Wouldn’t that be just like a pin prick to a whale?
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Once the whale was harpooned to hold it at the surface, additional harpoons or spears were used to pierce the brain and later to set off small grenades near the brain. Even if this was not possible or was ineffectual, death would occur from some combination of stress, exhaustion, blood loss, and blunt trauma.
If you’re going to reference a book when asking a question, you should probably try reading it to see if it contains the answer.
>In most land animals there are certain valves or flood gates in many of their veins, whereby when wounded, the blood is in some degree at least instantly shut off in certain directions. Not so with the whale; one of whose peculiarities is, to have an entire non-valvular structure of the blood-vessels, so that when pierced even by so small a point as a harpoon, a deadly drain is at once begun upon his whole arterial system; and when this is heightened by the extraordinary pressure of water at a great distance below the surface, his life may be said to pour from him in incessant streams. Yet so vast is the quantity of blood in him, and so distant and numerous its interior fountains, that he will keep thus bleeding and bleeding for a considerable period; even as in a drought a river will flow, whose source is in the well springs of far off and undiscernible hills.
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, 1851
The classical harpoon with a rope attached is just the initial harpoon. It is intended to lodge itself in the blubber, under the skin and prevent the whale from diving or swimming away from the ship. When the whale tried it would just tire itself out. The ships crew would then board smaller boats that could row up to the whale and use spears to kill it by hitting weak spots to bleed it out and finally get through to its brain killing it. Another common picture of whaling is the whaler sitting on top of the whale with a spear in his hands. This is from the later stages of the fight.
There were a few improvements to the harpoon to help in the later stages as well, not just the initial capture. There were longer thinner harpoons that would go deeper into the whale but not stick so well to it. But the most spectacular projectile were the grenade which would go into the blubber and then explode. This would open up a wound in the whale as well as create shocks that might cause concussions in the whale.
The harpoon doesn’t directly kill the whale (normally) it is used to attach the boat to the whale, you have a rope tied to the harpoon. The boat is then “anchored” to the whale when it moves.
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