Bjorn Sigurdsson

Bjorn Sigurdsson (July 4, 1824 - June 26, 1885) was a notable Norwegian whaler and eventual pirate from Hammerfest. He is noted for his great success in the whaling industry and long rivalry with English tycoon James Geiss.
Career
Sigurdsson was born to a life of abject poverty; at age 12 he entered into an apprenticeship on a whaling ship, where he swiftly rose through the ranks to ship's mate. He was noted for his ferocity, often jumping on a harpooned whale and killing and gutting it with his trusty 14-inch knife. Despite his his reputation as something of a firebrand, he was a keen businessman, working to obtain maximum profit for whale meat and oil from the inhabitants of his hometown and other Norwegian cities. By 1857, he had earned enough to found his own whaling company, the Arctic Circle Whaling Company (Arktis Cirkel Valfångst Selskatet).
Sigurdsson retained his bloodthirsty ways, and he was suspected of killing fellow whaler Søren Halvorsen in a bar fight in 1863. The charges were dropped under mysterious circumstances. Around this time Sigurdsson began to seriously impact the business of English whaler James Geiss. Eventually the competition between the two drove Sigurdsson to resort to more drastic measures. In 1867 Sigurdsson seized the British whaling ship Eleanor Welles, a prized member of Geiss's fleet. The British government issued a bounty. However, in spite of several searches by the Royal Navy, neither Sigurdsson nor the Eleanor Welles and several other ships of Geiss's North Sea Whaling Company was ever apprehended. Sigurdsson was helped along in his competition by the economic decline of the British whaling industry by the 1870s.
Ironically, Sigurdsson's decision to become a pirate proved a good business move. No longer bound by ties to a national government, Sigurdsson proceeded to capture numerous merchant ships from the North Sea to the Caribbean while selling lamp oil through a series of fronts in coastal cities in North America and Europe. Sigurdsson died in 1885 when his crew inadvertently harpooned a mako shark. In his characteristic manner, Sigurdsson attempted to stab the shark; however the shark bit his neck and severed his jugular vein. He was buried at sea by his crew, having evaded several foreign governments' attempts to apprehend him for 18 years.

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