Humpback Irons: A MOST UNUSUAL HARPOON By Jack Fritsch
It seems that in the eyes of the Yankee whalers, a whale was a lot like a mouse and they were forever trying to invent a better mouse trap. Whalemen were like all fishermen in begrudging the one that got away. A quick perusal of logbooks shows that many whales did in fact get away after being darted by a harpoon. In light of this, it is not surprising that the pursuit of the whale fishery gave rise to many attempted improvements in the tools of the trade: there were eventually at least 23 different types and 34 unique U.S. patented harpoons.1 Some of these, believe it or not, actually were improvements. One of the oddest of the harpoons was the little known (and rarely seen) Humpback Iron. This device was a greatly over-sized version of the improved toggle iron. It follows the design of a standard hand darted harpoon and could not possibly be fired from a gun. But just a quick glance at one in a museum immediately shows the mystery…this iron was too large and heavy to have been effectively thrown. The surprising answer does not disappoint and reveals the ingenuity (and desperation?) of the old whalemen. The humpback was one of the five species normally hunted by the Yankee whalers. It was the least desirable of prey since it sank about half the time after being killed.2 In later years after the collapse of whale oil prices and baleen became the driving commodity,3, 4 the humpback became even less desirable as its baleen was considered useless for commercial purposes.2, 3 The pressures of the Revolutionary War forced Nantucket whalers to rely on short, quick cruises in nearby waters, and since the right whale population had been depleted, out of desperation they were forced to chase humpbacks in large numbers.5, 6, 7, 8 New England whalers in small shore-based operations throughout the Gulf
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of Maine in the mid- and late-nineteenth century also had to resort to humpbacks as all other whale species disappeared and the menhaden oil fishery waxed and waned.5, 9, 10, 11 Since at least half of the humpback whales captured promptly sank, the fishery was run (in Maine parlance) as a “shoot and salvage” operation. Small, fast schooners carrying no more than two whale boats chased the whales, which despite their speed could be caught and killed with relative ease now with the advent of shoulder guns and bomb lances. The problem lay with so many whales sinking that now needed to be recovered off the ocean floor. In order to have any hope for success, the humpback fishery had to be pursued in shallow waters less than forty fathoms in depth,12 and specialized recovery methods needed to be devised. Simply trying to raise the whale by hauling back on the original harpoon line would not work: the small toggled head would pull out. Yankee ingenuity offered the solution of a specialized recovery harpoon—the “Humpback Iron”—with a greatly enlarged toggle head (in the order of ten inches as opposed to the standard five to six inches) and
