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Catching peaked in 1902, when 1,305 whales were caught to produce 40,000 barrels of oil. Whale hunting had largely declined by 1910, when only 170 whales were caught. A ban on whaling was imposed by the Althing in 1915. In 1935 an Icelandic company established a whaling station that shut down after only five seasons.
Commercial whaling in the United States dates to the 17th century in New England. The industry peaked in 1846–1852, and New Bedford, Massachusetts, sent out its last whaler, the John R. Mantra, in 1927. The Whaling industry was engaged with the production of three different raw materials: whale oil, spermaceti oil, and whalebone.
Sperm whaling is the human practice of hunting sperm whales, the largest toothed whale and the deepest-diving marine mammal species, for the oil, meat and bone that can be extracted from the cetaceans' bodies. Sperm whales are prized for the sperm oil, a waxy secretion that was especially popular as a lubricant and illuminant during the ...
Essex. (whaleship) Essex was an American whaling ship from Nantucket, Massachusetts, which was launched in 1799. On November 20, 1820, while at sea in the southern Pacific Ocean under the command of Captain George Pollard Jr., the ship was attacked and sunk by a sperm whale. About 2,000 nautical miles (3,700 km) from the coast of South America ...
The sperm whale or cachalot[a] (Physeter macrocephalus) is the largest of the toothed whales and the largest toothed predator. It is the only living member of the genus Physeter and one of three extant species in the sperm whale family, along with the pygmy sperm whale and dwarf sperm whale of the genus Kogia.
Mocha Dick (/ ˈmɒtʃə dɪk /; died 1838) was a male sperm whale that lived in the Pacific Ocean in the early 19th century, usually encountered in the waters near Mocha Island, off the central coast of Chile. American explorer and author J.N. Reynolds published his account, "Mocha Dick: Or The White Whale of the Pacific: A Leaf from a ...
The indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast have whaling traditions dating back millennia, and the hunting of cetaceans continues by Alaska Natives (mainly beluga and narwhal, but also the subsistence hunting of the bowhead whale) and to a lesser extent by the Makah people (gray whale). In the twentieth century there was a commercial ...
Owen Coffin. Owen Coffin (August 24, 1802 – February 2, 1821) was a sailor aboard the Nantucket whaler Essex when it set sail for the Pacific Ocean on a sperm whale-hunting expedition in August 1819, under the command of his cousin, George Pollard, Jr. In November 1820, a whale rammed and breached the hull of Essex in mid-Pacific, causing ...