The harpoon was designed for fastening onto a whale, to "play" it and tire it out as an angler would play an oversized fish. The harpoon blade or head is accordingly barbed or toggled to hold fast. Standard types were the single-flue or single-barb harpoon and the arrow-shaped double-flue or double-barb harpoon. The Arctic harpoon was a double-flue iron with stop-withers on the flues, better at holding fast in the blubber of some species. In the 19th century specialist blacksmiths–called shipsmiths and whalecraft manufacturers–attempted many variations to improve the tenacity and efficiency of harpoons. A toggling grommet harpoon (circa 1835) slightly improved efficiency, but the Temple toggle iron, invented by the African-American shipsmith Lewis Temple of New Bedford in 1848, and the derivative "improved" toggle iron, which was also developed in New Bedford, were a major step forward, virtually revolutionizing whaling by combining ease of handling with tenacious holding power. Whenever the Greener gun (1837) and various other swivel-guns and shoulder guns were used to launch harpoons, the configuration of the harpoon blade was critical; and despite the emergence of many subsequent designs, the original Temple and "improved" toggle irons remained dominant in American use until the fishery shut down in 1927, and remain in use today among Yup’ik and Inupiat Native whalers in Alaska.

The lance was used for the kill, and much of the technological innovation in 19th-century whaling was devoted to improving the means of dispatching spent whales. Rocket-shaped bomb lances, fired from shoulder guns (1846) and darting guns (1865), were successful alternatives that never entirely supplanted the conventional hand-wielded lance. The prussic-acid harpoon (1831) and electric harpoon (1851) endeavored to consolidate the functions of harpoon and lance, but only the darting gun, invented by Captain Ebenezer Pierce of New Bedford (1865), was ever widely adopted for that purpose in the 19th century. The harpoon-and-lance combination was never really satisfactory until, beginning in the 1870s, Norwegian entrepreneur Svend Foyn introduced a new technology: large-caliber explosive grenades fired from bow-chaser cannons aboard highly maneuverable, steam-powered catcher-boats. It was these modern Norwegian methods that ultimately, in the mid 20th century, threatened the extinction of several whale species.

ESKIMO HARPOON
Age-old types of Eskimo harpoons, originally fashioned from marine ivory and bone, with wooden shafts, flint or slate blades, and bindings of seal or walrus hide, were prototypes of the toggling harpoons developed by New Bedforders in the 19th Century.

SINGLE-FLUE (SINGLE-BARB) HARPOON
Counter intuitively, the single-flue harpoon was less likely then the double-flue harpoon to cut its way free of the blubber when fast to a whale.

DOUBLE-FLUE (DOUBLE-BARB) HARPOON
This most straightforward of all harpoons, in the form of a simple steel arrow, tended under stress to cut its way free of the blubber when fast to a whale. Most whalemen regarded the single-flue harpoon as an improvement.

ARCTIC HARPOON with stopwithers on the flues, intended to prevent the blade’s withdrawal from the blubber when fast to a whale.

The GROMMET HARPOON (circa 1835)
was a rudimentary toggle iron, intended on impact to swivel the dull rim of the blade against the blubber when fast to a whale, so as not to cut itself loose. The Temple toggle iron and "improved" toggle iron were dramatic improvements.

The TEMPLE TOGGLE IRON (1848),
invented by African-American shipsmith Lewis Temple of New Bedford, was a revolutionary improvement in efficiency: more reliably than any other type of harpoon, it swiveled the sharp blade into position facing away from the surface of the blubber, thus minimizing the tendency to cut itself free under stress. This meant fewer whales lost, thus greater efficiency of the hunt. This very rare specimen was made by the inventor himself in 1851 and went whaling aboard the New Bedford bark Canada. Kendall. Coll. T-xxx.

The IMPROVED TOGGLE IRON (circa 1850)
emerged in New Bedford shortly after Lewis Temple introduced the Temple toggle iron (1848). It was an "improvement" only from a manufacturing standpoint: a slotted steel blade or head, to accommodate the iron shaft–rather than Temple’s original split shaft, to accommodate a solid head–reduced manufacturing costs (and thus retail price) by half. In the 1850s tens of thousands of these were produced by the Durfee brothers and other high-volume shipsmiths and whalecraft manufacturers in New Bedford.

The GREENER GUN,
developed in 1837 by English gunsmith William W. Greener was a bow-mounted swivel cannon used to shoot harpoons at whales and walruses. It became immensely popular among British and American whalers. Captain Charles Melville Scammon, who was famous for hunting gray whales around Baja California, commented in 1874, "Were it not for the utility of Greener’s gun, the coast fishery would be abandoned, it being now next to impossible to ‘strike’ with the hand-harpoon. At the present time, if the whale can be approached within thirty yards [27.5 m], it is considered to be in reach of the gun-harpoon."

BOMB LANCE
developed in the 1840s and shaped like a rocket or a large bullet, it could be fired at a whale or walrus from a shoulder gun or swivel cannon, and exploded on impact.

SHOULDER GUN,
invented in 1846 by Oliver Allen of Norwich, Connecticut, and manufactured in several sizes by C.C. Brand of Norwich. This is one of the original 1846 models.

PRUSSIC ACID HARPOON-LANCE (circa the 1830s-’40s).
It was intended to fasten onto whales and kill them with chemicals, but it never caught on with Yankee whalers.

ELECTRIC HARPOON,
invented at Bremen, Germany, in 1851. It required an elongated whaleboat to accommodate a bulky hand-cranked generator to create the electrical charge required to kill the whale. The apparatus was tested at sea on the Bremen whaleship Averick Heineken, Captain Goerken in 1851, possibly also aboard the Amethyst of New Bedford, Captain William F. Jones, on a voyage of 1854-59. With a U.S. patent granted in 1852, Christian A. Heineken of Bremen evidently planned to manufacture electric harpoons and generators at Baltimore, but they never found favor with actual whalers and were never adopted for general use. This specimen (in the Museum’s Kendall Collection) may be the only one to survive. Kendall. Coll. T-300