The harpooner who leaped overboard escaped death by the act, the tail having struck the very spot on which he stood.
The effects of the blow were astonishing--the keel was broken, the gunwales and every plank excepting two were cut through, and it was evident that the boat would have been completely divided, had not the tail struck directly upon a coil of lines.

The boat was rendered useless.
"The Dutch ship 'Gort-Moolen,' commanded by Cornelius Gerard Ouwekaas, with a cargo of seven fish, was anchored in Greenland, in the year 1660.

The captain, perceiving a whale ahead of his ship, beckoned his attendants and threw himself into a boat.

He was the first to approach the whale, and was fortunate enough to harpoon it before the arrival of the second boat, which was on the advance.

Jacques Vienkes, who had the direction of it, joined his captain immediately afterward, and prepared to make a second attack on the fish when it should remount to the surface.
At the moment of its ascension, the boat of Vienkes, happening, unfortunately, to be perpendicularly above it, was so suddenly and forcibly lifted up by a stroke of the head of the whale that it was dashed to pieces before the harpooner could discharge his weapon.