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whaling
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whaling whaling history After being killed by whaleboat crews, the whale was secured alongside the ship and cut into pieces, which were cooked in the try-pots. The resulting oil was casked and stored below the decks. The whaleboat was towed by a harpooned whale until the animal tired. Lances were then used for the kill. The powerful engines of mid-20th-century catcher boats allowed these vessels to overtake even the fastest whales. A moratorium on commercial whaling was finally imposed in 1986 after decades of overhunting had already depleted the populations of many whale species. whaling harpoon
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whaling Japanese factory ship hauling a minke whale through a slipway in the ship's stern, 1992.

whaling

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Written by
Gordon Jackson
Reader in Economic History, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. Author of The British Whaling Trade and others.
Gordon Jackson
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whaling, the hunting of whales for food and oil. Whaling was once conducted around the world by seafaring nations in pursuit of the giant animals that seemed as limitless as the oceans in which they swam. However, since the mid-20th century, when whale populations began to drop catastrophically, whaling has been conducted on a very limited scale. It is now the subject of great scrutiny, both by formal regulatory bodies and by nongovernmental organizations. Whaling has been documented in many sources—from Neolithic cave art to present-day annual reports of the International Whaling Commission—but there is no firm proof as to ...(100 of 2966 words)

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