Most of our contemporaries believe that a harpoon is a kind of spear for fishing. Most often they confuse him with a prison. This is understandable: for hunting and fishing "for fun" the classic harpoon is almost never used, but among the indigenous peoples of the North who live in traditional crafts, this weapon is still in honor. The "civilized" Europeans and Americans now use a harpoon gun, and it has little in common with an ancient weapon: this rather complex tool has undergone significant changes over the many centuries of its existence. Of particular popularity was, of course, the whaling harpoon, described in detail by Herman Melville, but there were others that were different in design and purpose. We will try to highlight their common features.
Meaning of the word “harpoon”
The compilers of the explanatory dictionaries agree that this term (harpoen) owes its appearance to the Dutch whalers, who in the 17th century were unparalleled. The word comes from the late Latin harpo ("hook"). However, there is evidence that the concept arose even earlier - among the Basques, the people living in the territory of modern Spain. Translated from the Basque language, "harpoon" is a "stone point". In Russia, the harpoon was called cuticle or knitting needle.
Design. Harpoon and harpoon
The hardest harpoon device for fishing. Such a harpoon is just a jagged spear. In some cases, it has a ring for tying to a boat. The harpoon is sometimes called a jail (and vice versa), but in fact a jail is a completely different tool. It has several long teeth and is not intended for throwing. The hunter beats her fish without releasing the pole from his hand. A harpoon for hunting aquatic animals (seals, walruses) is a throwing tool, which consists of a shaft (usually a wooden one), a tip (may be bone, stone, metal) and the ropes connecting them. Given the scarcity of materials and tools, it is not easy for a hunter to make such a harpoon. The photo clearly shows what a complex design this device can have.
The tip, as a rule, is flat and jagged, inserted into the shaft, but not connected to it loosely. After the hunter has thrown, the shaft is separated from the tip that entered the victim’s body. Not always the animal manages to kill one throw. The wounded beast tries to hide, the rope is pulled, and the shaft that floats on the surface of the water indicates to the hunter the direction of its movement. The victim cannot get rid of the tip stuck in the body: the lateral teeth prevent this.
Harpoon in different nations
Harpoon is an international weapon. People learned to carve them back in the Paleolithic (early Stone Age) era . They were made of bone (northerners from walrus and mammoth) and horns, most often deer. The points of the ancient harpoons Eskimos, Aleuts, Chukchi and Koryak were made of flint, bronze, native copper and iron. However, the peoples of Alaska did not disdain with solid wooden harpoons. Some African tribes use a harpoon (with an iron tip) to hunt hippos. In the Andaman Islands they kill wild boars. In the caves of mainland Europe (at a considerable distance from the sea), bone tips from complex harpoons were found, which were obviously used for catching large fish and hunting for forest (not aquatic!) Animals. Bone tips of the Neolithic era are also found in Russia. With harpoons they hunted both in the summer and in the winter, from the boat, at a wormwood or just in the water. From ancient times, harpoons were used by Indonesians for the extraction of whales, dolphins and sharks. Their design did not provide for the separation of the tip, the harpoon was simply tied to the boat with a long line. It should be noted that the Indonesians do not throw the harpoon at the whale, but, without releasing the pole from their hands, jump on his back and prick him like an ordinary spear.
Harpoon - An Ancient Whaling Tool
The shapes of the harpoons were very diverse. The classic European or American whaling tool has an iron shaft and a wide short blade. Most often, such harpoons have wooden handles, for which they are attached to the boat with a very long rope. In the 19th century (and earlier), whales were chased on small rowing vessels (whaleboats). Approaching a distance of 6 meters, the harpooner metal in a whale his weapon (more often - two). When throwing, the tip did not separate from the pole. A tench tied to a harpoon quickly unwound, and a whale with great speed dragged the boat along the waves until it was exhausted. Then the whale was killed, but not with a harpoon, but with a spear, and this was done not by the harpooner, but by the captain of the whaleboat. Nevertheless, a good harpooner was highly respected.
Northern hunters still come across whales in whose body they find twisted 19th-century guns. Shown below is one such harpoon. The photo, even so concise, indicates that the whale was more than a dangerous adversary.
The Norwegians even had a law according to which a man who had a family could not be a harpooner.
Gun evolution
In the second half of the 19th century, the harpoon of the whalers was replaced by the harpoon gun, invented by the Norwegian engineer Foin. She made whale hunting safer and significantly more unsightly. An ordinary harpoon evolved into an underwater gun. But these devices retained the main elements of their “ancestor”: a sharp tip with teeth pointing backward, and a cable that did not allow the hunter to miss the prey.
The indigenous peoples of the North continue to use the same tools as their forefathers. Harpoon is a universal fishing tool. Despite the fact that residents of Alaska or Chukotka have become available firearms, they are not going to abandon hunting methods and tools that have been tested for centuries.