A hand lance with a long iron shaft and a small oval or leaf-shaped tip was also known as a killing iron. It was designed to dispatch a whale quickly and efficiently, once the mammal came to the water surface for the last time.
The hand lance was stabbed repeatedly into a whale’s thick neck arteries. The sharp leaf-shaped tip allowed easy removal for another thrust. Cutting these arteries prevented the whale from deep dives and hastened its bleeding to death.
Normally, multiple hand lances were carried aboard a whaleboat, so that if one was lost it could be easily replaced without returning to the mother ship for a spare one. By the late 19th century, guns had replaced most hand-thrown harpoons and lances. They were more efficient, more accurate, and safer, for a whaler could shoot a dart at a greater distance from the dangerous whale than a harpoon could be thrown.
This rope-strapped thimble carved from whalebone would have had a light rope through the eye for rigging, perhaps on a whaleboat.
These miniature items also served as children’s toys or curiosities back home. Toys in the form of miniature working ship parts were easy and quick for sailors to carve, and they did not require much skill to make. They also served as potent reminders of where and what the men were doing during their long absences from their friends and families.
Simply carved and without any engraving, this food chopper, or mincer, was made in two pieces from a sperm whale’s jawbone. Its blunted, curved blade was used to chop soft foods such as bread dough, fruits, sausage, and animal fats. This example was donated by former Secretary of the Institution Spencer F. Baird (1823–1887) to the Smithsonian, where it became one of the earliest objects in the maritime collections.