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"Three major types of firearm were developed and deployed in the 19th century whale fishery to catch and kill whales: bow-mounted guns, shoulder guns and darting guns. Bow-mounted guns were largely ineffectual at launching harpoons that hit their target. Shoulder guns were more efficacious at firing bomb lances that killed whales, but not attaching them to the whaleboat by harpoon. The most successful device was the hybrid "darting gun"—a firearm on a wooden pole that was hand-thrust at the whale with a harpoon attached. The harpoon fastened to the whale and a triggering rod on the pole-mounted gun-part of the unit simultaneusly launched a bomb lance."

"In the 20th century, massive missiles and high-speed catcher boats achieved a scale of industrial slaughter that dwarfed the yield of the old-fashioned sailing and rowing days. Nevertheless, the pursuit of more efficient, effective means to harvest whales started early and should be seen as part of a human evolution in diabolical killing force."

Nineteenth-century American whalemen pursued their quarry in thirty-foot whaleboats and generally used hand-thrust harpoons and lances for fastening to the whale and killing it. The late 1840s in America saw the development of shoulder-fired whaling guns, which were used to fire modified harpoons and explosive missiles called bomb lances. The latter were used successfully to kill whales that had already been harpooned by hand-darted irons. The former, although manufactured in different designs throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, were for the most part rather ineffective devices. ^*

"The darting gun is a gun mounted on the "business" end of an ordinary whaling harpoon wooden pole. The gun has one or two lugs for holding a specialized harpoon that has a spiked end rather than a socket. Within the barrel of the gun is a bomb lance, which is fired from the muzzle by means of a long trigger rod that activates the firing mechanism at the same time that the harpoon is darted. The darting gun harpoon has an iron hook just forward of the spike to which the main attachment line is spliced. Upon darting, the bomb lance is projected into the whale’s body as the harpoon is fastened. The whale takes off on the 'Nantucket sleigh ride,' hopefully to be stopped in short order after the bomb lance explodes. The gun and pole fall into the water and are retrieved by a light line attached to the pole. This ingenious, diabolical device was invented and patented in 1865 by an active New Bedford whaling master named Eben Pierce… The advent of the darting gun produced better yields for whalemen, particularly in the Arctic where it was important to kill a harpooned whale quickly before it could disappear among the ice floes." ^*

	Shoulder-Guns
	Darting-Guns
	Bow-Guns

Whaling  Hellman Whalecraft  Contents  Whalesite