In 2007, Alaskan Hunters Found A 19th-Century Weapon In A Bowhead Whale’s Shoulder. It May Have Been There For Over A Century

Whalers have long known that a harpooned whale does not always die. On May 16, 2007, Alaska Native hunters landed a 14.9-meter male bowhead at Barrow, Alaska, and found three finely machined brass pieces embedded near its right shoulder blade. Those brass pieces turned out to belong to a bomb lance, a weapon designed to explode inside a whale. Researchers used old patent records to date the design and estimate when it was fired, and the result suggests one whale carried the weapon for more than a century.

The bigger question, how long bowhead whales live, is harder to answer. Age estimates for these animals reach past 200 years, but scientists still do not know the species’ maximum lifespan. Here is what the evidence supports, and where it runs out.

What Did Hunters Actually Find?

An explosive bomb lance, not an ordinary hand-thrown harpoon. The 2008 Polar Biology account identifies the whale as No. 07B8. Authors “Craig” George and John R. Bockstoce matched the piece to a model Ebenezer Pierce patented in 1879. A bomb lance was a metal cylinder filled with gunpowder and fitted with a time-delay fuse. In a complete lance, a shot released an ignition weight that lit the fuse, which then detonated the charge inside the whale. Here, the explosive body was never recovered, and the surviving pieces were the point, the ignition weight and the connecting housing.

How Could Researchers Date The Strike?

Through patent details. Pierce’s 1879 patent for a combined bomb-gun and harpoon is dated January 28, 1879. He modified the design in 1885, and the researchers say the later version added two vent ports to release gas, which kept the ignition from happening instantly. The recovered fragment has no vent ports, so the team identified the earlier design. Because whalers used up expensive bomb lances before replacing them and adopted improvements quickly, the researchers placed its likely use within a few years before or after 1890.

The researchers acknowledged that an old lance could have sat in storage before use. They argued, however, that bomb lances were expensive, so whalers usually used up their supply before buying more, and that improvements were adopted quickly. A senior Barrow whaling captain also judged that the healing around the wound suggested the whale was quite old. The date is well supported but remains an estimate.

Does This Prove Bowheads Live Beyond 200 Years?

Not by itself. The same team identified the 1879 design in a second fragment, recovered from a bowhead harvested near Gambell on St. Lawrence Island in 1980, which supports the idea that some whales survive these strikes.

Age estimates come from a different source. A 1999 study in the Canadian Journal of Zoology estimated ages for 42 animals from 48 eye lenses using aspartic acid racemization, a chemical clock that changes as the lens ages. Four males exceeded 100 years, and the oldest estimate was 211 years. The method is chemical rather than a count of annual growth layers, and the Guinness World Records entry reports that the study authors suggested the 211-year-old could have been anywhere from 177 to 245 years old.

A Marine Mammal Science study analyzed 52 eyes from 42 bowhead whales with the same chemical method. It calibrated the chemical rate using 27 whales whose ages came from baleen or ovarian evidence, plus two full-term fetuses. It reported that one male exceeded 100 years and that the oldest female was 88, and it estimated female age at sexual maturity at about 26 years. Its abstract does not report a maximum lifespan for the species.

A Journal of Cetacean Research and Management study used a modified version of the same method on lenses from 68 bowhead whales. It reported more precise results, and Mote Marine Laboratory described the oldest whale in that study as about 188 years old.

What Does The Evidence Actually Support?

A qualified conclusion. NOAA Fisheries and the International Whaling Commission regulate Alaska Native subsistence whaling separately from commercial whaling, which is not covered by the commercial whaling moratorium. NOAA notes that for many Alaska Native communities, the bowhead hunt matters most as a food source and as a cultural tradition. The authors also credited Captain Arnold Brower Sr. and his crew for allowing the fragment to be examined.

The artifact is best treated as a durable historical marker rather than a precise birth record. A weapon designed to kill a bowhead before it could escape into the pack ice instead left evidence that one survived the strike. If the dating holds, that whale lived roughly another human lifetime afterward.