INTRODUCTION.
My views were originally directed to the undertaking which forms the subject of the present Volume, by a suggestion of the late Right Honourable George Rose, when President of the Board of Trade. On witnessing some experiments made by me to illustrate my method of saving persons from shipwreck, he was pleased to declare his conviction that the principle there employed, in the projection of a rope from a gun, might be extended with much advantage to the whale-fishery, for the purpose of throwing a harpoon in a similar manner. He expressed his own confidence that the general introduction of such a change, would, in a great degree, avert the failure, which he regretted to learn, had latterly attended the investment of capital in this branch of commercial speculation; and he at the same
