LANCES GENERAL.
The lance was used to kill the whale after it had been harpooned and had exhausted its last ton of whale-power dragging whaleboat and crew across miles of ocean in an effort to escape. There were, broadly speaking, two kinds of lances. Long and slender, the hand-thrust lance was designed to reach the interior arteries. The weapon was plunged over and over until the whale spouted blood. The bomb lance, the earliest dating from the 1840s, was fired by gun. It was a missile that penetrated the whale and killed by explosion.
Hand-Thrust
HAND-THRUST
Hand-Thrust
from "Stubb Kills a Whale," Moby-Dick:
"When reaching far over the bow, Stubb slowly churned his long sharp lance into the fish, and kept it there, carefully churning and churning, as if cautiously seeking to feel after some gold watch that the whale might have swallowed, and which was fearful of breaking ere he could hook it out. But the gold watch he sought was the innermost life of the fish. And now it is struck; for, starting from his trance into that unspeakable thing called his "flurry," the monster horribly wallowed in his blood, ovewrapped himself in impenetrable, mad, boilng spray, so that the imperilled craft, instantly dropping stern, and much ado blindly to struggle out from that phrensied twilight into the clear air of the day."
"And now abating in his flurry, the whale once more rolled out into view; surging from side to side; spasmodically dilating and contracting his spout-hole, with sharp, cracking, agonized respirations. At last, gush after gush of clotted red gore, as if it had been the purple lees of red wine, shot into the frighted air; and failing back again, ran dripping down his motionless flanks into the sea. His heard had burst!"
"‘He’s dead, Mr. Stubb,’ said Daggoo."
"‘Yes; both pipes smoked out!’ and withdrawing his own from his mouth, Stubb scattered the dead ashes over the water; and, for a moment, stood thoughtfully eyeing the vast corpse he had made."
Bomb lances
|
