whaler
In addition to the people involved in whaling, the term whalers mainly refers to the associated ships.
history
Initial whalers were still in small rowing or sailing boats, also called whaling boats or whaling sloops. A center for the construction of larger whaling ships was New Bedford . The classic wooden whalers with dinghies were built here in the 19th century. B. the full ship rigged Charles W. Morgan .
Around 1840 there were around 700 to 900 such ships, which in good years killed around 10,000 whales. The average American whaler in the 19th century carried about 20 to 30 men. The ships carried up to six boats including reserves. Usually three to four boats, each manned by six sailors, were used in the hunt. Only one or two men were left behind to guard the ship during the hunt. The ship's cook or ship's carpenter also had to get into the boats to hunt and row. The bacon of the captured whales was already boiled into oil on the ship and filled into barrels. A normal fishing trip lasted around two to four years depending on the yield and shelf life of the stocks.
As the center of whaling shifted from the Atlantic to the North Pacific, ships got even bigger. In 1873 the first steam-powered whaler went into service. The invention of the harpoon cannons by the Norwegian Svend Foyn in 1864 , which made it possible to hunt the faster blue whales and fin whales , and the invention of the garnets in 1868, which increased the range and penetration of the harpoons, were particularly important for the development . The machine-driven 30 to 60 meter long whaling boat came into being with the perfection of marine engineering. A small gun platform on the bow of the ship has also been part of the basic equipment since the beginning of the 20th century.
The industrialization of whaling also made it possible to process the caught whale at sea. That is why modern whaling fleets also include factory ships which gutt caught whales and process or store and preserve all economically interesting components. In the course of the self-sufficiency policy of the 3rd Reich (“ fat gap ”), a fleet of such combined factory and tankers was built in Germany to supply oil and fat.
In the International Maritime Museum Hamburg , a replica of the of can Arved Fuchs sailed James Caird II are visited, which was originally built as a whaling boat. The whaling steamer Rau IX , built in 1939 for the Walter Rau whaling fleet, is located in the German Maritime Museum in Bremerhaven . The whaling ship Southern Actor is moored in the Norwegian Sandefjord as a museum ship of the local whaling museum and is still in service as a museum ship. In Mystic Seaport lies the last surviving wooden whaler, the Charles W. Morgan from 1841.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Short history of whaling . Geschichtsforum.de - forum for history; Retrieved March 28, 2012.
- ↑ A Little History of Whaling . Earth ecosystem; Retrieved January 29, 2012.
- ↑ Whaling Today . jonas-blondal.de; Retrieved January 29, 2012
- ^ Whaling steamer Rau IX . ( Memento of the original from May 3, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Whaling ship "Southern Actor". Retrieved September 23, 2018 .
