The northern whale-fishery

Chapter 2: PREFACE.

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About This Book

The author offers a chronological account of northern whale-fishing and traces how its locations, techniques, and organization changed over time. Practical hunting conditions and vessel operations are described alongside detailed portrayals of modern expeditions in high-latitude grounds and a comparative account of expenses and profits. The work explains methods for extracting oil and preparing baleen and surveys the applications of those products. It concludes with a narrative of a whale-fishing voyage that recounts shipboard procedures and the measures taken to preserve a vessel under particularly dangerous circumstances.

PREFACE.

The following pages are an abridgment, with some modifications and additions, of the second volume of captain (now the rev. Dr.) Scoresby’s work on the Arctic Regions and Whale-fishery, Edinburgh, 1820; the substance of the former volume having already appeared in this Monthly Series. The second chapter of the work, on the comparative view of the whale-fisheries of different European nations, has been entirely omitted, as less interesting, it is supposed, to the general reader, than the other chapters.