the several look-outs stationed at the mast-heads. When a whale was found, whaleboats would be lowered and a harpoon attached to a long line would be thrown into it. The whale would then drag the boats (the famous "Nantucket sleighride") until it was too tired to resist, at which point the crew would lance it to death.[13]

Hunting for sperm whales during this period was a notoriously dangerous affair for the crews of the whaleboats. Although a properly harpooned sperm whale generally exhibited a fairly consistent pattern of attempting to flee underwater to the point of exhaustion (at which point it would surface and offer no further resistance), it was not uncommon for bull whales to become enraged and turn to attack pursuing whaleboats on the surface, particularly if it had already been wounded by repeated harpooning attempts. A commonly reported tactic was for the whale to invert itself and violently thrash the surface of the water with its fluke, flipping and crushing nearby boats.

Particularly massive sperm whale specimens have also proven willing (on rare occasions) to attack comparably sized whaleships. In the most famous example, on November 20, 1820 a huge bull sperm whale (purportedly 85-ft in length) rammed the 87-ft Nantucket whaler Essex twice, staving in the hull under the waterline and forcing the crew to abandon ship. After months adrift in lifeboats, the crew eventually resorted to cannibalism, with only 8 out of the 20 sailors surviving until rescue; a 21st sailor had jumped ship in South America before the attack.[16] The bull was unwounded and unprovoked at the time of the attack, but the crew of the Essex was in the process of hunting several smaller females from a nearby pod. Recent analysis suggests that the commotion and the bull's possible extreme size may have caused it to falsely identify the similarly sized Essex as an intruding competitive male. Bull sperm whales, especially older, solitary bulls, are known to battle amongst themselves for dominance by ramming each other, with the heavy, spermaceti-filled head spaces providing the biological equivalent of a weighted boxing glove.[17] Another proposed factor was the vibrations from repeated sledgehammer blows as the ship's hull was being repaired prior to the attack, which scientists suggest might have carried into the water and unintentionally mimicked the echolocation "clicks" that sperm whales generate to identify and communicate with each other.

Another recorded case of a sperm whale attacking a large ship is that of the New Bedford whaleship Ann Alexander which was rammed and sunk by a wounded and enraged bull off the Galapagos Islands whaling grounds in 1851, just miles from the spot where the Essex had been sunk 31 years prior. The large and unusually aggressive bull had already attacked and chewed to pieces two pursuing whaleboats before eventually turning on the Ann Alexander itself and ramming it just above the keel at an estimated speed of 15 knots. The crew were forced to abandon ship, but unlike the Essex all were recovered safely within days. The bull (whose unusual aggressiveness was eventually blamed on old age and pain from disease) was later discovered floating on the surface, mortally injured and "full of wooden splinters" from the attack.[18] American writer Herman Melville was inspired by the account of the Essex, and used some facts from the story, as well as his own eighteen-month experience as a sailor aboard a commercial whaler, to write his epic 1851 novel on the oil whaling industry, Moby Dick. The sections in Moby Dick on the biology of the sperm whale were largely based on books by Thomas Beale (1839) and Frederick Bennett (1840).[19][20][21][22]

Whaling activity declined from the 1880s until 1946, but picked up again after World War II. Modern whaling was more efficient than open-boat whaling, using steam and then diesel powered ships and exploding harpoons. Initially, modern whaling activity focused on large baleen whales, but as these populations were decimated, sperm whaling increased. Cosmetics, soap and machine oil formed the major uses of sperm whale products during this time. Sperm whale oil was still in use in automobile transmission cooling units in the United States in the 1970s.[23]

In modern whaling, after the oil had been extracted the meat was usually ground down into a meal for feeding livestock. After sperm whale populations declined significantly, the species was given full protection by the International Whaling Commission in 1985. Hunting of sperm whales by Japan in the northern Pacific Ocean continued until 1988.[13]

Sperm whales and other deep-sea species are still hunted from small open boats by hunters from two Indonesian villages, Lamalera and Lamakera. This is permitted under rules concerning aboriginal whaling.[24]