The leviathan, still bearing evidence of its earlier encounter with man, ran out of luck off the Alaska coast.
Embedded deep under its blubber was a 3½-inch arrow-shaped projectile that has given researchers insight into the whale's age, estimated at 115 to 130 years old.
"No other finding has been this precise," said John Bockstoce, an adjunct curator of the New Bedford Whaling Museum.
Calculating a whale's age can be difficult, and it usually is gauged by amino acids in the eye lenses. It is rare to find one that has lived more than 100 years, but experts say the oldest have been close to 200 years old.
The bomb lance fragment, lodged in a bone between the whale's neck and shoulder blade, was probably manufactured in New Bedford, on the southeast coast of Massachusetts, a major whaling center at that time, Bockstoce said.
It was probably shot at the whale from a heavy shoulder gun around 1890. The small metal cylinder was filled with explosives fitted with a time-delay fuse so it would explode seconds after it was shot into the whale. The bomb lance was meant to kill the whale quickly to prevent it from escaping.
The device exploded and "probably hurt the whale, or annoyed him, but it hit him in a nonlethal place," he said. "He couldn't have been that bothered if he lived for another 100 years."
The whale harkens back to far different era. If 130 years old, it would have been born the year Rutherford B. Hayes was sworn in as president and when Thomas Edison unveiled his newest invention, the phonograph.
The 49-foot male died last month when it was shot with a projectile similar to the one found buried beneath its blubber.
Whaling has always been a prominent source of food for Alaskans and is monitored now by the International Whaling Commission. A hunting quota for the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission was recently renewed, allowing 255 whales to be harvested by 10 Alaskan villages over five years.
After it is analyzed, the fragment will be displayed at the Inupiat Heritage Center in Barrow, Alaska.
