Century-Old Weapon Hidden in Whale Blubber Near Barrow, Alaska

In 2007, Inupiat whalers in Alaska examined a 50-ton bowhead whale and discovered a fragment of explosive harpoon near its shoulder blade. The weapon dates from 1879 to 1885. This dating finally allows scientists to estimate the animal’s age with precision.

A seemingly ordinary discovery, made during a subsistence hunt near Barrow

Indeed, it all began in the spring of 2007, during a subsistence hunt that local authorities supervise closely. On that day, Captain Arnold Brower Sr.’s crew captured a male bowhead about 49 feet long, roughly 50 tons, near Barrow. The men then began to butcher it.

Specifically, in the fat near the shoulder blade, a fragment of rusted metal appears. Nothing extraordinary at first glance: the Inupiat crews often find old iron in the whales they hunt in the Arctic. Moreover, this practice goes back several generations.

How experts identified an explosive weapon dating back to 1885

What changes everything is the precision of the identification. The fragment rests in a bone, between the neck and the shoulder blade. In reality, it probably came from New Bedford, then the world capital of whaling. At the local museum, historian John Bockstoce compares it to his reference collection.

His verdict is unequivocal. The piece matches a patent Ebenezer Pierce filed in 1879. Manufacturers produced this model only until 1885, before newer innovations replaced it. A window of barely six years.

The object is not a mere forged iron harpoon, but a mechanical weapon. It contains powder and explodes a few seconds after piercing the flesh. The experts then cross-check the patent and the vessel’s voyage, from San Francisco to Alaska. They thus place the shot around 1890.

Small engraved notches, the signature of a hunter long dead

One detail intrigues researchers: six small engraved notches adorn the tip. In fact, they resemble a mark of ownership, that of an Indigenous Alaskan whaling captain. A hunter left this signature. Nothing is known about him, except that he missed his target more than a century ago.

The irony does not escape the researchers. The descendants of this anonymous hunter could well belong to the same families who captured the whale in 2007. Unknowingly, they would have effectively completed a hunt their ancestors had begun more than a century earlier.

What this fragment reveals about the remarkable longevity of bowhead whales

Thanks to this tightly focused manufacturing window, researchers estimate the whale’s age at between 115 and 130 years. Additionally, Jeffrey Bada is conducting a study that goes even further: it places the animal’s age at up to 211 years.

This isn’t the first time such a clue has fallen into scientists’ hands. In 1980, hunters had already found a similar fragment near Saint Lawrence Island. Yet no one at the time grasped its significance: “nobody had any idea of their lifespan,” says a biologist.

In short, the bowhead whale is among the rare species with negligible senescence. It can live more than 200 years, just behind the Greenland shark. Today, the Inupiat Heritage Center in Barrow displays the artifact.