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Updated: May 16, 2025
Coming back from the whale hunt, triumphant as if they had caught a dozen finbacks, the men erected a post, engraving on it the date, July 14, 1789, and the names of all present. It had taken six weeks to reach the Arctic. It took eight to return to Chipewyan, for the course was against stream, in many places tracking the canoes by a tow-line. The beaver meadows along the shore impeded the march.
'Twas a finback whale, M. Radisson explained; and he protested against the impudence of scratching its back on our keel. As we sailed farther north many a school of rolling finbacks glistened silver in the sun or rose higher than our masthead, when one took the death-leap to escape its leagued foes swordfish and thrasher and shark.
"Neither of 'em," the gunner replied: "there's two kinds of right whale, the bowhead and the black, and both have fine whalebone, an' that, as you know, is a sort of strainer in the mouth that takes the place of teeth. Humpbacks an' finbacks are taken for oil, an' they look quite different.
Especially is this so in the case of the Twofold Bay shore whalers, for out of every ten whales killed during the season, whether humpbacks, "right" whales, or finbacks, three-fourths are captured through the pack of killers seizing and literally holding them till the boats come up and end the mighty creatures' miseries.
But the 'finners, which are still fairly common, include the 'sulphurs, among which there have been specimens far exceeding any authentic sperms or 'rights. Even the humpbacks and common finbacks, both well known in Canadian waters, occasionally surpass the average size of sperms and 'rights. But the sulphur is probably the only kind of whale which sometimes grows to a hundred feet and more.
But, in a case where one of these finbacks is held by killers, it can be approached, as I have said, by shore boats and killed, as is the practice of the Twofold Bay whalemen. Let the writer now quote, with the publisher's permission, from a work he wrote some years ago describing the way the killers "work in" with their human friends.
When we commenced our cruise on this new ground, there were seven whalers in sight, all quite as keen on the chase as ourselves, so that I anticipated considerable sport of the liveliest kind should we "raise" whales with such a fleet close at hand. But for a whole week we saw nothing but a grampus or so, a few loitering finbacks, and an occasional lean humpback bull certainly not worth chasing.
"Where does the sperm whale come in?" asked Colin. "It's got teeth, like the gray whale," was the reply, "but you never find it in cold water. Sperm whalin' is comin' into favor again. But those two over there the ones we're after, are finbacks. You can tell by the spout, by the fin, by not seein' the flukes of the tail, an' by the way they play around, slappin' each other in fun."
This perfect stop to our progress troubled none, although it aggravates a merchant skipper terribly. As for the objects of our search, they had apparently all migrated other-whither, for never a sign of them did we see. Finbacks, a species of rorqual, were always pretty numerous, and as if they knew how useless they were to us, came and played around like exaggerated porpoises.
I was getting pretty well versed in the tricks of the trade now, so I kept mum, but strained my eyes in the direction for which the other ship was steering. The chief was looking astern at some finbacks, the look-out men forward were both staring to leeward, thus for a minute or so I had a small arc of the horizon to myself.
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